#Separatism and Women’s Community Dana R. Shugar. 1995.

[lesbianfeminists]

Separatism and Women’s Community, Dana R. Shugar. 1995.

[woman-loving]

Speaking of the legacies of lesbian feminism, I’m interested in the effect that lesbian feminism had on butch-femme identities. On tumblr, I can see a lot of people attach explicit feminist meaning onto butch and (particularly) femme identities, often talking about the subversive quality of performing femininity exclusively for women. I wonder if butch and femme first began to be explicitly imagined as essentially feminist in response to the challenge by lesbian feminism that they were oppressive and male-identified. I have another quote here from Separatism and Women’s Communities (Dana R. Shugar, 1995) that talks about how Joan Nestle interpreted these roles as feminist in practice if not in articulated theory. She seems to take some of lesbian feminism’s understanding of lesbianism as feminist, and interpret (rehabilitate?) butch-femme practices in these terms.

On here, I think I’ve seen more contention over the meaning of femme, and the need to fix it as an identity-performance exclusively “for” or “centering” women. Not uncommonly, there’s a suggestion or direct assertion that this amounts to a unique--and uniquely subversive (i.e. feminist)--expression of femininity. I wonder if the people making these arguments are continuing to respond to a challenge felt by feminism to justify choices that seem expected or oppressive for women, and/or continue to consider the element of unique or advanced feminist potential to be an important component of their lesbian identity. (For that matter, I also wonder whether alternate articulations of femme, such as a form of femininity performed--subversively--without regard for men, although not necessarily lesbian-exclusive, are also useful for recasting in feminist terms what might be disdained as normative.) Anyway, here’s the quote:

But even these early steps toward feminism began to divide the lesbian community in ways that were to be exacerbated by lesbian feminism’s definitions of lesbian sexuality. Often portrayed by lesbian feminists as those who simply lived out oppressive imitations of heterosexuality, lesbians who identified themselves as butch of femme during the 1950s recently have become both the authors and subjects of studies that strive to redefine their lives. In her essay ‘Butch-Femme Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s,’ Joan Nestle argues that butch-femme couples neither imitated nor attempted to recreate heterosexual marriages. Rather, she finds a feminist activism in butch-femme visibility that allowed these lesbians both to support themselves and to be recognized within the lesbian community:

“I believe ... that many pre-Stonewall Lesbians were feminists, but the primary way this feminism--this autonomy of sexual and social identities--was expressed, was precisely in the form of sexual adventuring that now appears to oppressive. If butch-femme represented an erotically autonomous world, it also symbolized many other forms of independence. Most of the women I knew in the Sea Colony [a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village] were working women who either had never married or who had left their husbands and were thus responsible for their own economic survival. ... Their feminism was not an articulated theory; it was a lived set of options based on erotic choices.

None of the butch women I was with, and this included a passing woman, ever presented themselves to me as men; they did announce themselves as tabooed women who were willing to identify their passion for other women by wearing clothes that symbolized the taking of responsibility. Part of this responsibility was sexual expertise. in the 1950s this courage to feel comfortable with arousing another woman became a political act. (Nestle 105, 100)

Though Weitz’s and Nestle’s studies seem to focus on two fairly disparate facets of lesbian existence in the US, the conception of lesbianism implied in both is remarkably similar.[4] Whether proponents of the Ladder’s assimilationist stance or openly rebellious adventurers in butch-femme couples, lesbians before the late 1960s identified with lesbian community as a sexual minority: as women who had sex with other women. Further, community arguments through channels such as letters to the Ladder seem to have occurred primarily over the visible expression of desire, not whether that desire was in and of itself immoral or, conversely, valuable. Yet that which makes Weitz’s study possible and Nestle’s necessary--lesbian feminism--strove to define lesbianism as germane to more than women’s sexuality. In the process lesbian feminists, like the Ladder before them, created new conceptions of being for women and, especially within women’s attempts to practice separatism, new ways of living their lives. And as we will see, these conceptions broadened the definition of what it meant to be a lesbian in such a way as to create quite a different sense of lesbian community from those that preceded it.

