For the Love of Women: Gender, Identity, and Same-Sex Relations in a Greek Provincial Town

For the Love of Women: Gender, Identity, and Same-Sex Relations in a Greek Provincial Town. Elisabeth Kirtsoglu. New York: Routledge, 2004. 192 pp.

Sexuality, homoeroticism, performativity, gender identity, and friendship are central themes in Elisabeth Kirtsoglu's portrayal of the young Greek women of a parea (a company of close friends). Set in a provincial town outside of Athens, Kirtsoglu's ethnography delves into the lives of these women and focuses on a topic rarely discussed in such intimate detail-female sexuality in Greece beyond the context of traditional heterosexual womanhood. Kirtsoglu, herself a member of the parea, seeks to elaborate the ways in which "gender is not simply a fixed attribute of the person, but the point of interaction between subjective experience, cultural ideals, social values, and power relations" (p. 33).

In the opening chapters, Kirtsoglu introduces us to her parea, which comprises a cross-section of contemporary Greek womanhood. The members range in age from teenage high school students to well-educated professional women in their late thirties. Most of the women in the parea are single, but several are...