The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Lesbian Is Now a Fashion Statement, Also: Gender, Identity, Roles and Feminism

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 69 Comments

The cover of the latest issue of Flare, a Canadian women’s fashion magazine, adds new meaning to the phrase “lesbian chic.” Apparently, “loving ladies and living proud” a la celebrity lesbian Ellen Page is what stylish Canadian women are now expected to do.

Stephanie Verge’s feature interview with Page is rather tedious:

With a quiver in her voice and wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “All Love Is Equal,” [Page] stood in front of a crowded Las Vegas room at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s inaugural Time to Thrive conference and uttered the words every adolescent lesbian who’s ever watched (and rewatched) the roller derby flick Whip It dreams of hearing: “I am here today because I’m gay.” She went on to say that she was “tired of lying by omission.”

(Point One: Gay people do not actually believe that “All Love Is Equal”; they disdain heterosexuality, otherwise they wouldn’t be gay. Point Two: How does Stephanie Verge know “the words every adolescent lesbian . . . . dreams of hearing” unless . . .?)

It was the eight-minute speech pinged around the blogosphere, and one that Page and her manager planned meticulously in collaboration with the HRC Foundation. Page wanted her announcement to be aligned with a cause, ideally one having to do with LGBTQ youth (promoting the safety, inclusion and well-being of queer teens is an HRC Foundation priority). . . .

(Translation: It was was a political publicity stunt.)

“I was very nervous. I was very nervous, yes. Yes. Very, very nervous. Yes. I was emotional, deeply, deeply emotional.” Though she told her parents she liked-liked girls when she was 19, she was still coming out to herself eight years on. “You think you’re in a place where you’re all I’m thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don’t feel shame about being gay, but you actually do. You’re just not fully aware of it. I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.”

(She was a heterosexual impersonator?)

One of the perks of being an out lesbian: being able to wear whatever you want. Less than three weeks after her big speech, Page attended theVanity Fair Oscar party wearing a leather-accented Saint Laurent tux by Hedi Slimane. “I felt happy and confident and the difference was huge,” says Page. . . . For years, she endured pressure to conform to industry standards, i.e., dresses, but those days are over.

OK, you can read the whole thing if you care. But what kind of simplistic reduction is this? Being a presumably straight girl means “pressure” to wear dresses, and once you come out as a lesbian, you get the “perk” of “being able to wear whatever you want”? As though there are no heterosexual women who wear pants and no lesbians who wear dresses? What is this, 1957 or something?

When I was tweeting about this Thursday night, a conversation ensued with someone who doesn’t seem familiar with feminist theory:

Maybe I’ve become too familiar with feminist theory, that I expect other people to understand the difference between sex and gender, between sexual preference and gender roles. Feminism is about the abolition of gender — that is, eradicating all “socially constructed” differences between the sexes. According to feminism, it is the oppressive male patriarchy that imposes the “feminine” role — a humiliating condition of submissive inferiority — on women. To be “feminine,” according to this theory, is for a woman to be passive and yielding toward men, to shape her appearance and behavior in ways that are acceptable and attractive to men. By contrast, feminists view the “masculine” role as typified by domination and aggression which ultimately is about reducing women to the role of “fuckholes, breeders and slaves.”

This is why lesbianism is the goal of feminism. Only by escaping male domination can women escape the prison of “gender” and the inherently violent act of male sexuality: PIV (penis-in-vagina) intercourse, which is both the means and motive of women’s oppression: “All PIV is rape, OK?” and “No woman is heterosexual”:

What men call heterosexuality is an institution where men make women captive for PIV, to control our reproductive functions and steal our labour. . . .
It’s part of the global male infrastructure that ensures men a constant supply of ready-tamed and pre-possessed women to effortlessly stick their dicks in, impregnate and abuse. The more it grows, the easier it is for each individual man to break any woman’s will and trick her into PIV and being owned by him — and maintain submission level with the help of men’s institutions.

If you don’t understand and believe this — if you recognize this as complete lunacy — then obviously, you are not a feminist.

Now, some of you familiar with lesbian culture may be asking yourself, “What about butch dykes? Aren’t they acting out a ‘masculine’ role? If feminists reject gender roles, what about women who emulate stereotypically masculine behavior and appearance?” Oh, but see, butch dykes are subverting the patriarchy by demonstrating that females can perform the “masculine” role. However, because of the transgender vogue, many butch lesbians are now undergoing hormone treatments and surgery to become “transmen,” a trend that one older feminist laments:

Why are all the butches becoming men? Why can’t they understand that gender is a social construct, and that women don’t have to conform to a feminine ideal? Isn’t that what we were fighting for — a world in which women could wear tool belts and neckties and do anything we damn well please, without the constraints of gender?
At its very core, this was the vision of the feminist movement, and lesbians more than anyone understood how transformative this could be.
Years ago, I asked the same questions, but today, this conversation makes me uncomfortable. Because I am of this older generation, I have seen things change — and not change — for a long time.
I have, in my life, loved many butches. My relationships and affairs have almost always been with masculine women and, more recently, with trans men as well.
In my experience, for as long as I have found myself in intimate circumstances with butches/studs/masculine-identified women — from way back when I was too young to be in the bars where I was meeting and going home with them — a curious thing happens. Once there is enough trust established, I become witness to a moment of confession. The confession goes something like this: “I don’t know how to explain this, but I don’t exactly feel like a woman. I mean, I’m butch, and that’s close, but honestly, I’m not sure what I am.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are many, many proud butch women who are exactly that: women. In today’s terminology, their gender expression is masculine, and their gender identity is female. They wear their tool belts proudly, and I am happy to admire the show. For them, a butch identity resolves the issue — if people have a problem with it, it’s their sexism or homophobia rearing its head.
But that experience is not everyone’s, and it never has been.

