Reclaiming Lesbian Pride

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

ALH:

I've become convinced that until we get over identity politics, this kind of discussion will continue to dog us. However good the intentions might have been, identity politics has been a bog we have gotten sucked into. Now we're lost in it and all we can manage to do is come up with ever ramifying identity labels as if the fact that we did not know we were X was the actual problem facing us. I've grown weary of it.

I don't see how educating ourselves about our identities will actually help us because that won't get us past two *really* dysfunctional things we do: the first is that we assume the worst. It's not that white women in the community might not have thought about black women or what-have-you. No, in OUR community it is that white lesbians are irredeemably racist and, given half a chance, would love to see black women destroyed. That's the *first* interpretation. And we tell ourselves that we are doing this in the name of liberation. Poppycock! We're doing it because it is easier to take the worst interpretation than it is to step back and reflect on other possible causes. The other thing we do is that every time a new identity pops into existence, we have to go through vocabulary angst. First we define the new identity. Then we decide that since this identity name points out the difference between that group and all the other human beings who are *NOT* part of that group we have to come up with a term that describes everyone else.

The most obvious example is cisgendered. It is an entirely pointless word. It really is. It was created as a way of 'evening the playing field' with transgendered people. This was nominally necessary because talking about transwomen or transmen was somehow not empowering because it assumed that men and women who were *not* transgendered were the default. So now we have this term cisgendered so that transpeople can be empowered to live our lives. Except it does no such thing. The thing is these linguistic Rube Goldberg devices are moving targets anyway. So, transwoman or transman is supposed to be a sign that someone doesn't think of transgendered people as 'real' men or 'real' women so we come up with a neologism because THAT will change things. Except that once everyone adopts whatever term then THAT becomes the descriptor that is responsible for our oppression so we have to come up with another term and so on.

It's like the deckchair feng shui that the black community goes through about once a generation. My grandmother was colored. My parents were negroes. I was black. My son was African American. My granddaughter is a person of color (i.e. colored). Yay! We've come full circle. Does anyone here believe that the *reason* Barack Obama was elected President was because he was African American and not a negro? Anyone?

This subject has me really exercised so I'm going to sign off but I want to leave you with this thought:

"Equality in spite of evident nonidentity is a somewhat sophisticated concept and requires a moral stature of which many individuals seem to be incapable. They rather deny human variability and equate equality with identity. Or they claim that the human species is exceptional in the organic world in that only morphological characters are controlled by genes and all other traits of the mind or character are due to “conditioning” or other nongenetic factors. Such authors conveniently ignore the results of twin studies and of the genetic analysis of nonmorphological traits in animals. An ideology based on such obviously wrong premises can only lead to disaster. Its championship of human equality is based on a claim of identity. As soon as it is proved that the latter does not exist, the support of equality is likewise lost." (Steven Pinker quoting W.D. Hamilton in The Blank Slate)

The evil I see is not that as a black lesbian I have rights that derive BECAUSE I'm a black lesbian and I am denied those rights. Rather, I see it that as a member of Homo sapiens I have certain rights which I am denied BECAUSE I'm a black lesbian. My rights should not hinge upon this or that identity. I have no rights that should be granted because of my identity and *all* my rights are such that I should not be denied ANY of them because of my identity. To the degree that I am treated accordingly, I experience that as justice.

Cheers
Aj

I am weary, too and a shift from identity politics could serve us well if we will just see how it is getting us nowhere. What you state here hits so many nails on the head that I so wish we could move on to that could get us out of the non-productive wheel-spinning we do.

My education comment had more to do with how often I see that many don't even do cursory investigations of literature that is readily available to all of us and a means to better understand who we all are. And that said- how are the publishing possibilities going for you? You have to get your work out there!1