Reclaiming Lesbian Pride

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by Martina

It does not. Of course. Defending or reclaiming one might be taking a position against another. It often is the case. i have given examples.

Let's look at this quote -- from Kobi, whom i did not mean to offend by not using her name.



Who MIGHT be making her feel like a guest in her OWN community? Perhaps someone NOT a "woman who wants to be with other women?" i am guessing. The possibilities of people who choose to ID as lesbian but are not women loving women are somewhat limited. i speculated.

There's a ton of research on identity formation, much of which talks about how it is created by defining oneself in opposition to the other, by disavowing another group. i think that's a normal way of thinking. But ID formation on a greater than individual level is sticky stuff. i used to be offended (as a woman) by definitions of femme that implied that a reconsidered and reconstructed femme femininity was somehow superior to that of straight women. Anyway, femme cultural products are full of such statements. Less so anymore.

My point is that ID formation can come out of disavowals of the other. It can disparage the other. Definitions that imply that straight women are less reflective of or transgressive in their femininity are examples.

But when you take it up a level to DEFENDING a supposedly beleaguered identity, you enter into a discourse that does more than potentially demean the other. The poor me stuff can lead to justifications for exclusion or worse. It's the rhetoric of oppression. The speakers may SOUND like victims, but they are justifying something else.

So i am not calling anyone here an oppressor. But this kind of discourse is dangerous. In any context.

I can't speak for Kobi, but I can say unequivocally that when I use the word 'lesbian' to identify myself I have been met with some hostility from people who, in another time and place, would have certainly been called lesbians, and probably would have called themselves lesbians. In some circles, including b-f communities, calling oneself a lesbian is considered uncool, a relic from former times, and a word associated with people who would choose to oppress those who don't fit into a narrow definition of what it means to be a woman who has sex with and partners with other women. There have been lesbians who claim I can't be one because I'm a stonefemme, because I'm a leatherwoman, and because I partner with butch women. I very powerfully, emphatically, and crankily claim the label LESBIAN because I am one. F.U. to anyone who attempts to tell me otherwise.

There have been plenty of straight POCs who attempt to police the behaviours of LGBT POCs. Some have claimed that gayness is a white disease. Does that make LGBT POCs disavow their connection to their communities? Not usually, and yet that's a common response amongst those who might once have called themselves lesbians. Because some lesbians have attempted to police their (b-f, trans, leather), IDs, they eschew the use of the label. Some of the not-very-bright people who have challenged my lesbian ID have done so because they assume it must mean I'm a transphobe.

The reason I'm hammering this point with you Martina, is that there is not one place in my general definition or in my self ID that has anything to do with males or transphobia. You brought that accusation into the thread spuriously, and you have yet to support the accusation with any quote. You merely assert that feeling defended around the use of this, in my opinion, embattled ID, must have something to do with transphobia. This is inflammatory because in my experience, unsupported accusations of transphobia are sometimes used to shut down conversations about lesbian ID.

I'm a prickly, argumentative person when I get riled up. Attempts to shut me down don't work very well, but others who are not as verbally aggressive as I am will walk away from those conversations where their lesbian ID has been mocked or denigrated feeling disempowered and invalidated. This is the reason why 'Lesbian Pride' is a topic of importance to me. Unless one is foolish enough to personally challenge my ID, there's nothing "dangerous" about this discourse.