Individual Sexual Stories

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore my participants’ individual sexual narratives, focusing on accounts of becoming sexual, lesbian identity and sexual roles. These accounts differed depending on whether they had prior heterosexual experiences. I first consider how these Taiwanese women acknowledge same-sex attraction. Participants who did not have previous hetero-experiences frequently talked about ‘feeling different’ from an early age, while those who had such experiences developed varied strategies for struggling with heteronormativity when ‘changing sexuality’. I discuss how participants first became aware of same-sex attraction and analyse three strategies through which present lesbian-identified women make sense of their sexualities and their discontinuous pasts and pre-lesbian (or bisexual) selves and embrace a change in identity. I then discuss how Taiwanese lesbians realised, formed and reformed their identity in a patriarchal, heterosexual society and how sexual roles and T–Po role-playing were involved in self-identity, erotic relationships, peer groups and lesbian/feminist community politics. I explore the social spaces within which lesbian women learn the label ‘lesbian’ in Taiwan, particularly in school, university and other peer groups, through which they establish supportive networks and seek information. Each way of building a community creates different subcultures and norms of lesbianism, particularly in relation to T (masculine) and Po (feminine) roles. Importantly, collective identification is adaptable and may throw up contradictions in the wider community and/or in later relationships.