Reclaiming Lesbian Pride

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Heart

The popularization of gender theory (which is common in B-F-T communities), continues the worship and over-valuing of masculine/man/male, while expressing ambivalence and undervaluing of feminine/woman/female.
I don't find current expressions of "girl power," with its ongoing sexualization of children and commodification of women's bodies and sexuality, to be liberatory. And the reality is that binaries have been reinforced, rather than blurred, crossed, or jettisoned because gender theory, at least as enacted in queer communities, seems to lack any political analysis of institutionalized power. Again, not an expert in gender theory in any way, just my observations.

Mine as well. And this lack of analysis of institutionalized power is at the "heart" of racism as well. Just more reinforcement of an unequal foundation. What is so terribly sad to me is that gender theory could be such a positive force in de-constructing this power structure.

Don't get me started on "girl power"....

[Apocalipstic]

How does BF play into these gender roles?

It's difficult to dismantle what we seem to play into.

But I completely see that discussions about gender analysis do nothing to help the issues facing Women eccept as it related personally.

[Martina]

One of the reasons gender studies started investigating masculinity -- and this was at least twenty years ago -- was that the masculine and the male were considered the baseline, the ur gender, the the model of humanness. There needed to be an historical and cross-cultural understanding of how masculinity and maleness were constructed IN ORDER to destabilize the binary, in order to understand that the idea of male identity, especially in psychoanalysis and medicine, was not a stable social fact.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by Martina

One of the reasons gender studies started investigating masculinity -- and this was at least twenty years ago -- was that the masculine and the male were considered the baseline, the ur gender, the the model of humanness. There needed to be an historical and cross-cultural understanding of how masculinity and maleness were constructed IN ORDER to destabilize the binary, in order to understand that the idea of male identity, especially in psychoanalysis and medicine, was not a stable social fact.

To the untrained eye it looks like it stuck there.

[Martina]

What's missing is a social movement. That's what we're longing for. And it's not coming out of women's studies or gender studies departments. Nor should it.

Women's Studies departments were built out of a social movement, but they are now parts of academic institutions. Students may start social movements, but their professors never will.

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by Martina

One of the reasons gender studies started investigating masculinity -- and this was at least twenty years ago -- was that the masculine and the male were considered the baseline, the ur gender, the the model of humanness. There needed to be an historical and cross-cultural understanding of how masculinity and maleness were constructed IN ORDER to destabilize the binary, in order to understand that the idea of male identity, especially in psychoanalysis and medicine, was not a stable social fact.

Those who began by investigating the construct of maleness seem to have ended by fetishizing it instead. It's quite clear to me that although the intent may have once been to destabilise the gender binary, gender studies have had great success in promoting it.

Is there something transgressive about a female bodied person claiming that they are male because they resemble traditional males? Isn't that just saying that those who look and act traditionally male must BE male? What happened to dismantling assumptions about traditionally gendered behaviours?

I've been a gender transgressor for my entire lifetime. When I was six years old I boycotted the Flintstones, refusing to watch them because of the ridged gender stereotypes the show promoted. I started riding motorcycles in 1981. I instruct riders at the racetrack. I've made a living at various times as a carpenter and general contractor. Without any friends or family in the business, I earned a union card in the Stagehands Union in the mid 1980s. It's an infamously sexist and bigoted union, and 1986 was an inauspicious time for that sort of pioneering.

I've fought that war with my own body, too. I've been the object of unwanted sexual attention from men from my earliest memory. When a strong beard sprouted on my chin in my mid twenties, the attention magically disappeared. What a relief! I suddenly was free from daily verbal rape. I unselfconsciously wore my beard, along with my hairy legs, with my vintage dresses and high heeled shoes. I reasoned that anyone I wanted to know wouldn't care about my beard, or they might even admire my courage. I didn't shave it off until I was in my early 30s.

I did all of the above AS A WOMAN. I did the above declaring loudly all the while, "THIS IS WHAT A WOMAN LOOKS LIKE".

That's what it looks like to dismantle the gender binary in my world.

[Martina]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

Those who began by investigating the construct of maleness seem to have ended by fetishizing it instead. It's quite clear to me that although the intent may have once been to destabilise the gender binary, gender studies have had great success in promoting it.

Is there something transgressive about a female bodied person claiming that they are male because they resemble traditional males? Isn't that just saying that those who look and act traditionally male must BE male? What happened to dismantling assumptions about traditionally gendered behaviours?

i do not know what has been happening in gender studies in recent years. For all i know you are right. i am not your foil in this argument. i was making a point about how the departments arose, why masculinity studies emerged and were seen as important.

[Kobi]

I am very grateful for this dialogue. It is giving words to what I have been feeling internally. It has felt very important to me to reclaim female, woman, feminism, and lesbianism in their purest forms. Now I am beginning to grasp why it is so important to me.

Has feminism as a social movement died? Turned into a debate with competing theories? There must be some group, somewhere that is action oriented.

[Heart]

Kobi, feminism never died and there are many many feminists and feminist groups engaged in action across the globe.

Start with Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/...-against-women, and take a look at the book I have linked in my sig line (by Nick Kristof, a feminist man).

I understand the urge, but I don't think a "pure" form of feminism exists. As has been talked about, feminism as a movement has been guilty of racism, classism, even misogyny. No social movement is without its serious blind spots and drawbacks. None can be glorified.

Heart

[Reader]

Originally Posted by Heart

Kobi, feminism never died and there are many many feminists and feminist groups engaged in action across the globe.

Start with Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/...-against-women, and take a look at the book I have linked in my sig line (by Nick Kristof, a feminist man).

I understand the urge, but I don't think a "pure" form of feminism exists. As has been talked about, feminism as a movement has been guilty of racism, classism, even misogyny. No social movement is without its serious blind spots and drawbacks. None can be glorified.