If you did not previously believe all feminists are crazy, perhaps now you’re beginning to change your mind. Feminism requires women to be fanatically certain about theory, while being perpetually confused about reality. Everything is whatever they say it is. Feelings triumph over facts. So if some women say they “don’t exactly feel like a woman,” a gynecological examination — proving that they have the biological equipment — cannot refute their feeling.

And if you are such an intolerable smart-ass as to point out that this emphasis on subjective feeling is typically feminine . . .

OK, I denounce myself.

 

 

Category: Celebrities, Culture, Feminism, Gays

Comments

69 Responses to “Lesbian Is Now a Fashion Statement, Also: Gender, Identity, Roles and Feminism”

  1. Darth Chocolate
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 10:37 am

    “All love is equal”???? Really?

    Like I love doughnuts more than my wife?
    Ellen Paige = shallow and banal

  2. M. Thompson
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 10:52 am

    It’s not about love, it’s about lust.

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 11:01 am

    Rule 5 Lesbian washboard!

    As Brendan Eich found out, you can “express yourself” so long as you don’t say anything that might get you fired!

  4. Kimberlin Unmasked
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 11:21 am

    It is unfortunate that some people have swallowed the lie that gender is a social construct.

  5. Anneka Jameson
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 11:33 am

    Under things I learned today, lesbians can still sleep with men as long as they’re trans. So, the lesbian sex classification is based on biology and not gender? Why is this so complicated?

  6. Phil_McG
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 11:54 am

    I don’t get it either.

    So PIV is always rape, unless it’s a fake penis attached to a butch lesbian who had a buzz cut and a sex change and now wants to be called Barry.

    But if you’re a heterosexual woman who likes hunky firemen or handsome male doctors, you’re a brainwashed slave of the Patriarchy.

    Seems legit.

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:12 pm

    You make it sound like the gay mafia’s witch trial was unreasonable? I mean, come on, they did not burn him, just drive him out into exile.

  8. NeoWayland
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:12 pm

    Gay people do not actually believe that “All Love Is Equal”; they disdain heterosexuality, otherwise they wouldn’t be gay.

    I’ve never met Ellen Page, but the gays I know do not “disdain heterosexuality ” It’s not either/or, and certainly not on the terms you describe.

    You can enjoy Thai without disdaining meatloaf.

  9. LesbiansRule
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:37 pm

    The traditional western institution of marriage sold teenage girls off to boys they never met so their fathers could finalize a financial transaction. It’s really not all that chaste, and rather pretty craven. With that in mind there is very little tradition to honor.

  10. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:37 pm

    I for one can’t wait to read Dave Barry’s Year in Review for this year. I bet it’s a doozy.

  11. Some Dude
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:38 pm

    Hey, if the radfems want to teach me, a man, how to properly make love to a woman, I’ll be happy to watch…do a video…bring the oil…oops, darn, did I type that out loud? My bad.

  12. LesbiansRule
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:38 pm

    they disdain heterosexuality, otherwise they wouldn’t be gay”

    What a shocking pile of bullshit that tell us two things: you’ve never known a gay person, and you hate them. NEXT!

  13. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:41 pm

    Hey Stacy, you riled up a gamma! It’s kinda cute when they get mad.

  14. LesbiansRule
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:41 pm

    Um, that’s not a widely held belief, but you cant fault McCain for trying to tie the ideas of one crackpot to every lesbian or feminist. If I had a gullible audience like you who are stuck in a 1950’s McCarthyist fantasy, I’d take advantage too, especially if my career depended on it.

  15. Phil_McG
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:46 pm

    Larry is the INTERNATIONAL Lord of Hate. But he can’t hog all the glory.

    There’s a whole House of Lords of Hate.

  16. Phil_McG
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

    The tradition is marriage being the union of one man and one woman. It’s the core institution of the greatest, richest, and freest civilisation human beings have ever known. Competing institutions, such as polygamy, never produced societies that could hold a candle to the West.

    For that reason, I’m not inclined to agree that politicians radically changing the definition of marriage is a good thing.

  17. Rob Crawford
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:55 pm

    I wonder if anyone told Page she’ll only get roles in chick flics and as a lesbian from now on?

  18. Rob Crawford
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:56 pm

    Do they have pancakes? Because I’d totally go to a restaurant named “International House of the Lords of Hate Pancakes”.

