[Martina]

i am too tired to make sense. But i will try.

Whenever someone talks about defending an identity, they are in deep water. Basically, it's a battle already lost (to mix my metaphors).

Think of people in France who are fighting for a French identity that does not include women wearing the niqab. Or again the French trying to protect the purity of their language and culture. Did that work? No. It never works.

Problems with that mode of discourse:

1) You are framing it as a conflict rather than a change or evolution. You are creating two sides when there may be many or none.

2) It tends to have an agenda that is in part reactionary. France's is an anti-immigrant racism lurking behind that pride in French culture. Here? Who knows? Probably some transphobia.

3) It never works.

i am proud to be a lesbian, but my version of lesbian, which is pretty mainstream for my age-group (yes, i listened to Meg Christian), wasn't everybody's then, and it's not many people's now. You can't have an official version of an identity. And an effect of defending and reclaiming IS expressing some typical or baseline set of traits that one is defending. YAY for Berkies may mean Manolos are not the footwear of the lesbian elite. I's dangerous. i have seen that with "femme." It's going on with "butch" all over.

We can't look at it as reclaiming and defending without becoming reactionary. It's inevitable.

My suggestion is that we show up as we are and love ourselves. If it's a political setting with a specific goal, then politicize the debate. But be careful about how we define ourselves.

There are lesbians here who aren't "women loving women." They are living with and loving men. They are lesbians. I myself feel liberated by that. It means there is more room for me to breathe. It means i have new sisters and brothers.