[woman-loving]

For the record, and I apologize if people are already tired of this topic, I want to bring up other possible ‘sources’ of tension among lesbians and bi women, not because I want to go to bat for lesbian feminism or separatism, but because I genuinely think there are multiple factors in these conflicts. I think that because lesbian feminism and separatism are very unpopular (among non-lesbian feminists), it’s easy to reach for them as explanations for actions we want to condemn, but I think this can leave some of these other factors unexposed and unexamined.

I also do think there are more prominent legacies of lesbian feminism than, say, thinking bi women can’t use butch/femme (which wasn’t specifically on the lesbian feminist agenda), that might be easier to identify if we actually look at what lesbian feminists said. It’s A Myth that lesbian feminists precipitated a sudden, universal changeover between an understanding of “lesbian” that included bi women to one that didn’t. However, lesbian feminists did create a definition of lesbian as not only feminist, but as the vanguard of feminism. This is a revision to what I was arguing yesterday (again, my thoughts aren’t fully formed), but I think the addition of that understanding of lesbianism to the mix is more of an ongoing legacy of lesbian feminism that continues to influence tensions among lesbians and bi women. This is something that continues to be picked up and passed on among lesbians and bi women, sometimes without even connecting it with “lesbian feminism” specifically and while combining it with other positions that contradict lesbian feminism (such as innate divisions between sexual orientations, or lesbianism as defined primarily by sexual attraction).

This book I’m reading (Separatism and Women’s Communities, Dana R. Shugar, 1995) has a chapter that looks at the 1970 article “The Woman Identified Woman” by the Radicalesbians, and talks about how it basically flipped the script on how lesbianism was assessed within the predominantly white radical feminist movement at the time, and how its ideas were taken up by other lesbian feminists:

Yet radical-feminist uneasiness over issues of sexuality in general (Echols’s study details the avoidance of or even refusal in radical-feminist theory to approach constructively most issues of sexuality) made even these groups less than hospitable for many lesbians. Further, radical-feminist discourse on the topic of lesbianism produced a surprising number of articles that seemed bent more on the preservation of the status quo than they were on the promotion of a ‘radical’ understanding. For example, though she left NOW [National Organization for Women] in disagreement with its conservative governmental practices, Ti-Grace Atkinson approached NOW’s position on lesbians in her early radical-feminist essays. In a 1970 speech entitled ‘Lesbianism and Feminism,’ Atkinson claimed:

“... lesbianism is totally dependent, as a concept as well as an activity, on male supremacy. This face, alone, should make a feminist nervous. ... lesbianism is based ideologically on the very premise of male oppression: the dynamic of sexual intercourse. ... Because lesbianism involves role-playing and, more important, because it is based on the primary assumption of male oppression, that is, sex, lesbianism reinforces the sex class system. ... The price of self-respect for oppressed people is to adopt the role of the Oppressor, and, thus, ultimately, toward oneself. Lesbians, in that one paradoxical sense, become their own Oppressors.” (Amazon Odyssey 85-88)

The comparison of lesbianism to male supremacy was, of course, nothing new to lesbians, though perhaps early lesbian feminists were dismayed to hear it from women who insisted on the primacy of women’s commitments to one another. In essence, Atkinson’s portray attempted to write lesbianism out of the women’s movement: lesbians were, by her description, men rather than women--if not in actuality then certainly in behavior, mind-set, and social outlook. And as ‘men,’ lesbians were less than welcome in a ‘woman’s’ movement.

[...]

In May 1970, a newly formed lesbian-feminist group, the Lavender Menace, chose the Second Congress to Unite Women as the place to confront the women’s movement on its own homophobia. As soon as the entertainment portion of the evening ended, the lights in the auditorium went out. When they were relit, nearly twenty women stood at the front, ‘Lavender Menace’ stenciled on their T-shirts. They preempted the rest of the evening’s activities and proceeded to facilitate a speak-out and discussion on homophobia in feminism. Though they had placed women sympathetic to their action in the audience, these ‘plants’ were unnecessary; when the Menace opened the microphone and asked women to come froward to speak, dozens thronged to the stage. It was at this action that then little-known author Kate Millett declared her alliance with lesbians and spoke of her own bisexuality. At the same time, unknown to members of Lavender Menace, three lesbian groups from California held panels at the Second Congress meetings. Lesbians thus began to demand the recognition of their presence and work within women’s liberation (Abbot and Love 113-16).

