Lesbian Studies as a Way of Countering Non-Sexual Feminisms in Poland

Abstract

This article offers a reflection on the current state of affairs regarding sexuality studies in general and the representation of non-heterosexual women in particular in contemporary academia and feminisms. As a lesbian scholar based in Poland, I am attempting to establish a separate lesbian-studies discourse in the Polish academia on the one hand, and encourage a great dose of interdisciplinarity in moving towards re-adjusted and re-defined lesbian feminisms on the other. Having defended my doctoral dissertation, I am going to re-visit and summarise one of its parts, namely the question of inadequacies of contemporary gender studies. Although the overall character of my activity can be situated within the sociology of sexuality, I tend to conceptualise the problems in question through the prism of sociology of knowledge and human geography, and especially the branches of feminist geography and geographies of sexualities. Altogether, I am going to briefly look into several contemporary gender and/or women’s studies programmes in Poland in order to show both their incapacity to deal with female sexuality and, as a consequence, their erasure of lesbianity. Needless to say, the brief analysis herein is merely the start of the discussion as it offers only a sample of exploratory efforts with regard to the question of academic feminisms, but it is one that reveals some alarming tendencies.