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[–]writerlylesbian 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

I pretty much agree with how you've characterised the context of what political lesbianism meant back when the concept first came into being. I also agree that it gave many women a positive space in which they could connect with other women, and that it gave lesbians a space in which they could explore themselves and realise they were lesbians.

But I also agree with the person who quoted the recent Sheila Jeffreys article where she talks about sexuality being a social construct. That really is what she, and others, were arguing back then, and some of them are still arguing for it now. And I don't think we have a lot of evidence that most people can choose their sexuality at will.

The other thing I'd point out is that, regardless of the good intentions of political lesbianism in its original context, it still was absolutely a large-scale attempt to redefine what lesbianism meant. The intent was to move lesbianism away from being female homosexuality, and into being this other thing that was an ideological political position, that may or may not involve sexual contact with other women for some.

This did have negative consequences for some lesbians at the time, particularly those who resisted lesbianism becoming an identity and wanted to keep it as being a sexual orientation. There were a lot of lesbian feminists books that talked about lesbians who were sexually attracted to other women, but not feminists, as not being 'true lesbians', and being quite derogatory about such women. They were pretty much viewed as the 'genital fetishists' of the day, and I absolutely think it was the inherent homophobia in these 'political lesbians' (many of whom were just straight women) that made them act in pretty shitty ways towards actual lesbians who wanted to sleep with other women. Not in every case, of course, but there was a conflict going on there.

From talking to older lesbians who lived through those times, it seems like there was also a class element to all this as well. The butch femme culture that Jeffreys famously condemned was, from what I understand, mainly a culture of working class lesbians at the time. Many of the women who were involved in all the theorising around political lesbianism and lesbian feminism tended to be women who were middle class or upper class, and writing from within the university sector at the time. So it was a bit of a top-down movement that was seeking to reclassify lesbianism as something for all separatist women, regardless of sexual orientation, while the dirty genital fetishist lesbians (who weren't on board) didn't get a say. I know there was one lesbian from a working class background who ended up going into the university sector precisely because that community felt like they needed to have a voice who could push back against this whole idea of reclassifying lesbianism into an identity, because so many ordinary lesbians who weren't as politically involved weren't cool with it. I just wish I could remember who it was!

So I do think it's not surprising at how political lesbianism has evolved to become what it is today, because the seeds of that were already there in what the movement was proposing. I'm happy to recognise the original context of the idea, to talk of some of the positives that came out of it, but I'm also going to criticise what I see as some of its hugely problematic aspects, both then and now.

[–][deleted] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

A wholesale condemnation of the entire political lesbian movement and the women involved is what most women are doing in 2020, and many know very little about it, especially it’s context in history. It has been reduced to “fake lesbian” the way that “terf” reduces women to transphobes. Political lesbianism is not without criticism, but it is also not without merit, as you said. I do see political lesbianism and lesbian orientation as different things, because they really are different things, I just can’t dismiss the helpful aspects for women, and I wish that was not the most common narrative around it. I honestly don’t think we could avoid it becoming an identity because women and men existed that literally preferred both, and we all got lumped in together anyway using “born this way” politics. Now literal men are “born in the wrong body.”

[–]writerlylesbian 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Yeah, I guess where we differ in our assessment is that I think political lesbianism's 'project', as it were, to redefine 'lesbian' as a term for all feminist separatist women, and excise lesbianism as meaning female homosexuality, was actually quite damaging for a lot of lesbians. Both then and now.

I do take your point about the movement creating space for some women to explore their lesbianism. I have met older women who talked about that being the case for them. But at the same time, space was taken away from lesbians who wanted lesbianism to be conceptually about female homosexuality. And such lesbians were often viewed as 'lesser' lesbians, by 'political lesbians' who were in fact often straight women, which is bizarre. I actually don't see it as very different to today's identity politics. The difference is that those co-opting lesbianism today are doing so within the framework of queer politics, whereas those of the second wave were doing it within a feminist framework.

