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Title: The Woman-Identified-Woman Author: Radicalesbians Language: en Topics: Gender Nihilism, Patriarchy, Sexuality, Lesbianism Source: What Is Gender Nihilism? — https://littleblackcart.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=602 Notes: Transcription note:
What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the
point of explosion. She is the woman who, often beginning at an
extremely early age, acts in accordance with her inner compulsion to be
a more complete and freer human being than her society — perhaps then,
but certainly later — cares to allow her. These needs and actions, over
a period of years, bring her into painful conflict with people,
situations, the accepted ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, until
she is in a state of continual war with everything around her, and
usually with herself. She may not be fully conscious of the political
implications of what for her began as a personal necessity, but on some
level she has not been able to accept the limitations and oppression
laid on her by the most basic role of her society — the female role. The
turmoil she experiences tends to induce guilt proportional to the degree
to which she feels she is not meeting social expectations, and/or
eventually drives her to question and analyze what the rest of her
society more or less accepts. She is forced to evolve her own life
pattern, often living much of her life alone, learning usually much
earlier than her “straight” (heterosexual) sisters about the essential
aloneness of life (which the myth of marriage obscures) and about the
reality of illusions. To the extent that she cannot expend the heavy
socialization that goes with being female, she can never truly find
peace with herself. For she is caught somewhere between accepting
society’s view of her in which case she cannot accept herself — and
coming to understand what this sexist society has done to her and why it
is functional and necessary for it to do so. Those of us who work that
through find ourselves on the other side of a tortuous journey through a
night that may have been decades long. The perspective gained from that
journey, the liberation of self, the inner peace, the real love of self
and of all women, is something to be shared with all women — because we
are all women.
It should first be understood that lesbianism, like male homosexuality,
is a category of behavior possibly only in a sexist society
characterized by rigid sex roles and dominated by male supremacy. Those
sex roles dehumanize women by defining us as a supportive/serving case
in relation to the master caste of men, and emotionally cripple men by
demanding that they be alienated from their own bodies and emotions in
order to perform their economic/political/military functions
effectively. Homosexuality is a by-product of a particular way of
setting up roles (or approved patterns of behavior) on the basis of sex;
as such it is an inauthentic (not consonant with “reality”) category. In
a society in which men do not oppress women, and sexual expression is
allowed to follow feelings, the categories of homosexuality and
heterosexuality would disappear.
But lesbianism is also different from male homosexuality, and serves a
different function in the society. “Dyke” is a different kind of
put-down from “faggot,” although both imply you are not playing your
socially assigned sex role ... are not therefore a “real woman” or a
“real man.” The grudging admiration felt for the tomboy, and the
queasiness felt around a sissy boy point to the same thing: the contempt
in which women — or those who play a female role — are held. And the
investment in keeping women in that contemptuous role is very great.
Lesbian is a word, the label, the condition that holds women in line.
When a woman has this word tossed her way, she knows she is stepping out
of line. She knows that she has crossed the terrible boundary of her sex
role. She recoils, she protests, she reshapes her actions to gain
approval. Lesbian is a label invented by the Man to throw at any woman
who dares to be his equal, who dares to challenge his prerogatives
(including that of all women as part of the exchange medium among men),
who dares to assert the primacy of her own needs. To have the label
applied to people active in women’s liberation is just the most recent
instance of a long history; older women will recall that not so long
ago, any woman who was successful, independent, not orienting her whole
life about a man, would hear this word. For in this sexist society, for
a woman to be independent means she can’t be a woman — she must be a
dyke. That in itself should tell us where women are at. It says as
clearly as can be said: women and person are contradictory terms. For a
lesbian is not considered a “real woman.” And yet, in popular thinking,
there is really only one essential difference between a lesbian and
other women: that of sexual orientation — which is to say, when you
strip off all the packaging, you must finally realize that the essence
of being a “woman” is to get fucked by men.
“Lesbian” is one of the sexual categories by which men have divided up
humanity. While all women are dehumanized as sex objects, as the objects
of men they are given certain compensations: identification with his
power, his ego, his status, his protection (from other males), feeling
like a “real woman,” finding social acceptance by adhering to her role,
etc. Should a woman confront herself by confronting another woman, there
are fewer rationalizations, fewer buffers by which to avoid the stark
horror of her dehumanized condition. Herein we find the overriding fear
of many women toward being used as a sexual object by a woman, which no
only will bring her no male-connected compensations, but also will
reveal the void which is woman’s real situation. This dehumanization is
expressed when a straight woman learns that a sister is a lesbian; she
begins to relate to her lesbian sister as her potential sex object,
laying a surrogate male role on the lesbian. This reveals her
heterosexual conditioning to make herself into an object when sex is
potentially involved in a relationship, and it denies the lesbian her
full humanity. For women, especially those in the movement, to perceive
their lesbian sisters through this male grid of role definitions is to
accept this male cultural conditioning and to oppress their sisters much
as they themselves have been oppressed by men. Are we going to continue
the male classification system of defining all females in sexual
relation to some other category of people? Affixing the label lesbian
not only to a woman who aspires to be a person, but also to any
situation of real love, real solidarity, real primacy among women, is a
primacy form of divisivness among women: it is the condition which keeps
women within the confines of the feminine role, and it is the
debunking/scare term that keeps women from forming any primary
attachments, groups, or associations among ourselves. Women in the
movement have in most cases gone to great lengths to avoid discussion
and confrontation with the issue of lesbianism. It puts people up-tight.