Lavender Menace’s impact reached far beyond the congress, however. In preparation for the congress and during its aftermath, the Menace-later renamed Radicalesbians--wrote and widely distributed ‘Woman Identified Woman,’ their position paper on lesbianism. The essay contained five basic sections: a definition of homosexuality, an analysis of society’s derogatory views of lesbianism, the place of lesbianism within feminism, an analysis of women’s dependency upon men, and a call to all women to begin the creation of a new sense of what it meant to be a woman.[5]

As the title ‘Woman Identified Woman’ suggests, this discursive representation of lesbianism was in part an attempt to push the social definition of lesbianism away from sexuality and toward a constructed identity that had far more to do with a sociopolitical critique than it did with what one did in bed. Thus a lesbian was a woman who ‘acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be a more complete and freer human being than her society ... cares to allow her. ... She is forced to evolve her own life pattern, often living much of her life alone, learning usually much earlier than her ‘straight’ ... sisters about the essential aloneness of life (which the myth of marriage obscures) and about the reality of illusions’ (Radicalesbians 240-41). This redefinition of lesbianism resonated on several levels within the early radical-feminist movement, in part because it effectively utilized characterizations of women’s experiences put forth by radical feminist groups themselves. When Radicalesbians described the typical lesbian as a woman who struggled to create herself outside social conventions of the feminine, they granted her the journey that most heterosexual feminists desired to undertake. Thus, lesbians were posited as not some outside evil force that tried to break up the feminist party but rather as women who, like everyone else, struggled for autonomy from patriarchal definitions of womanhood. The difference--if there was one--come in the implicit claims that lesbians were almost automatically compelled to start the process heterosexual women could begin only after a political or social awakening. In short, lesbians were rewritten as the pioneers of the feminist community.

The concept of lesbians as the pioneers of the feminist revolution was quickly adopted by many lesbian feminists in their analyses of gender and society. In the process, lesbian feminists often linked their critique of female socialization to the theory of sexism as the primary contradiction, a combination that had the rhetorical effect of positioning woman-identification as the crucial step in the eradication of all oppression. [...]

In part, Radicalesbians’ definition attempted to counter incessant emphasis by many feminists on lesbianism as solely sexual and therefore--like all sexuality--oppressive to women. And in this way lesbian feminism was to take an antagonistic stance to any overly sexualized portrayals of lesbianism, including those of butch-femme identification prior to the 1960s. But this willingness to mute sexuality in the hopes of appealing to heterosexual feminists also began a line of thought that was to become central to radical feminism: the view of the lesbian as the quintessential feminist.[7] Radicalesbians’ statement was thus an effective rhetorical strategy, for it placed the ‘well-adjusted’ lesbian as one who had successfully completed a journey to a freely chosen womanhood. And intentional or not, the wide acceptance of this definition opened the boundaries between heterosexual and lesbian women: if lesbianism was more than sex; was more, in fact, a method of liberation than it was a sexual orientation, then all women potentially could (and perhaps even should) become lesbians.

By the early 1970s, then, the burden of sexual proof placed on lesbians by works such as Atkinson’s ‘Lesbianism and Feminism’ was clearly turned back from lesbians onto heterosexual feminists themselves. Caught somewhat unprepared, heterosexual feminists found it necessary to defend their sexuality and found themselves vulnerable to the charge of collaboration with the oppressor if they attempted (or refused) to do so. That there was no immediate, organized rebuttal of this redefinition of heterosexuality was perhaps not surprising, even though the lack thereof made lesbian-feminist analyses seem generally correct. And any defense of heterosexual relationships without an effective challenge to lesbian feminists’ redefinitions--a challenge that was not forthcoming--could quickly be labeled both antifeminist and homophobic. Thus the overall response by heterosexual feminists usually fell along the lines of Ti-Grace Atkinson’s: shortly after Lavender Menace’s action and publication of ‘Woman Identified Woman,’ Atkinson reversed her earlier position on lesbianism and stated that ‘lesbianism has been a kind of code word for female resistance’ and that women who are ‘married to men ... are collaborators’ (Atkinson 131-32).[8]