It's difficult as well because theorising the ways that lesbians, specifically, were oppressed as both lesbians and women was important, and a lot of that work was being done in the feminist movement, but not in the gay movement which was a lot more focused on gay men. But I think it very unfortunate that a lot of that theorising ended up in a place where 'lesbianism' was an identity that had not much to do with being an actual lesbian. Because I think that was probably alienating to a lot of lesbians who then didn't necessarily want to engage with the feminist movement because they could see the anti-lesbian sentiment that was inherent in a lot of these co-options. So they went and joined the gay movement instead. But then the gay movement progressed without having a lot of understanding of feminism, which was also ultimately to the detriment of lesbians, who got ignored and marginalised there too.

I suppose the way I wish things had progressed was more like: 1) recognising lesbianism as a neutral sexual behaviour that has existed throughout history and across many different cultures and ethnicities (which suggests it is a biological phenomenon more than a culturally learned behaviour); 2) recognising that this behaviour has political consequences because patriarchy etc. but not collapsing it into a political identity, because it is a sexual behaviour that would continue to exist even if the political climate changed (e.g. feminism 'won' and there was no more oppression of women); 3) women getting together to form female only communities/groups, centreing themselves and other women, and recognising that such spaces will naturally be appealing to lesbians, without trying to say this is synonymous with lesbianism.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Female bisexuality in patriarchy is really what undermined lesbianism. We can say political lesbianism or whatever else but women are always coming and going from lesbianism, especially when same sex relationships are so much more difficult. I really don’t know that we can truly lay blame on political lesbianism for eroding our potential as a community or as an orientation when there were always women with us who also favoured men sexually, and some didn’t realize, I suppose. I am not saying this to be biphobic, it’s just impossible to parse same-sex attracted women apart from how they say they identify, and that has been proven wrong over and over by the women themselves.

Their orientation is still an orientation and at least political lesbianism tried to corral us all together without dudes, so nice try I guess, poli lez.

Unfortunately bisexual women are double the number of lesbians. Orientation itself might actually be more at fault for the lack of lesbian spaces than any of the other factors blamed on polilez. Some women do choose a lesbian life, and those women are likely bisexual to some degree. To achieve the progression you would like, which sounds awesome, btw, lesbianism would probably need to literally include bi women. I don’t know how it would work unless we framed lesbian as a choice and or stopped using the word and made female only groups. Which is right back round to some deeply polilez ideas.

Edit: just to clarify, I am not a fan of political lesbianism. I feel alienated by most of the discourse around lesbianism, myself, I just know, like you know, what it is and what it is not, and maybe have different ideas about it. I think it is not especially relevant right now, but I am really trying to find something that is so we can carve out a space for ourselves without losing potential lesbians and febfems by non stop behaving like assholes toward real women who need to have some space to find their way to us. If I were a late bloomer or a new lesbian I would be pretty scared to go anywhere near a bunch of women who want to treat second wave feminists miserably when it’s like they are our only hope. And they really did try and create safety for same sex attracted women, and women in general. It was an overreach, like movements that include every single woman can become, but it’s brutal to see these women reduced to “fakes” and “frauds” because they think some ughhhh things. I would rather learn from it

[–]Innisfree 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

it’s just impossible to parse same-sex attracted women apart from how they say they identify, and that has been proven wrong over and over by the women themselves.

The main thing we can and should do is insist on the current definitions of woman, lesbian and bisexual as rooted in material reality.

The solution to the bisexuals coming and going from the lesbian community is not policing them (realistically we can't) - but helping them own their experiences.

Say a bisexual woman who several years into a relationship with a lesbian, for whatever reason feels incomplete and sort of peels away and goes on to have a relationship with a man. We can see how the public can misread the situation as one of a lesbian peeling away and going on to have a thing with a man.

Well the TV series "The Bisexual" tried to correct the misconception by clearly describing such a narrative as part of a bisexual woman's experiences while representing lesbians as exclusively lesbian. And I welcome such representation. So yeah material reality all the way!

