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Lesbians are not women

deletia

07:20 / 27.09.01

Deva, anyone else - are there online resources which explore this concept in more detail? Where should I be looking? Am eeeenterested.

deletia

07:49 / 27.09.01

Presenting a militaristic uprising from the vantage point of a sect of rogue warrior women in unspecified "golden spaces lacunae", Wittig's novel revisions institutions as varied as capitalism, religion, warfare, and family.

OK, more and more eeenteresting. Good places to start?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:24 / 27.09.01

You could balance it with the fascinating discussions about whether Thatcher was really a woman. Those were interesting, too.

08:24 / 27.09.01

I'm on campus at the moment so I don't have any books on me (ironically).

Haven't read Wittig in a while but I think the basic thinking was that 'woman' is a term which only has meaning within heteropatriarchy, as the heterosexual (and economic, etc) complement to 'man'. This can be traced back to Levi-Strauss who posits the origin of culture as the exchange of 'women' between men, so that a 'woman' is not a subject but a commodity in a homosocial/heteropatriarchal economy.

Lesbians are removed from this exchange, and hence are not women.

Quote:

Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude, a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation ("forced residence," domestic corvée, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual.

URL: One Is Not Born A Woman

PS: Nick, are there invisible '%'s round your comment?

[ 27-09-2001: Message edited by: Deva ]

deletia

08:24 / 27.09.01

Thanks - I tracked down a couple of articles which gave me some info, but this looks like a good "helicopter view".

11:29 / 27.09.01

If you haven't aleady seen it, you may be interested in Judith Butler's commentary on Wittig in 'Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig and Foucault' (in Seyla Benhabib & Drucilla Cornell eds., Feminism as Critique. I'll quote a little of it:

"Wittig does not argue that the lesbian is another sex or gender, but claims that the lesbian 'is the only concept I know which is beyond the category of sex.' But even as Wittig describes the lesbian in relation to this binary opposition of 'man' and 'woman', she underscores the fact that this being beyond opposition is still a way of being related to that opposition, indeed a binary relation at that. In order that the lesbian avoid being caught up in another binary opposition i.e., the opposition to heterosexuality itself, 'being lesbian' must itself become a multiple cultural phenomenon, a gender with no univocal essence. If binary oppositions imply hierarchies, then postulating a sexual identity 'beyond' culture promises to set up yet another pair of oppositions that, in turn, suggest another hierarchical arrangement; hegemonic heterosexual culture will stand as the 'Other' to that postcultural subject, and a new hierarchy may well replace the old - at least on a theoretical level. Moreover, to define culture as necessarily preoccupied with the reproduction of binary oppositions is to support a structuralist assumption that seems neither valid nor politically beneficial. After all, if binary oppositions are to be overcome in experience, they must meet their dissolution in the creation of new cultural forms. As Beauvoir says, and Wittig should know, there is no meaningful reference to 'human reality' outside the terms of culture. The political program for overcoming binary restrictions ought to be concerned, then, with cultural innovation rather than myths of transcendence."

13:53 / 27.09.01

And then there's this old thread with the S.C.U.M. links. Not strictly on topic, but similarly themed.

14:07 / 27.09.01

Thanks, Haus, for starting this topic... Thanks to everyone else for the useful/interesting stuff. I just know I am going to be able to use this in anthropology sometime...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:29 / 27.09.01

Deva:

I suppose I do find the claim that 'lesbians are not women' faintly whimsical, not least because it makes the definition of 'lesbian' oddly problematic (given that 'female' carries many of the same bits of social baggage and presumably is also disallowed).

I understand the root notion - that 'woman' is a term (and perhaps a construct or thing) embedded in patriarchy, and I recognise the self-definition which escapes from preceonceived notions. I suppose I'd be more inclined to re-define 'woman' than reject it altogether, but perhaps that's a male viewpoint.

But no, I'm not kidding. There was some stuff written about Thatcher's gender location which was fairly bizarre. Her treatment of homosexuality and other dissenting genders was so negative that I think some of the queer and'or feminist theorists of the time tried to demonstrate that she wasn't female/ a woman at all. I assume they must have been contending that she had crossed the rubicon and entirely internalised heteropatriarchy in its strongest form, thus becoming at best ungendered and at worst monstro-male.

Could be wrong. Sounds funky, though, dunnit?