[woman-loving]

I was inspired to actually sit down and read a book I have about separatism (before I get caught not knowing what I’m talking about, which is always), and I got to this part:

Perhaps due in part to such a rhetorical strategy [casting separatism as the test of one’s feminist commitment, especially for other lesbians], yet another type of separatism evolved at this time. As is usually the lot of separatism within the frameworks of other liberation or radical movements, lesbian separatism met more than its share of hostility from both within and outside the feminist movement. Lesbian separatists often found themselves, therefore, under attack even from other lesbian feminists. Separatist reactions to these attacks varied, but one response has been to call for separation from all but like-minded separatists:

“BECAUSE WE WANT TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS ON A MUCH MORE INTERPERSONAL LEVEL AND GROW, WE HAVE FOUND IT NECESSARY TO SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM CERTAIN LESBIANS. ... [T]here is no desire to develop close, binding ties with those lesbians whom we have major clashes with. For the most part, we want to withdraw ourselves from very oppressive, negative situations into more positive ones. This is the basis of our politics.” (Gutter Dyke Collective 29) [From Separatism and Women’s Communities, Dana R. Shugar, 1995.]

Tongue in cheek, but I wonder if one could argue that all those Do Not Interact/join our Discord server if you don’t hold these specific opinions on LGBTQ terminology could be considered an online manifestation of separatism.

[lesbianfeminists]

When we, as scholars, analyze the various genres of separatist discourse, it is of course interesting and challenging to apply our training in literature as we search for literary tropes, conventions, rhetorical devices, feminist themes, or representations of gender. But it is crucial to remember that our objects of study are not simply esoteric: these works had material effects on the lives of women, effects that in turn influenced the creation of other discourses as women worked through the problems of community they encountered in both theory and practice. Nor are these effects historically contained. In 1988, Sarah Hoagland and Julia Penelope cited community as one of their underlaying values in the creation of For Lesbians Only; Bev Jo, Linda Strega, and Ruston in 1990 named creating community as one of the reasons they wrote Dykes-Loving-Dykes: Dyke Separatist Politics for Lesbians Only. Thus the use of literature to aid in fighting, creating, and shaping separatist community continues, though the genres within which such community work is attempted have changed. No longer the prerogative of fiction, autobiographical narrative, or even theory, the genre through which lesbian authors now present their goals for community is often what I would term the community-help text. By community-help I mean texts that identify specific problems within lesbian community and offer advice or even exercises for women to complete to overcome these problems. Books such as Sarah Hoagland’s Lesbian Ethics, for example, are offered to the lesbian community in the following manner:                    "I wrote this book in the hope that it will provoke discussion which will take us beyond where we are in our understanding and actions. I will consider this book successful if it inspires lesbians to get together in something like consciousness-raising groups to discuss the suggestions here: how they might work, whether they apply in different situations, whether they are capable of helping us avoid some of the pitfalls we have faced up to now.“ … Just as the choice of genre in the search for community over the last ten years has changed, so too the discursive debates that divide the separatist and lesbian communities have shifted. While issues of race, class, and the degree to which one should practice separatism remain as concerns within the separatist community, they are no longer at the forefront of the community’s most divisive arguments. Rather, issues of sexual practice– specifically sadomasochism, pornography, and to a certain extent butch-femme history– divide the lesbian community today in ways that race, class, and separatism did during the 1970s. For example, when Sarah Hoagland states that "the norms we’ve absorbed from anglo-european ethical theory promote dominance and subordination through social control (what I call heterosexualism)… [and] thwart rather than promote successful weaving of lesbian community” (Lesbian Ethics 2-3), or, conversely, when Pat Califia writes that the community “insists on sexual uniformity and does not acknowledge any neutral differences– only crimes, sins, diseases, and mistakes’ (Macho Sluts 9), they line up on sides of a debate that lays claim to very deep community stakes.

Dana R. Shugar in Separatism and Women’s Community. 1995.

[lesbianfeminists]

Separatism and Women’s Community, Dana R. Shugar. 1995.