Phelan, Shane.1993.
''This framework was used to legitimate lesbianism as 'feminist
theory in action' (Abbott and Love 1973, 136), as visible, integrated
love of women and, therefore, of oneself. This view has been
manifested in the idea that lesbians are 'better feminists' than
heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual women; in the belief that men,
nonfeminist women, or nonlesbian feminists cannot be trusted as
allies; in the arguments that problems of racism, classism, and
other systems of discrimination are the result of sexism and therefore
are lesser problems among 'women-identified women.' ''(765-6)
''While retaining lesbian as a meaningful category, they have
each worked against reification of lesbians, toward views of lesbianism
as a critical site of gender deconstruction rather than as a unitary
experience with a singular political meaning. Anzaldua's revolutionary
discussions of 'mestiza consciousness,' a consciousness that arises
from living within multiple cultures, have provided new ground
for understandings of lesbian subjectivity and politics (1987,
1990). Fuss's treatment of 'identity as difference,' containing
'the specter of non-identity within it,' links lesbian identity
and politics to philosophical issues of identity and difference
(1989, 103). Butler's argument that sexual identity is better
seen as socially constructed, 'neither fatally determined nor
fully artificial and arbitrary' (1989, 147), lead us to view lesbianism
not as an essence or a thing outside of time and place but as
a critical space within social structures. De Lauretis's notion
of 'eccentric subjectivity' attempts to locate a position for
lesbians 'at once inside and outside' hegemonic institutions and
discourses (1990. 139)'' (766).
''If we ask why certain metanarratives function at certain times
and places, we find that the answer does not have to do with the
progress of a unitary knowledge but rather with shifting structures
of meaning, power, and action''(767).
''The gap between postmodernism and poststructuralism occasionally
extends to become a contradiction between arguments for politicized,
historicized identities and those for a more thorough deconstruction
of identity/ies altogether''(768).
''Lesbianism must be natural because it occurs; moreover, it occurs
with great frequency. The battle between groups, then, is over
the nature of nature. Nature functions as an authority no less
ambivalently than does God (Flax 1987; Phelan 1992) (770).
''Instead of interrogating science or religion or feminism for
the 'truth,' we need to ask, why do we need to justify ourselves''
? Why does homophobia exist? Why is hetereosexism so central
to Western thought, and why is there so little tolerance for diverse?
Why should it be important that we all develop heterosexual attachments
and desires? What are the stakes here? Why is homophobia virulent
in some societies and mild or nonexistent in others? These questions
need asking not because a truth exists 'out there' that, once
found, will eliminate heterosexism and homophobia; rather, the
questions usefully shift the focus from lesbian identity to heterosexist
social institutions'' (771).
''In this view, lesbian is not simple sexual but is a matter of
resistance to patriarchy. Lesbianism is about being fully oneself
rather than the stunted that society thinks of as 'woman.' The
theme of rebellion was blended with the idea that lesbians are
those who never turn their backs on their mother, their first
love. What had been seen by psychoanalysts as a failure to separate
and individuate became in lesbian-feminism the constancy of female
love. And this love for the mother enables us to resist the imperatives
of male, oedipal society; this love for women that we never lose
is both the source of our rebellion and the seed of our wholeness''
(772).
''We must find the room and the strength to confront the fears
that perhaps there is no single core to lesbian identity and thus
our identities rely on politics rather than ontology--indeed,
that ontology is itself an effect of politics'' (773).
''Coming out is partially a process of revealing something kept
hidden, but it is more than that. It is a process of fashioning
a self--a lesbian or gay self--that did not exist before coming
out began'' (774).
''[L]esbianism is not the source of epistemological or political
privilege in ant simple sense. Rather, it ' is that which exposes
the extreme limits of what passed itself off as simply human,
as universal, as unconstrained by identity; namely the position
of the white, middle class' '' (776).
''Were lesbian cultures not within patriarchy, we would not have
to engage in so much struggle to define and maintain them. Thinking
of ourselves as simply outside is an illusion that denies us any
strategic power in patriarchal cultures'' (777).
''The lesbians should not refuse the specificity and reality of lesbian experience; neither should we reify our experience into an identity and history so stable that no one can speak to it besides other lesbians who agree on that particular description of their existence. Our politics, perhaps disappointingly, must consist of continued patient and impatient struggle with ourselves and with those within and without our 'communities' who seek to 'fix' us (in the many senses of that term). We can afford neither assimilation into mainstream politics nor total withdrawal in search of the authentic community. We have to stand where we are, acknowledging the links and contradictions between ourselves and other citizens of the world, resisting the temptations to cloak crucial differences with the cloak of universality and to deny generalities for fear of essentialism. Only in this way will we be able to be free from the domination that lives both within and around us'' (786).
Last modified: 22 May 1996
Reply to: LiChien Hung