They are hostile, evasive, or try to incorporate it into some “broader
issue.” They would rather not talk about it. If they have to, they try
to dismiss it as a “lavender herring.” But it is no side issue. It is
absolutely essential to the success and fulfillment of the women’s
liberation movement that this issue be dealt with. As long as the label
“dyke” can beused to frighten women into a less militant stand, keep her
separate from her sisters, keep her from giving primacy to anything
other than men and family — then to that extent she is controlled by the
male culture. Until women see in each other the possibility of a primal
commitment which includes sexual love, they will be denying themselves
the love and value they readily accord to men, thus affirming their
second-class status. As long as male acceptability is primary — both to
the individual women and to the movement as a whole — the term lesbian
will be used effectively against women. Insofar as women want only more
privileges within the system, they do not want to antagonize male power.
They instead seek acceptability for women’s liberation, and the most
crucial aspect of the acceptability is to deny lesbianism — i.e., to
deny any fundamental challenge to the basis of the female. It should
also be said that some younger, more radical women have honestly begun
to discuss lesbianism, but so far it has been primarily as a sexual
“alternative” to men. This, however, is still giving primacy to men,
both because of the idea of relating more completely to women occurs as
a negative reaction to men, and because lesbian relationship is being
characterized simply by sex, which is divise and sexist. On one level,
which is both personal and political, women may withdraw emotional and
sexual energies from men, and work out various alternatives for those
energies in our own lives. On a different political/psychological level,
it must be understood that what is crucial is that women begin
disengaging from male-defined response patterns. In the privacy of our
own psyches, we must cut those cords to the cord. For irrrespective of
where our love and sexual energies flow, if we are male-identified in
our heads, we cannot realize our autonomy as human beings.
But why is it that women have related to and through men? By virtue of
having been brought up in male society, we have internalized the male
culture’s definition of ourselves. That definition consigns us to sexual
and family functions, and excludes us from defining and shaping the
terms of our lives. In exchange for our psychic servicing and for
performing society’s non-profit making functions, the man confers on us
just one thing: the slave status which makes us legitimate in the eyes
of the society in which we live. This is called “femininity” or “being a
real woman” in our cultural lingo. We are authentic, legitimate, real to
the extent that we are the property of some man whose name we bear. To
be a woman who belongs to no man is to be invisible, pathetic,
inauthentic, unreal. He confirms his image of us — of what we have to be
in order to be acceptable to him — but not our real selves; he conforms
our womanhood — as he defines it, in relation to him but cannot confirm
our personhood, our own selves as absolutes. As long as we are dependent
on the male culture for this definition, for this approval, we cannot be
free.
The consequences of internalizing this role is an enormous reservoir of
self-hate. This is not to say the self-hate is recognized or accepted as
such; indeed most women would deny it. It may be experienced as
discomfort with her role, as feeling empty, as numbness, as
restlessness, as a paralyzing anxiety at the center. Alternatively, it
may be expressed in shrill defensiveness of the glory and destiny of her
role. But it does exist, often beneath the edge of her consciousness,
poisoning her existence, keeping her alienated from herself, her own
needs, and rendering her a strange to other women. They try to escape by
identifying with the oppressor, living through him, gaining status and
identity from his ego, his power, his accomplishments. And by not
identifying with the other “empty vessels” like themselves. Women resist
relating on all levels to other women who will reflect their own
oppression, their own secondary status, their own self-hate. For to
confront another woman is finally to confront one’s self — the self we
have gone to such lengths to avoid. And in that mirror we know we cannot
really respect and love that which we have been made to be.
As the source of self hate and the lack of real self are rooted in our
male-given identity, we must create a new sense of self. As long as we
cling to the idea of “being a woman,” we will sense some conflict with
that incipient self, that sense of I, that sense of a whole person. It
is very difficult to realize and accept that being “feminine” and being
a whole person are irreconcilable. Only women can give to each other a
new sense of self. That identity we have to develop with reference to
ourselves, and not in relation to men. This consciousness is the
revolutionary force from which all else will follow, for ours is an
organic revolution. For this we must be available and supportive to one
another, live our commitment and our love, give the emotional support
necessary to sustain this movement. Our energies must flow toward our
sisters, not backward toward our oppressors. As long as woman’s
liberation tries to free women without facing the basic heterosexual
structure that binds us in one-to-one relationship with our oppressors,
tremendous energies will continue to flow into trying to straighten up
each particular relationship with a man, into finding how to get better
sex, how to turn his head around — into trying to make the “new man” out
of him, in the delusion that this will allow us to be the “new woman.”
This obviously splits our energies and commitments, leaving us unable to
be committed to the construction of the new patterns which will liberate
us.
It is the primacy of women relating to women, of women creating a new
consciousness of and with each other, which is at the hart of women’s
liberation, and the basis for the cultural revolution. Together we must
find, reinforce, and validate our authentic selves. As we do this, we
confirm in each other than struggling, incipient sense of pride and
strength, the divisive barriers begin to melt, we feel this growing
solidarity with our sisters. We see ourselves as prime, find our centers
inside of ourselves. We find receding the sense of alienation, of being
cut off, of being behind a locked window, of being unable to get out of
what we know is inside. We feel a realness, feel at last we are
coinciding with ourselves. With that real self, with that consciousness,
we begin a revolution to end the imposition of all coercive
identifications, and to achieve maximum autonomy in human expression.