15:32 / 27.09.01

there is the camp of radical separatist feminist lesbians who use the term "womyn" to describe themselves, one must wonder whether the root of this is the theory being discussed.

as far as Thatcher, well theres always the internalized homophobia theory

-Trish

deletia

07:25 / 28.09.01

Hmmm - would one suggest that Wittig's views are an extension of the "political lesbianism" (and I use the phrase without rancour, using the squarequotes to acknowledge its limitations - assume here for the moment that it means positing that the removal of sexual contact between men and women is a good and necessary thing) Alliekitty mentions, and that the term "woman/women", no matter how it is spelled, is fatally compromised by its class implications? I'm interested by how this could be tied into inhumanism, especially with Cav's extremely useful addendum. God, I wish my brain worked better...

I have to say that I found what I read on Thatcher not being female interesting (without %s), as a source of ideas and perspectives. I'm not sure that something has to tally with one's own worldview before becoming interesting...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:53 / 28.09.01

See? Haus is on my side. Haus doesn't think I'm being evil.

...oh, sod...

11:28 / 28.09.01

All you ever wanted to know about WOMAN.

Can I Please invite you to Calling all Daughters and Son of Earth? PLEASE?

[ 28-09-2001: Message edited by: Laila ]

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:38 / 28.09.01

You and I have never dated, have we? Because you're starting to sound awfully familiar...

[ 28-09-2001: Message edited by: Nick ]

16:22 / 28.09.01

No, but tell me more about her, she sounds intresting.

big city deserter

18:29 / 28.09.01

quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Willow:
Deva, anyone else - are there online resources which explore this concept in more detail? Where should I be looking? Am eeeenterested.

Why are you so interested?

11:08 / 29.09.01

Nick: it was a genuine question about the '%%'s, so I knew whether to respond or not... I used to insist that Thatcher 'didn't count as a woman' or 'might as well not be a woman', though I don't think I ever went as far as totally disqualifying her. In the case of Thatcher, I guess the thinking might be that the political desire for "a woman Prime Minister" was not fulfilled by the election of the empirically female Maggie T, but remained as a desire for a feminist Prime Minister or one whose concerns reflected those of "women" as a group (as if there was such a thing...)

I think you're right about redefining 'woman' - though I'd argue that both saying "Thatcher is not a woman" and "lesbians are not women" are attempts to do so, recognizing that the cultural references and effects of the term "woman" outweigh the biological ones and insisting on 'woman' as a cultural/political identifier - as a corrective (maybe) to the heteropatriarchal use of 'woman' as a cultural/political identifier of "passive, feminine, nurturing, etc".

Hence also, I think, 'wimmin'/'womyn'/'womoon' as an attempt to remove 'wo-man' from its relationship to 'man', and all the other 70's/radical/separatist terms like "woman-identified woman". But, as Cavatina/Judy B (thanks so much for that quote - no, I haven't read the article but I will now) point out, such attempts are inherently problematic - here, because you end up enforcing a particular set of characteristics as being the 'essence' of woman (or womyn, or lesbian) - which is exactly what you're fighting against in the first place (I know that's not what Judy B is saying, but I can't improve on anything she says ever because she is GOD, so I'm just leaving the quote to be swooned over).

Haus: can you say a bit more about the class implications? Certainly it's dodgy to suggest that "woman" is a stable signifier across class, sexuality, & racial/ethnic boundaries. I'm reading Anne McClintock's 'Imperial Leather' atm which is wonderful on the mutual implication of class and gender in Victorian times - or as Drucilla Cornell puts it, the way we are "femmed" is determined by our other positionings in terms of class, language, race, sexuality & whatnot... but I'm just rambling now. Let me know what you mean.

18:17 / 29.09.01

havent read Wittig for a while but the Wittig in my head has morphed into the use of the figure 'lesbian' as a destructive force for ripping apart the organisation of bodies into stable genders. I also seem to recall that she argues that those who we call 'men' must also be lesbianised, hence no longer 'men'. This I like.
re Nick's post, I think for W lesbians do not have sex with other women ergo there is no contradiction - and those people who we might think of generally as lesbians but who position themselves through a kind of Adrienne Rich style Lesbian continuum (which kind of magnifies womanhood [put oversimply]) are not lesbians in Wittig's view. In Leo Bersani's book homos - and i regard him as misogynist btw - he recounts a story of Wittig giving a lecture, in Canada I think, where she was challenged by a heckler who demanded to know whether she had a vagina. she apparently said 'no'. for me the heckler's question/accusation works as a performative interpellation to attempt to realign and stabilise the performative attempt by Wittig to lesbianise herself...(D, I know I'm supposed to be at Moulin Rouge but it was sold out...hence my momentary return)

Disco is My Class War

06:27 / 30.09.01

No time to post what I think now but check out a book called Lesbian Utopics by Annamarie Jagose (she's an old lecturer of ine, amazing woman) which is about the idea of a kind of 'lesbian utopia', separated from the heterosexual matrix and from 'mainstream' culture generally, and how/why that's problematic. She discusses Wittig at length, I believe.
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/research/publications/lutopics.html

08:07 / 30.09.01

Blue - damn re Moulin Rouge! - but I like the take on Wittig (I've only read the "One Is Not Born A Woman" article and a couple of other bits & bobs - are you thinking of Les Guerillieres [sp?])? and I love the anecdote (hey, and Uncle Jacques D *does* have a vagina...)

