Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (26 page)

Fundamentally mutual respect is essential to liberatory sexual practice and the conviction that sexual pleasure and fulfillment is best attained in a circumstance of choice and consensual agreement. Within patriarchal society men and women cannot know sustained heterosexual bliss unless both parties have divested of their sexist thinking. Many women and men still consider male sexual performance to be determined solely by whether or not the penis is hard and erections are maintained. This notion of male performance is tied to sexist thinking. While men must let go of the sexist assumption that female sexuality exists to serve and satisfy their needs, many women must also let go a fixation on penetration.

During the heyday of sexual liberation and contemporary feminist movement women found that men were often willing to accept equality in every sphere except sexuality. In the bedroom many men want a sexually desiring woman eager to give and share pleasure but ultimately they did not surrender the sexist assumption that her sexual performance (i.e., whether or not she wanted to be sexual) should be determined by their desire. While it was fun to do it with willing excited, liberated females it was not fun when those females declared that they wanted a space not to be sexual. Often when that happened heterosexual men made it clear that they would need to took elsewhere for sexual release, an action which reinforced the reality of continued allegiance to a sexist paradigm of ownership in the female body as well as their holding to the notion that any female body would suffice. In a liberatory heterosexual or homosexual relationships both parties should be free to determine when and how frequently they want to be sexual without fear of punishment.

Until all men cease to believe that someone other than themselves is required to respond to their sexual needs demanding sexual subordination of partners will continue.

A truly liberatory feminist sexual politic will always make the assertion of female sexual agency central. That agency cannot come into being when females believe their sexual bodies must always stand in the service of something else. Often professional prostitutes and women in everyday life hold up their free exchange of pussy for goods or services as an indication that they are liberated. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that whenever a woman prostitutes her body because she cannot satisfy material needs in other ways she risks forfeiting that space of sexual integrity where she controls her body.

Masses of heterosexual women remain unable to let go the sexist assumption that their sexuality must always be sought after by men to have meaning and value. To do so they must believe that same-sex sexual encounters, self-pleasuring, and celibacy are as vital and life-enhancing as sexual intercourse with men within patriarchal culture. Aging females, many of whom once advocated feminist change, often find that they must subscribe to sexist notions of femininity and sexual desirability in order to have any sexual contact with men whom they fear will trade them in for a younger model. To some extent then radical feminist thinkers were right years ago when they suggested that women would only be truly sexually liberated when we arrived at a place where we could see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether or not we were the objects of male desire. Again we need feminist theory to show us how this sexual feeling and identity expresses itself within the context of a society that remains deeply patriarchal.

Despite the limitations of feminist discourse on sexuality, feminist politics still is the only movement for social justice that offers a vision of mutual well-being as a consequence of its theory and practice. We need an erotics of being that is founded on the principle that we have a right to express sexual desire as the spirit moves us and to find in sexual pleasure a life-affirming ethos. Erotic connection calls us away from isolation and alienation into community. In a world where positive expressions of sexual longing connect us we will all be free to choose those sexual practices which affirm and nurture our growth. Those practices may range from choosing promiscuity or celibacy, from embracing one specific sexual identity and preference or choosing a roaming uncharted desire that is kindled only by interaction and engagement with specific individuals with whom we feel the spark of erotic recognition no matter their sex, race, class, or even their sexual preference. Radical feminist dialogues about sexuality must surface so that the movement towards sexual freedom can begin again.

TOTAL BLISS

Lesbianism and Feminism

Sometimes it’s hard to know which came first, the movement for women’s liberation or sexual liberation - for some activists they happened at the same time, blending into one another. This was certainly true for many of the bisexual and lesbian women who were part of the first contemporary feminist vanguard. These women were not led to feminism because they were lesbian. Masses of lesbians were not “into” politics, were conservative, and had no desire to do anything radical. The lesbians and bisexual women who helped form the women’s liberation vanguard were led to feminism because they were already engaged in left politics, pushing against fixed boundaries of class, race, and sexuality. Women’s liberation had already been an issue they had claimed psychologically, rebelling against traditional notions of gender and desire.

Simply being lesbian does not make one a feminist, anymore than being lesbian makes one political. Being a member of an exploited group does not make anyone more inclined to resist. If it did, all women (and that includes every lesbian on the planet) would have wanted to participate in the women’s movement. Experience coupled with awareness and choice are the factors that usually lead women into leftist politics. Having done so much of the menial tasks as well as the behind the scenes radical thinking in socialist circles and in the civil rights and militant black power movements, individual radical women from various walks of life were ready to get justice for themselves; they were ready for feminist movement. And among the most ready, the truly visionary and courageous, were and are many lesbian women.I came to feminism before I had my first sexual experience. I was a teenager. Before I knew anything about women’s rights I knew about homosexuality. In the narrow-minded world of southern religious fundamentalism, of racial apartheid, in our black community gay people were known and often had special status; often they were men with class power. Homosexuality among men was more accepted than lesbianism. The lesbians in our small, segregated black community were usually married. Yet they knew who they really were. And they let their real selves be known behind closed doors, at secret hook joints and parties. One of the women accused of being lesbian chose to mentor me; a professional woman, a reader, a thinker, a party girl, she was a woman I admired. When my father complained about our bonding on the basis that she was “funny,” mama protested, insisting that “folks had a right to be who they are.” When the gay man who lived across the street from us was cruelly teased and taunted by teenage boys, mama was there protesting, telling us that he was a responsible caring man - that we should respect and love him.

