Political Difference and Maintenance of Shared Identity

Abstract

The data analysed in this book so far has indicated that the Stompers, whilst idiosyncratic in their interactive style and not always cooperative in their stance-taking, nonetheless tended to mutually negotiate the meaning of core aspects of Stomper identity. In constructing what it meant to be a ‘real’ lesbian, for example, the women jointly engaged in positioning a Girl as inauthentic and those traits associated with Dykes as legitimate. Though they sometimes prioritised their own, individual, identity work at the expense of others in the group, the interactions presented so far have illustrated a shared ethos, one relying not only on lesbian culture but on the women’s expectations of one another’s experiences as middle-class, middle-aged gay women. The previous chapter began by illustrating the expected significance of feminism to the group, before going on to describe the importance of knowledge, intellectualism and understanding of queer politics and culture. In this way, it indicated that not everything that the women did, as members of a lesbian group, necessarily indexed their sexuality in a direct way. This chapter will return to the relevance of feminism, specifically, to the Stomper women. It will also reveal moments whereby the women, rather than engaging in a friendly or bantering style in order to gain individual legitimacy, explicitly disagreed with one another’s stances and took on differing personae within the same interactive moment. In this way, it will explore how the women managed the disruption of their idealised homogeneity and maintained a coherent group identity.