Reclaiming Lesbian Pride

[Chazz]

Originally Posted by Kobi

The individualization of identity is a very complex thing. Yet, it has an impact on a broader scale. That concerns me greatly because the potential political ramifications are frightening.

I am a lesbian i.e. a female homosexual. I dont think even OED has changed that definition. If people who do not fit "female homosexual" start claiming lesbian, it impacts my personal identity as well as lesbians in general. It renders lesbian to mean essentially nothing.

And that is supposed to be ok with me? I dont care who anyone sleeps with but when what it is called impacts me, I care a lot.

Part of why this bothers me is, it is someone else's circumstances that have changed not mine. But, there is the presumption that I have to make adjustments to accomodate their changing circumstances. In essence, to me, it is someone else deciding they have the right to change things to suit themselves without regard as to how it affects others. I have a real problem with this kind of thinking.

On a larger scale, gay rights, in part, has used the paradigm that our gayness is an inherent part of who we are. Our minority status is from our gayness being something we have no control over. It is not a choice per se, it just is.

Now we are muddying the waters by saying we are lesbians who sleep with men? Either we have control and make a conscious decision or we dont. And there is no political implications to this?

Another part of gayness being something we have no control over is the fight we have with religious fruitcakes ( ok bad choice of words) who say we can change our behavior and become unsinners. They can deprogram us. Well, lesbians sleeping with men gives them a wee bit of ammunition on that one.

Someone posted somewhere that in Iran or Iraq, they would rather perform sexual reassignment surgery than have homosexuals in their midst. Do you really think this doesnt matter?

Feminism is predicated at its simplest level on a male versus female paradigm. Gender theory, at its simplest level is masculine versus feminine. Wow, that blows the binary to pieces eh? There are very real, very everyday implications inherent in this for every single female and women. And our response to this is to argue about the definition of woman? Does that strike anyone as odd?

Sometimes I read this thread and I dont know which is worse...the flashbacks to Anita Bryant's antigay stuff or the ones of Phyllis Schafly arguing against the ERA.

[Women’s] authority is effective only so long as [she] identifies wholly with [her male] sponsors’. What happens for the feminist is that she somehow discovers her own authority, and comes to understand herself as authorized by her own knowledge of right and wrong to assume the agency of the judge, director, instructor, planner, policy maker, administrator [and namer of her own reality]. - Marilyn Frye