Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Public Health at the University of Otago. Available for loan from Otago University's Canterbury Medical Library.

This thesis is an exploratory study into the 'second closet' from which lesbians must emerge in order to acknowledge the violence that they experience within the bounds of a lesbian relationship. It examines the discursive strategies that Pakeha lesbians use to acknowledge and silence the existence of family violence in lesbian relationships. This research has been carried out under the broad theoretical umbrella of feminist research using a discourse analytic method of analysis. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were carried out with 10 self-identifying lesbians residing in Christchurch during 2000. All women in the study acknowledged the existence of family or domestic violence in lesbian relationships. The definition of violence as gendered silenced the existence of violence within lesbian relationships, as men perpetrate violence and women are victims of it. This gendered definition is described by all participants in this study and occurs on three levels: the individual, the lesbian community and the generic community. The basis for future study, challenging social practices surrounding lesbian violence, informing training programmes to include lesbian violence and targeting lesbian domestic violence interventions to empower, is set, and recommendations for future study and changes in social practices are made.--AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT

nz