ABSTRACT
In the 1986 national census, a question was asked about which ethnic group respondents belonged to but the answers showed significant differences in self-identification. Often ethnicity is coincidental and irrelevant to the partners in intercultural sexual relationships, who love each other for other reasons—it just so happens that they came from different ethnic backgrounds. Since the early 1970s successive Australian governments have been committed to a version of cultural pluralism called multiculturalism. Fundamental aspects of this policy are an immigration program which does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality or ancestry and that “each ethnic group desiring it, is permitted to create its own commercial life and preserve its own cultural heritage indefinitely while taking part in the general life of the nation”. Rose Kizinska explains the frustrations of being tokenized as a “representative ethnic lesbian” by Anglo-lesbians, and relates her experience with the Interlesbian group for non-Anglo lesbians in Melbourne.
