LESBIAN SYMBOL VIA POP: FOR REBECCA

LESBIAN SYMBOL VIA POP: FOR REBECCA

LESBIAN SYMBOL VIA POP: FOR REBECCA [2008]

LESBIAN FEMISINISM ACCORDING TO ‘WIKIPEDIA’

It is worth distinguishing between lesbian feminism as a critical perspective, and lesbian feminism as a cultural movement. Both question the position of lesbians, gay men and women in society but put forward different strategies. The latter is also much more specific. Sheila Jeffreys (2003:19) for example defines lesbian feminism as having seven key themes:

An emphasis on women’s love for one another
Separatist organizations
Community and ideas
Idea that lesbianism is about choice and resistance
Idea that the personal is the political
A rejection of hierarchy in the form of role-playing and sadomasochism
A critique of male-supremacy which eroticises inequality
Jeffreys is a highly controversial figure not just outside, but within lesbian feminism. Others have critiqued her, amongst other things, for being too specific in these criteria. Nevertheless it is a useful starting point.

Biology, choice and social constructivism

As outlined above, lesbian feminism typically situates lesbianism as a form of resistance to “man-made” institutions. Sexual orientation is posited here as a choice, or at least a conscious response to a situation. (See also political lesbianism or queer by choice). Indeed, it could be argued that lesbian feminism pre-empted if not laid the ground work for queer theory to posit sexuality as culturally specific.

Separatism

In separatist feminism, lesbianism is posited as a key feminist strategy, that enables women to invest their energies in other women, creating new space and dialogue about women’s relationships, and typically, limit their dealings with men.

Strategies of lesbian separatism are also controversial within feminism. At its most extreme, male genocide (androcide) has been put forward as a strategy for achieving women’s emancipation, as in Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto. This is certainly a small and isolated view but nevertheless there was a specific flourish of scholarship and literature dealing with whether men are really necessary. Some of this looks at issues of reproduction, for example parts of Mary Daly’s classic text Gyn/Ecology. Other canons explore histories of male violence and still others reference the historic genocides perpetrated upon groups of women. Witchcraft is the most obvious example, but one might also cite a general if variegated preference for male offspring, throughout human history.

Elsewhere, lesbian feminists have situated female separatism as quite a mainstream thing and have explored the mythology surrounding it. Marilyn Frye’s (1978) essay Notes on Separatism and Power is one such example. She posits female separatism as a strategy practiced by all women, at some point, and present in many feminist projects (one might cite women’s refuges, electoral quotas or Women’s Studies programmes). She argues that it is only when women practice it, self-consciously as separation from men, that it is treated with controversy (or as she suggests hysteria). Male separatism on the other hand (one might cite gentleman’s clubs, labour unions, sports teams, the military and, more arguably, decision-making positions in general) is seen as quite a normal, even expedient phenomenon.

Still other lesbian feminists put forward a notion of “tactical separatism” from men, arguing for and investing in things like women’s sanctuaries and consciousness-raising groups, but also exploring everyday practices to which women may temporarily retreat or practice solitude from men and masculinity.

The Woman-Identified Woman

If the founding of the lesbian feminist movement could be pinpointed at a specific moment, it would probably be May 1970, when Radicalesbians, an activist group of 20 lesbians led by lesbian novelist Rita Mae Brown, took over a women’s conference in New York City, the Congress to Unite Women. Uninvited, they lined up on stage wearing matching T-shirts inscribed with the words “Lavender Menace”, and demanded the microphone to read aloud to an audience of 400 their essay The Woman-Identified Woman, which laid out the main precepts of their movement.

Contrary to some popular beliefs about “man-hating butch dykes”, lesbian feminist theory does not support the concept of female masculinity. Proponents like Sheila Jeffreys (2003:13) have argued that “all forms of masculinity are problematic.”

This is one of the principal areas in which lesbian feminism differs from queer theory, perhaps best summarised by Judith Halberstam’s quip that “If Sheila Jeffreys didn’t exist, Camille Paglia would have had to invent her.”[citation needed]

Womyn’s culture

Labrys symbol”Womyn” along with “wimin”, “womin” were terms produced by parts of the lesbian feminist movement to distinguish it from men and masculine (or “phallogocentric”) language. The term “women” was seen as derivative of men and ultimately symbolised the prescriptive nature of women’s oppression. A new vocabulary emerged more generally, sometimes referencing lost or unspoken matriarchal civilisations, Amazonian warriors, ancient – especially Greek – goddesses, sometimes parts of the female anatomy and often references to the natural world. It was frequently remarked that the movement had nothing to go on, no knowledge of its roots, nor histories of lesbianism to draw on. Hence the emphasis on consciousness-raising and carving out new (arguably) “gynocentric” cultures. (Esther Newton’s classic (1984) text “Radclyffe Hall and the Mythic Mannish Lesbian”, although she was certainly not a lesbian feminist, is interesting here in exploring the substance of, and debates around lesbian histories prior to the 1950s in particular).

Bonnie Zimmerman is a lesbian feminist literary critic who talks quite a bit about the language used by writers from within the movement. (See her 1978 text) Often drawing on autobiographical narratives and the use of personal testimony. Lesbian feminist texts are often expressly non-linear, poetic and, perhaps, obscure.[citation needed]

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