Call for submissions on women's experiences of shifting sexuality

[Meen]

(A friend of mind fwded this to me, so I am passing it along to as many places as I can think of.)



Call for Submissions

2,000-4,000 words
Payment: upon publication
Deadline: September 1, 2009
Editors: Candace Walsh and Laura André
Contact: candace.walsh@gmail.com

As Dr. Lisa Diamond’s recent ground-breaking book Sexual Fluidity makes clear, women’s sexual desire and identity are capable of shifting. Cynthia Nixon, Carol Leifer, Wanda Sykes, Portia de Rossi, and countless others have left the fold of heterosexual identity to enter into or pursue same-sex relationships.

Although this book will evolve as we receive submissions, we welcome first-person essays from women

1. who were aware that they had always felt robust same-sex desires, but wanted to try to make it work in the straight world, and also

2. women who identified as heterosexual at one time, but found that the situation they were in just naturally led to embarking on an intimate romantic relationship with a woman.

(We also welcome essays from women who don’t fit precisely into the above descriptions, of course.)

Here are some questions that we’d like answered in your piece. It may be one of the questions, or you may touch on most of them, and throw in some extra, great stuff that didn’t even occur to us.

How did you come to your moment of truth?

Did your perception of yourself change?

Do you feel that others’ perceptions of you changed? Did they surprise you with either an unexpected positive or negative reaction? How did this affect you? Did their reactions change over time?

Do you feel like you surrendered heterosexuality or elements of heterosexual privilege? Do you feel like your new life with a woman has yielded rewards? What were the rewards you expected and which ones were surprises?

What do you miss? What do you not miss? Everything from in the bedroom to out at dinner, at a wedding, as a parent, as a family member, at the gym, in the workplace, on a picnic—whatever comes up for you.

What is this journey like, in general and for you? How did you feel as you were setting out on it and how do you feel now? How do you mark your progress? Were there stages? Illustrative moments? Looking back, do you feel like you went through certain phases?

What is it like to shift your identity? What about you is the same and always will be? What about you has changed or altered?

How did you feel as you began your relationship with a woman? Did you get flak from individuals who second-guessed you? Did you feel like you had to prove yourself? How did you keep your internal balance?

How did your socialization as a straight woman prepare you (ill or well) for pursuing a woman or being in a relationship with a woman?

Do you like, or are you attracted to certain things that your partner or girlfriend, or gay women do that are traditionally labeled as masculine? Feminine?

How do you define yourself? Do you feel like the current “labels” work for you or that what you are is not yet defined by a word or phrase? What paradigm do you imagine?

Are you still with the woman you left your previous relationship for? Was she just a catalyst, or a rebound, or something else, or “the one”?

As editors, we value specificity, detail, “showing, not telling,” honesty, epiphanies, clean, polished, yet real writing, and the sharing of insights.