Heart

I also agree with some things you said, Heart, but it seems as though the right has succeeded in its attempt to divide and conquer.

[Kobi]

Thanks for the links.

I am having a bit of trouble articulating what i am looking for.

The purity I am seeking isnt in a movement per se. It is purity in getting back to myself. Have had to compromise a bit much of myself of late. I was referring to getting back to my roots.

Originally Posted by Heart

Kobi, feminism never died and there are many many feminists and feminist groups engaged in action across the globe.

Start with Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/...-against-women, and take a look at the book I have linked in my sig line (by Nick Kristof, a feminist man).

I understand the urge, but I don't think a "pure" form of feminism exists. As has been talked about, feminism as a movement has been guilty of racism, classism, even misogyny. No social movement is without its serious blind spots and drawbacks. None can be glorified.

Heart

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

Those who began by investigating the construct of maleness seem to have ended by fetishizing it instead. It's quite clear to me that although the intent may have once been to destabilise the gender binary, gender studies have had great success in promoting it.

Is there something transgressive about a female bodied person claiming that they are male because they resemble traditional males? Isn't that just saying that those who look and act traditionally male must BE male? What happened to dismantling assumptions about traditionally gendered behaviours?

I see a great deal of this. The construct, within gender studies, is that if a woman likes, for instance, trucks, baseball, fishing, beer and power tools that person is 'masculine of center'. If said person then goes ahead and transitions, this is supposed to be transgressive and demolishing the gender binary. How is it though since it appears to recapitulate the existing gender construction of male = trucks, sports, fishing, beer and tools?

I would argue, like you do, Cheryl that I am transgressing gender boundaries/roles because, even though my passions lie in typically 'male' things such as the physical sciences, Linux and the Free/Open Source Software movement generally, skepticism and a certain holding to living my life rationally none of that makes me 'male' or 'masculine'. The problem, in other words, does not lie in my being a woman who is a geek rather, it lies in society defining certain things which are not really gendered as having gender traits. I don't 'think like a man', I think like a scientist.

Originally Posted by Heart

Kobi, feminism never died and there are many many feminists and feminist groups engaged in action across the globe.

Start with Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/...-against-women, and take a look at the book I have linked in my sig line (by Nick Kristof, a feminist man).

I understand the urge, but I don't think a "pure" form of feminism exists. As has been talked about, feminism as a movement has been guilty of racism, classism, even misogyny. No social movement is without its serious blind spots and drawbacks. None can be glorified.

Heart

This is merely to say that feminism is a movement made of people who came to feminism with their own predilections and cultural baggage intact. Given the time period where NOW was formed, it would have been remarkable if feminism had *not* had a non-trivial amount of racism, certainly, and homophobia. This is not to excuse anything, it is merely to remind that people are products--to some greater or lesser degree--of their time and the movements they spawn are also products of that time.

Cheers
Aj

[Reader]

Originally Posted by Kobi

I am very grateful for this dialogue. It is giving words to what I have been feeling internally. It has felt very important to me to reclaim female, woman, feminism, and lesbianism in their purest forms. Now I am beginning to grasp why it is so important to me.

Has feminism as a social movement died? Turned into a debate with competing theories? There must be some group, somewhere that is action oriented.

Great post. Just the other day I was thinking about NOW and wondering if there even was a chapter nearby any longer. I happen to think that, globally speaking, there is a war raging against women that almost no one is acknowledging.

Does anyone even know who Gloria Steinem is? Or that ERA has nothing to do with baseball or real estate? Anyone remember the Lesbian Herstory Archives? How about "Sisterhood is Powerful"?

The right has so bastardized the term Feminist that many refuse to ID as a feminist, even though they believe in feminist ideals...as long as you don't call it "feminist". Argh.

[Heart]

Originally Posted by Hunter Green

Great post. Just the other day I was thinking about NOW and wondering if there even was a chapter nearby any longer. I happen to think that, globally speaking, there is a war raging against women that almost no one is acknowledging.

Does anyone even know who Gloria Steinem is? Or that ERA has nothing to do with baseball or real estate? Anyone remember the Lesbian Herstory Archives? How about "Sisterhood is Powerful"?

The right has so bastardized the term Feminist that many refuse to ID as a feminist, even though they believe in feminist ideals...as long as you don't call it "feminist". Argh.

Well... I don't want to be oppositional, but NOW is one of those organizations that really had to work through its own homophobia and racism. NOW did not originally consider the voices of lesbians or women of color. In fact, the Lavender Menace was formed in 1970 to protest the exclusion of queer women from the feminist movement. Many feminists of Color are still having to carve out a voice in the feminist movement, especially in relation to issues of poverty. Femininsm is a notoriously white middle/upper-class movement.

I respect Gloria Steinem, but as recently as our last presidential election she wrote an editorial that constructed some problematic comparisons between Clinton and Obama in terms of which is worse - sexism or racism, and totally ignored the existance of women of color who deal with both. (Oppression olympics is a very bad idea.)

Nonetheless, NOW is still active and there is an upcoming PBS special about Steinem that I'm looking forward to seeing.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm a fierce feminist -- it's perhaps the most relevant social movement on the planet, but I feel that its important to keep a critical perspective.

Heart

[Chazz]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

How does BF play into these gender roles?

It's difficult to dismantle what we seem to play into.

This is a worthy question, Apocalipstic.

As a lesbian woman with a Feminist sensibility, I don't see me "playing into" anything. There is no place in my relationships for misogyny of any kind.

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

But I completely see that discussions about gender analysis do nothing to help the issues facing Women eccept as it related personally.

I think gender analysis has it's place, but not to the exclusion of everything else women and other disenfranchised people face.