Rosa, am jealous as hell of you being lectured by Annamarie J, she is a genius. I haven't read the book but I read a paper by her of the same title, about the utopics of the lesbian body and attempts to 'recover' it as a 'natural', prediscursive body - but it seems from Bluestocking's post that Wittig is a little more aware of the violence done to the het. matrix/body by lesbianism, and thus doesn't quite place it 'outside' culture...? Will check out the link.

10:51 / 30.09.01

I think there are different 'Wittig's' in circulation - partly affected by whether one reads her 'fiction texts' [using crude terms not able to stand up to scrutiny...] or not - or chooses to read her 'theory texts' rhetorically. Certainly some of her 'theory texts' the Straight Mind & other essaysin can be read as more conservative radical lesbian separatism.
I once tried to write something combining W with Sandra Bernhard's all-girl version of 50 Ways to leave your loverinc. lines like
Just get on the plane, Jane,
you'll never look back again
The future is bleak, Monique
Just set yourself free...
but it hasn't quite come off yet...

deletia

06:32 / 01.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Deva:
Haus: can you say a bit more about the class implications? Certainly it's dodgy to suggest that "woman" is a stable signifier across class, sexuality, & racial/ethnic boundaries.

Oh God....brain not working - running on about an hour's sleep, and as such dtruggling with simple concepts. Forgive.

What I think I was trying to say was that "woman" exists, or can be ssaid to exist, as a kind of paraclass - one that runs alongside but also informs other distinctions of class. So, somebody can be described as a society hostess (woman) or a match girl (woman), and in each case the descriptor is in itself gendered, or one can indicate the "woman-ness (as aberration) of the role, one of the most common breadcrumb trails being the gendered pronoun, but that nestling in with endless tiny cues and clues locating an individual in a matrix of associations of which gender is one, but which also bleed over into one another.

Thus, by that thinking, "woman" as terminology interacts with other signifiers to affect interaction with the subject, in a manner symbiotic with other descriptors.

All a bit basic, but I am a slow child.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:30 / 01.10.01

quote:I think for W lesbians do not have sex with other women ergo there is no contradiction - and those people who we might think of generally as lesbians but who position themselves through a kind of Adrienne Rich style Lesbian continuum (which kind of magnifies womanhood [put oversimply]) are not lesbians in Wittig's view

See, that's where this passes me by. It recalls to my mind Germaine Greer insisting on the removal of a transsexual from an all women college. It's a 'queerer than thou' position which I find annoying. And the complications of creating a term to deal with a gender and a situation which then requires you to exclude some people who define themselves in that way...

Bah. There must be a better approach.

Disco is My Class War

04:43 / 02.10.01

I agree that there are definitely different readings of Wittig in circulation, which have been appropriated by political/radical lesbians and post-structuralist feminists alike. It's a long time since I read Wittig, but I'm quite sure that Jagose gives a rieading of the Lesbian Body, a novel about a whole lot of women escaping to an island (possibly Lesbos?) and making a kind of new society of 'women'.

Wittig herself is definitely not a radical feminist, though. She's very critical of universalism...

Goodness Gracious Meme

08:47 / 08.10.01

just want to say i love you people. and if i ever get near a decent library i want to find that judith b (who is indeed godlike, altho funkier than any god i've ever heard of, except perhaps Hanuman) article. damn nonacademic crappy town libraries.

pray please continue. actually think Kate Bornstein's written stuff on this, will try and remember...

No star here laces

10:21 / 08.10.01

Is there not a basic paradox involved here that makes the whole thing a bit of a cul-de-sac?

Debate as I understand it:

The term 'woman' is compromised by the cultural assumptions of heteropatriarchy

This is a bad thing because heteropatriarchy is a prejudiced and dogmatic society.