And as was said elswhere, the main thrust of the attack on the definitions comes from men and their desire to have all women be sexually available to them.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Our experiences are so fundamentally different from women who primarily date men, that it’s hard to imagine lesbians NOT policing our communities, although it would be helpful to be able to be less freaked out. I just don’t see it happening when women can’t stomach even the idea of febfems (who are similar to political lesbians minus the framework).

But yes, the attack is from patriarchy and gets displaced on to women who try different ways to combat those attacks and liberate women. Which is essentially what depresses me because women’s efforts, though imperfect, don’t deserve to be flattened completely.

[–]Innisfree 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

although it would be helpful to be able to be less freaked out.

Absolutely :). In the context of this forum it is understandable why women are on edge(the TRA debacle). Plus my guess is the people who misunderstood you are people who also said that they are not political and don't want to be. Now if this big thread at least nudged them to question their position, that's already a big win.

And I hope you will keep posting here. I only joined and warmed up to staying because your comments absolutely crack me up!

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I am thrilled with this thread and don’t care about people liking me as much as I care about trying to shit less on entire generations of women who were trying things to help other women break free from extremely oppressive norms. The fact is, lesbians find lesbians and stay. That’s who stays, same-sex attracted women, the ones who were “born that way” or born MOSTLY that way. Lesbians will never stop existing. It’s not going to happen. But we sure like making it hard for them to get to us when we feel like the best analysis we can come up with about political lesbianism as a whole is by saying “fuck them, they are not lesbians!” when liberal feminism thinks being a prostitute or pornographer is empowering. Are we really trying to hate good old Sheila when at least she figured we could choose away from all of that? I don’t agree with her exact stance on orientation but I’ll be damned if I can’t admit she cares about women more than the majority who claim to.

And thank you

[–]writerlylesbian 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I do actually have some thoughts on this, though when I say 'thoughts', I probably mean 'essay'. And I actually think that we are currently in a better position to manage this challenge than previous generations of women. Right. So, essay incoming. One thing I notice when reading a lot of the feminist sci fi that was written during the second wave, is that a lot of those novels made the assumption that all humans were innately bisexual. From that, I kind of extrapolate that this was an idea that was generally circulating in a lot of feminist spaces at the time. And it does make a certain amount of sense that women of the time were wondering about how much sexuality was a construct and how much of it was innate. That was an era when heterosexuality was very much enforced as the norm, and there weren't any alternatives.

But, we've now had a good 20+ or 30+ years in a handful of countries where it has been (sort-of mostly) okay to be gay, so if human sexuality really were that fluid, we would expect that we would have a sexual landscape that would have shifted very dramatically. That hasn't happened. Most people are still straight, while a minority are LGB. LGB just stopped being persecuted so much, which was obviously a good thing.

I can imagine that the idea, or perhaps the hope, that women could just train themselves out of attraction to men would have seemed like the perfect feminist solution to many problems the feminist movement was dealing with. But it hasn't panned out that way.

Related to this, it is only very recently that women have actually been able to have enough sexual autonomy to be able to be able to articulate and pursue their own desires, which I think is has helped us to be able to find where those boundaries are between lesbian desire, bisexual desire, and heterosexual desire, and to recognise that they are indeed different and distinct sexualities. The fact that we have been able to do this is hugely significant. Because it means we don't all have to smoosh together under a big umbrella like 'political lesbianism' - we can recognise areas of overlaps, as well as areas of difference, in terms of how we're treated in society as women, how we experience our sexuality, and what consequences that sexuality might have for us.