I was an advocate for gay rights long before I knew the word feminism. My family feared I was a lesbian long before they worried that I would never marry. And I was already on my way to being a true freak because I knew I would always choose to go where my blood beats, in any and all directions. When I wrote my first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, I had already been engaged in feminist movement which included straight, bisexual, and out gay women. We were young. And in those days there was pressure on some of us to prove we were really radically down with the movement by sharing our politics and our bodies with women. The lesson everybody learned in those days was that transgressive sexual practice did not make one politically progressive. When my first book came out and I was attacked by individual black lesbian women I was stunned. I was accused of being homophobic because there was no discussion of lesbianism in my book. That absence was not an indication of homophobia. I did not talk about sexuality in the book. I was not ready. I did not know enough. And had I known more I would have stated that so no one would have been able to label me homophobic.

What knowing powerful, caring lesbians taught me as a girl, a lesson that has continued, is that women do not need to depend on men for our well-being and our happiness - not even our sexual bliss. This knowledge opened up a world of possibility for women. It offered choice and options. We will never know how many millions of women stay in relationships with dominating sexist males simply because they cannot imagine a life where they can be happy without men, whether they are satisfied sexually and emotionally with the men in their life or not. If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.

Lesbian women inspired me from childhood on to claim the space of my own self-definition.

This is the special wisdom radical lesbian thinkers brought to feminist movement. Even if there were exceptional straight women who theoretically understood that one could be utterly fulfilled without the approval of men, without male erotic affirmation, they did not bring to the movement the lived experience of this belief. In the early stages of feminist movement we used the phrase “woman identified woman” or “man-identified woman” to distinguish between those activists who did not choose lesbianism but who did choose to be woman-identified, meaning their ontological existence did not depend on male affirmation. Male-identified females were those who dropped feminist principles in a flash if they interfered with romantic heterosexual concerns. They were the females who also supported men more than women, who could always see things from the male perspective. Teaching one of my first women’s studies courses in San Francisco I was confronted by a group of radical lesbian students who wanted to know why I was still “into” men. After class one day in the parking lot there was a showdown. At that time an older black woman lesbian student, who had worked in the sex industry, having much sexual intercourse with men even as she remained clear about her lesbian identity, defended my feminist honor by declaring, “she’s a woman-identified woman who’s into sex with men - that’s her right, but she’s still down with the cause.”

Sustaining loyalty to feminist politics was a central topic of discussion within feminist circles by the mid-‘80s as many women were dropping out. While visionary lesbian thinkers and/ or activists had shaped the radical dimensions of the movement as women gained more rights, their presence, their input was often forgotten. Many of the lesbians who were most radical and courageous in the movement were from working-class backgrounds. Then they did not have the credentials needed to rise in academic circles. The academization of feminism reinscribed heterosexist hierarchies where straight women with fancy credentials were often given more respect and higher regard even if they had spent no time being involved in a women’s movement outside the academy.

When it came to issues of difference, of expanding feminist theory and practice to include race and class, visionary lesbian thinkers were among those women most willing to change their perspectives. In many cases it was because they had an experiential understanding of what it means to be exploited and/or oppressed because you do not conform to mainstream standards. Visionary lesbians were far more willing to take on the issue of interrogating white supremacy than their straight comrades. And they were more likely to desire to strengthen bonds with all men. The vast majority of straight women, whether they were actively feminist or not, were more concerned about their relationships with men.

Our freedom as women to choose who we love, who we will share our bodies and lives with, has been deeply enhanced by the struggles of radical lesbian women both on behalf of gay rights and women’s rights. Within feminist movement, both past and present-day, lesbians have always had to challenge and confront homophobia, much in the same way as all women of color irrespective of their sexual preference or identity challenged and confronted racism. Women who claim to be feminist while perpetuating homophobia are as misguided and hypocritical as those who want sisterhood while holding on to white supremacist thought.

Mainstream mass media has always chosen a straight woman to represent what the feminist movement stands for - the straighter the better. The more glamorous she is, the more her image can be used to appeal to men. Woman-identified women, whether straight, bisexual, or lesbian rarely make garnering male approval a priority in our lives. This is why we threaten the patriarchy. Lesbian women who have a patriarchal mind-set are far less threatening to men than feminist women, gay or straight, who have turned their gaze and their desire away from the patriarchy, away from sexist men.

Nowadays the vast majority of lesbians, like their straight counterparts, are not into radical politics. Individual lesbian thinkers active in feminist movement often found it difficult to face the reality that lesbian women could be as sexist as straight women. The utopian notion that feminism would be the theory and lesbianism the practice was continually disrupted by the reality that most lesbians living in white supremacist capitalist patriarchal culture constructed partnerships using the same paradigms of domination and submission as did their heterosexual counterparts. And that building mutually satisfying bonds where no one risked being subordinated was as difficult to achieve in lesbian relationships as in heterosexual ones. The revelation that domestic violence happened in lesbian partnerships was the first clue that equality among women was not inherent in same sex bonds. Concurrently, feminist lesbians were far more willing to talk openly about their participation in sadomasochist sexual acts than their straight counterparts.

Sexually conservative feminists, gay and straight, found and continue to find consensual sexual rituals of domination and submission inappropriate and see them as betraying feminist ideals of freedom. Their absolute judgment, their refusal to respect the rights of all women to choose the sexual practice they find most fulfilling, is in actuality the stance which most undermines feminist movement. There are many women who will never understand what two women do together sexually, who will never desire another woman sexually, but who will always support the right of women to choose, to be lesbian or bisexual. That same support can be given lesbians and straight women who engage in sexual acts that would never appeal to most women or most people. Embedded in conservative feminist critique of lesbian sadomasochism was an underlying homophobia. Whenever any woman acts as though lesbians must always follow rigid moral standards to be deemed acceptable or to make straight people feel comfortable, they are perpetuating homophobia.