Resilience, Resistance and Relationality

Transformational Politics in Australian Lesbian Grassroots Organising and Community Spaces

Abstract

This article explores lesbian grassroots organising and community spaces in the past and present within the context of response, reflection, and action. Specifically, it examines how such activist organising efforts and spaces of culture and community in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Australia are responses to the confrontation, violence, alienation and trauma of heterosexist oppression. These responses provide lesbians opportunities to reflect on oppressive systems through the deconstructing of stereotypes and othering, transforming notions of identity and the self toward acceptance. Lesbians are able to act in ways which foster resistance, resilience and healing. In particular, connection with the Australian environment and ecological commitment plays a considerable role in facilitating independence, relationality and psychic healing. However, lesbians in the later twentieth century also experienced internal community fragmentation as reconstructions of the lesbian identity—from broadly negative to celebratory—involved a recognition of intersectional oppressions. Those with privilege grappled with their perpetuation of what were deemed ‘patriarchal values’. This article uses AnaLouise Keating’s post-oppositional consciousness framework to analyse how Australian lesbians historically responded to issues of intersectional marginalisation—including identity markers such as race and class—within grassroots organising and community space efforts. It also explores potential transformative pathways for the present and future. Post-oppositional consciousness involves an understanding and an embrace of difference to challenge status-quo thinking and generate commonalities among people, rather than insisting on unified notions of sameness. It encourages interconnectedness, relationality, complexity and flexibility. Findings from this article can contribute to research in post-oppositional consciousness theory as well as theories of trauma, identity, social organising and community spaces.