I think it's also helpful to think about how 'lesbianism' itself came to be viewed as a problem, and why. The concept of romantic friendship between women was hugely popular throughout much of the 18th and 19th century, and I have no doubt that there were lesbians who used the cover of romantic friendship to conduct their relationships. But society on the whole didn't care, at least nowhere near as much as it cared about policing gay men. I would argue that was because women largely could not opt out of marriage anyway, so dudes never felt like their control of women was threatened. But then came the first wave of feminism. Women were getting educated, getting jobs, earning their own money, getting into Boston Marriages so they could keep their independence. And again, not all of those women were lesbians, but I sure bet there were lesbians who embraced the Boston Marriage with huge amounts of enthusiasm, lol.

Concurrently, lesbianism (i.e. same sex desire between women) began to be discussed in the sexology literature of the time as a 'disorder' that needed to be treated. What a coincidence. So the recognition of lesbian desire as a distinct concept (seen as problematic by those dudes) paralleled the rise of women's rights. But I don't think that was just about starting to police lesbians, who were seen as a threat once they could have their sexual independence, though that absolutely was part of it. I think the larger project was to popularise the idea that any close relationship between women was suspect and unnatural, and I feel like even today we're still living with the legacy of that somewhat. And that feeds into all these strange ideas about how this or that women who even mildly bucks a completely standard life trajectory must be a lesbian. Which is of no help to lesbians, and no help to het or bi women either, quite frankly.

Anyway, where I'm going with this, is that lesbians are in a good position to articulate what we are, and how and why we're different from bisexual and heterosexual women. It's then up to bisexual and het women to own their own shit and figure themselves out too. They can't keep hiding behind lesbianism as a way to not deal with the problem of their relationships with men. They need to figure that out. We can't do it for them, and we need to have lesbianism as same-sex attracted homosexual woman because we need the space to talk about the negatives as well as the positives of lesbianism (like e.g. domestic violence in lesbian relationships), which we cannot do when we're held up as some great feminist ideal all other lesser women should aspire to.

But I also think that a lot of bisexual and heterosexual women recognise this too. And on bisexual women specifically, I find that the ones who have spent a lot of time in lesbian spaces generally integrate and don't cause a lot of issues. They can often actually better recognise what the differences are between themselves and lesbians, because they've spent a lot of time with lesbians. The ones who cause the problems are usually the 'tourists' coming from het land. They don't know or understand lesbian culture, come in crashing around like a bull in a china shop, bring a whole lot of heterosexual assumptions and attitudes along with them, start demanding sex and attention - and then get pissed off when lesbians don't react well, lol.

[–]Innisfree 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

that lesbians are in a good position to articulate what we are, and how and why we're different from bisexual and heterosexual women. It's then up to bisexual and het women to own their own shit and figure themselves out too.

Also my takeaway from it. The world has changed, we have to be able to handle the complexity of real life and think about the challenge of how to use that complexity (bisexuals and heterosexual women in lesbian spaces) to further our cause in different contexts: lesbian spaces vs political movements. So this is what I took from your beautiful essay and Strictly's points: while on the one hand we must articulate clearly who we are as lesbians, that does not mean that say in the context of a political movement, or a lobby we start excluding bisexuals and heterosexual women - we would need their numbers then (edit: with the proviso that said bisexuals and heterosexuals are committed to our agenda in a given lobby).

[–]reluctant_commenter 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

And such lesbians were often viewed as 'lesser' lesbians, by 'political lesbians' who were in fact often straight women, which is bizarre. I actually don't see it as very different to today's identity politics. The difference is that those co-opting lesbianism today are doing so within the framework of queer politics, whereas those of the second wave were doing it within a feminist framework.

This is such a fascinating parallel. I also arrived at this observation elsewhere in this thread.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, they're really helping me organize mine! Lol.

[–]writerlylesbian 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Anytime :)

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]writerlylesbian 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Joan Nestle is another writer to check out. She mostly wrote a lot about butch femme culture, and very much talked about lesbians as sexual beings (and women in general as sexual beings). She was critical of political lesbianism's attempts to de-sexualise lesbianism and make it an identity for any female feminist separatist. She also touches on the class aspects in some of her works.

    [–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Also, I appreciate the amount of thought you put in and info. I hope everyone reads this.