Content area
Full Text
Boston Marriages: Romantic but A sexual Relationships Among Contemporary Lesbians is an interesting addition to the varied discourses on devising and defining lesbian relationships and sexualities. Rothblum and Brehony provide a collection of theoretical articles and personal narratives which open a discussion of the centrality of sex to the definition of lesbian relationships. This discussion implicitly challenges what has been the definitive moment for the category lesbian. It also offers an opportunity to think about the links (and the ruptures) between sexual activity and intimacy in lesbian relationships.
Although this book is aimed primarily at psychologists and psychotherapists, the project of finding ways to redefine or to expand existing definitions of "relationship," "intimacy," and "sexuality" in the lives of lesbians is of interest to any of us who live and theorize in, around, and through the boundaries of those definitions. Taking a critical look at the meanings of the terms "sexuality," "intimacy" and "relationship" has profound implications for our lives, loves and politics, especially since such an examination necessarily calls the hegemonic meanings associated with these terms into question.
Rothblum and Brehony suggest that we reclaim the nineteenth-century term "Boston Marriage" as one means to discuss intimate, but not sexually active, committed relationships without resorting to terms which would pathologize that sexual (in)activity. Many of the essays in the introductory and theoretical sections suggest inadequate and inaccurate language to describe lesbian sexualities...