Desire Lines: Treading Trails and Telling Tales of Lesbian Mothering

Abstract

This study highlights the ways in which the marginalization of lesbian families in Canada and the United States is perpetuated by heterobias and exacerbated by the legislation that continues to exclude non-hetero families. As demonstrated in this study, however, this marginalization is actively being countered as lesbian mothers disrupt the hegemonic notions of motherhood and family by seeking to make their voices heard and stories known in the public sphere. The focus on lesbian parented families in this thesis is important and timely in its engagement of the social debate that continues to surround the queer community as a whole. Data was collected online by accessing five publicly posted blogs authored by self-described lesbian mothers, with narrative inquiry and grounded theory used as methodological approaches. Reading the blogs with a queer feminist critical lens and using an intersectional framework studying the dynamics of queer(/)mother identities as they have been presented within the blogs, the primary questions I ask in this study are: how do lesbian women go about creating and maintaining personal and family identity despite the prevalence of heterobiased and homophobic attitudes that comprise their social context?; and, what stories are being told about their experiences in an online, blogged setting? The question of how opportunities for community building are introduced by sharing these stories online also emerged as I conducted this study. In considering the dearth of research that includes the voices of lesbian mothers as expressed through blogs (Hunter 2015), this study is important in its ability to capture, document and analyze existing and emerging counter-narratives. As a central theme, I offer the notion of blogging as activism, both in terms of the act of storytelling, and also where bloggers have challenged the hegemonic notions of lesbian/mother/family in the context of every day interactions with others. The rationale for blogging as described within the data fell under the themes of information sharing, support seeking and community building. In examining the blogs, themes emerged that described the experience of trying to conceive outside of a heteronormative context; the difficulties of living in a heterobiased culture; and strategies for resistance. Despite the fundamental challenges described in the blogs with regard to living and parenting on the margins of the dominant culture, this study demonstrates blogging as a form of rebellion in disrupting the silence/silencing of queer lives though the public offering of counter-narratives.