  19. Rob Crawford
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 1:58 pm

    Just what do lesbians rule? Women’s basketball?

  20. Phil_McG
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:04 pm

    It’s pretty widely held among radfems. Witchy Wind didn’t just pull that one from her derriere, academic feminism has been teaching that hetero sex is oppressive for decades now. But it’s true that most women aren’t feminists.

    What do you have against the 50’s?

  21. Phil_McG
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:07 pm

    And golf. And the ever popular short hair and chunky masculine spectacles combo.

  22. Phil_McG
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:09 pm

    They have a great sauce made out of raspberries and the delicious tears of social justice warriors.

  23. McGehee
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:10 pm

    The substitution of “gender” for “sex” is a conscious attempt to make one’s sex as subject to interpretation as any other linguistic phenomenon.

    There is a minuscule proportion of the population with ambiguous genitalia; the rest of us fit surprisingly easily into one or another of a rigidly binary set of options.

  24. ZZZZZZZZ
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:28 pm

    zzzzzzzz……..

  25. NeoWayland
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:43 pm

    I just get very tired of watching people who should know better lump all members of a group into a monolithic block who is out to destroy their way of life and must be Stopped for the Good of Humanity™

    The ironic thing is many of the people who complain loudest about it being done to them are only too willing to turn around and do it to someone else.

    I’ve seen pagans do it to Christians, “blacks” do it to “Hispanics,” Republicans do it to Democrats, and women doing it to men.

    And vice versa.

    You know what? It’s not the label shouting and doing things, it’s the individual person. Until you deal them as individuals rather than as a subset of a label, you have walled yourself off.

    Not them. You.

  26. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:56 pm

    Only if I can pour sweet delicious Scadenfreude over those pancakes.

  27. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 2:57 pm

    Can they infuse those tears into the whipped butter? That would be delightful.

  28. Julie Pascal
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:03 pm

    Heh. 🙂

  29. LesbiansRule
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:07 pm

    I’ll take that as “I’m an idiot with no answer to your question because deep down I know the narrative being put forth here is complete bullshit, but because I’m prejudiced, and a conformist I’ll go along with it anyway!”

    Good try, loser. And guys that call other guys “betas” and “gammas” are “betas” and “gammas”. you dont have the brains, the character, or the self confidence to be an alpha, jerk-off.

  30. LR
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:07 pm

    What’s that? The sound of your wife when your dick is in her? Yeah, thought so.

    D’oh!

  31. MyAdidas
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:28 pm

    Yeah, because someone doesn’t believe with the right wing idiot mentality they must be “gamma”! You really are a fucking idiot.

  32. ZZZZZZZZ
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:32 pm

    Resorting to ad hominems, huh? You got nothin’, troll.

    zzzzzzzzz…….

  33. richard mcenroe
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:36 pm

    There was a rash of this in the 90’s with actresses “coming out” as a career enhancer. Not much of it around anymore.

  34. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:46 pm

    Oh, I forgot about the International part of Larry’s title. But then, does that make him the leader of the Lords of Hate?

  35. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:49 pm

    Get out of my uterus!

  36. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! I’m glad to see you’ve come to terms with the fact that you’re an idiot. The first step to overcoming a problem is recognizing you have one. Have fun with that, cupcake.

    Oh, and as a man, doesn’t that mean you can’t have an opinion on any of this? Or does the face that you’ve sold your man card act as a loophole to that rule? Sort of like granting you an honorary vagina?

  37. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:53 pm

    Ooooh, the gamma has a sock puppet!

  38. Regular Right Guy
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

    Rabbit hole for plain girls.

  39. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

    Hard to be the “new edgy thing” by coming out when everybody and their dog is coming out now.

  40. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:02 pm

    Hey hey hey, some of us very heterosexual chicks happen to look good with short hair and chunky specs. I can’t help that I look better with the two than Rachel Maddow. And as Michael says in Office Space: Why should I have to change? She’s the one who sucks.

  41. maniakmedic
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:11 pm

    That he doesn’t understand them.

  42. Kirby McCain
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:22 pm

    She probably won’t get those either. Katie Sackhoff did a great job as the lesbian in Riddick and she’s straight. Women like Sackhoff don’t have to pull publicity stunts, they have talent.

  43. M. Thompson
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

    Maybe he’s the ambassador for the Lords of Hate.

  44. Bob Belvedere
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:35 pm

    ‘Shallow and banal’ and mentally ill.

  45. Bob Belvedere
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:38 pm

    Ahhh…another ignoramus is heard from. Willful stupidity is no way to go through Life.

  46. Kirby McCain
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:40 pm

    There’s nothing funnier than stupid people getting mad.

  47. Bob Belvedere
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:45 pm

    A socket puppet to go with his flannel pajama oneses.

  48. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:46 pm

    The Lords of Hate would be an excellent name for a Heavy Metal band.

  49. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 4:48 pm

    Like one of those yappy lap dogs.

  50. TC_LeatherPenguin
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

    Wait a farking minute: A) WHO? B) See “B”