Lesbian Identity Construction: An Adhesive Identity Proces

Abstract

As part of the sexual minority, lesbians receive less attention than gay men. Compared with gay men, lesbians bear more pressure from traditional culture and social discipline, and their identification process is more complicated. In other words, lesbians form a more open "mixed self" in the process of accepting multi-culture and multiple identities. To explore the identity status and mode of lesbians, the qualitative interview was used to conduct in-depth interviews with 5 lesbians. The results show that the main interaction dimensions of lesbians are as follows: In the process of interaction with self, parents, heterosexual community, and homosexual community in the above four dimensions, different situations or different situations in the same situation will change the way individuals manage their identities. Conflicts, coordination, concealment, or integration among different identities will affect the psychological state of individuals: Steadiness or anxiety, or sometimes steadiness and sometimes anxiety, will also lead to the different behavior of the individual. It can be seen that the identity of lesbians, namely the acceptance of their own multi-role identities, is a process of integration with multiple identities and roles. By introducing the concept of adhesive identity, this study enriched the interpretation of the psychological and behavioral manifestations of the lesbian identity process.