But 'woman' in this context refers to the female gender. However the only aspect of 'female-hood' to be non-culturally specific is the biological. So 'woman' in this context simply refers to the concept of 'female-hood' in the prevailing culture, which happens to hetero-patriarchy, but equally well could be political lesbianism, as in the case of this hypothetical island. Therefore, irrespective of the word used, or the prevailing culture, the word signifying 'female-hood' will only ever indicate the prevailing (and therefore limited and dogmatic) conception of 'female-hood' in that society and therefore will always be compromised, just in different ways.

Or do I just not get it?

deletia

07:14 / 09.10.01

Debate as I understand it:

The term 'woman' is compromised by the cultural assumptions of heteropatriarchy

This is a bad thing because heteropatriarchy is a prejudiced and dogmatic society.

But 'woman' in this context refers to the female gender. However the only aspect of 'female-hood' to be non-culturally specific is the biological. So 'woman' in this context simply refers to the concept of 'female-hood' in the prevailing culture, which happens to hetero-patriarchy, but equally well could be political lesbianism, as in the case of this hypothetical island. Therefore, irrespective of the word used, or the prevailing culture, the word signifying 'female-hood' will only ever indicate the prevailing (and therefore limited and dogmatic) conception of 'female-hood' in that society and therefore will always be compromised, just in different ways.

Or do I just not get it?[/QUOTE]

Sort of...you're failing to note that the term "woman" is not something which existed from the dawn of time and which was then coopted. You are also assuming that biologically is not culturally determined, and everything else is.

11:08 / 09.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Tyrone Mushylaces:
Therefore, irrespective of the word used, or the prevailing culture, the word signifying 'female-hood' will only ever indicate the prevailing (and therefore limited and dogmatic) conception of 'female-hood' in that society and therefore will always be compromised, just in different ways.

Or do I just not get it?

I'm kind of expanding on what Haus said, I think, but bear with me.

I think the cul-de-sac stems from your assuming that 'female-hood' is constant cross-culturally: that there are 2 sexes, no more, no less, and that all societies will always divide their populations into male and female. "Heteropatriarchy" could actually be taken as a name for all societies which *do* believe in a biologically determined sexual dimorphism, and are structured accordingly around a gendered division of labour.

Cf Blue-Stocking's anecdote above, about Monique Wittig denying that she had a vagina, which I would interpret thusly, with all due quaking in the direction of Blue, who knows this stuff better than I do: Wittig may or may not have what a gynaecologist would describe as a vagina, but in terms of the cultural meaning and signifying potential of the vagina, she does not have one; that is, she does not have what you or I would call a 'vagina', and hence is not, biologically or otherwise, a 'woman'.

Also, I think you're assuming that Wittig and other lesbians/feminists want to 'liberate' a true, natural womanhood from cultural baggage etc. While this is true of some strands of feminist critique & action, Wittig (and Butler, and many others, and me) believe as you do, that any signifier of "female-hood" is going to be culturally determined or 'compromised': it's the "in different ways" that matters, and that's where a lot of feminists (particularly those influenced by French theory) are doing their work.

Does that make any sense?

Blank Faced Avatar

12:44 / 10.10.01

Models in which a lesbian matrix exists in conflict with the patriarchal society, and so is oppositionally defined by it, are a snapshot of a conflict phase in that society. You define yourself in opposition to a structure, target it aggresively & destroy large portions, find large portions of your own identity are being shattered, and change parralel to the opposition. Just morph as you go along. Woman destroys man, people become 'Wo'.

I would like a definition of 'Human' which places me in a different category from Margaret Thatcher, but that's an old psycho-sexual syndrome from 80's british childhood; A powerful memory of the abolition of the school free milk programme, "Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher". Mrs T as the cold mother, witholding her milk from the children. Waaaah! Waaaah!
( Another de-womanising association for Mags tho', any cultural parallels? )

19:42 / 10.10.01

quote:Originally posted by the Humble Crab:
Models in which a lesbian matrix exists in conflict with the patriarchal society, and so is oppositionally defined by it, are a snapshot of a conflict phase in that society. You define yourself in opposition to a structure, target it aggresively & destroy large portions, find large portions of your own identity are being shattered, and change parralel to the opposition.

I like that. However, I have been trained to fear Hegelianism... can you expand on this? Do you mean that heteropatriarchy is the thesis, the lesbian matrix the antithesis, and "Wo" (or whatever) the synthesis... or is it something different?

I'd never thought of The Milk Snatcher as equating Mags with "the bad breast" (as 'twere)... but you're quite right. God damn this sexual dimorphism.

Oh, and when you say "matrix", are you referring to the Bane of the Board, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger? Or not? And if you are, can you explain her to me?