What Is Radical Feminism? ‘Make Deviance the Core of Our Identity’

Posted on | July 10, 2014 | 59 Comments

“Both femininity and masculinity are heteropatriarchal terms that establish the boundaries of what is ‘acceptable,’ ‘permissible’ appearance and behavior for females, Lesbians included. Heteropatriarchal semantics equates femininity with femaleness and masculinity with maleness, as though behaviors and personality traits were determined by biological sex. On the basis of that equation, heteropatriarchy values femininity in females and masculinity in males. . . .
“What is Lesbian identity? What does it mean to be a Lesbian, live as a Lesbian, think as a Lesbian, in a Lesbian context? So we have to begin by identifying how we differ from heterosexual women and bisexuals and make our deviance the core of our identity. Lesbians don’t fuck men. We are the only group in the world that refuses to place men at the center of our lives. We are the only group whose lives are focused on women.”
— Julia Penelope, Call Me Lesbian: Lesbian Lives, Lesbian Theory (1992)

Some people are ahead of their time, and Julia Penelope Stanley — who dropped her heteropatriarchal surname early in her career as a radical feminist academic, author and activist — was an angry lesbian man-hater before being an angry lesbian man-hater was cool.

Her eccentricities of style, grammar and orthography are very reminiscent of Mary Daly, and make her work difficult to quote because apparently freedom from heteropatriarchal oppression requires that nobody is permitted to edit your work for ease of reading. Admirers of the late Ms. Penelope’s radical feminist work will therefore take umbrage at the tiny bits of editing I’ve done to the quote above, but her abbreviation of “heteropatriarchy” as “HP” struck me as silly, and at least I didn’t change her habitual capitalization of “Lesbian,” a quirk that seems to have had some significance to her.

She described herself as a “fat, butch dyke who never passed,” which is to say she was the perfect stereotype of a feminist, and thus viewed as something of an embarrassment to the movement. Despite the fact that her writings were (and to some extent, still are) influential within radical feminism, that she participated in the founding of important feminist organizations and suffered in her academic career on account of her early status as an “out” lesbian, Ms. Penelope was largely forgotten by the time she died last year.

Born in 1941, she developed her lesbian identity at an early age and, by the time she was 16, was hanging around lesbian bars in her native Miami. Her lesbianism led to her being kicked out of college twice (first at Florida State and then at the University of Miami) before finally getting her bachelor’s degree at New York’s City College when she was 25, then getting a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. She taught English for more than a decade at the University of Nebraska, and blamed her lack of promotions on sexist homophobia, which we might accept as valid, except that (a) she was hired as an English professor and (b) apparently her publications consisted entirely of writing about lesbianism. This was many years before angry lesbians could get their Ph.D. in Women’s Studies and spend their academic careers publishing treatises on Queer Theory, so if Julia Penelope suffered the usual fate of those who are ahead of their time . . . Well, whatever.

Unlike some of the “political lesbians” of the 1970s — who became lesbian only after feminist “consciousness raising” convinced them they were oppressed by men — Julia Penelope was a “stone butch” lesbian for more than a decade before joining the feminist movement. Also unlike most Second Wave feminists, who were aligned with the antiwar New Left, Ms. Penelope’s politics were idiosyncratic and even right-leaning: She became a devotee of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism in the late 1950s and, in New York in the 1960s, was a libertarian conservative at a time when all her close friends were either Communists or Socialists. Furthermore, unlike most feminists, she had a sense of humor and a reputation as a joker, describing herself as a “cunning linguist.” Her friend Anne T. Leighton recounted an occasion when Ms. Penelope used LSD:

“Julia, delightedly addled on acid, standing mesmerized in the bakery section of a Midwestern supermarket, fondling a package of rolls. While we worried about security guards, Julia remained amazed. With a shyness she rarely let others see she gestured with the rolls, offering her pronouncement then beaming at our understanding. ‘Breasts’ she whispered. Julia: alive to the wonder of a world filled with breasts.”

Her lesbian separatism was rooted in a simple logic: Women’s oppression by men (i.e., patriarchy) was the result of heterosexuality, hence the term “heteropatriarchy” to describe the male-dominated system she opposed. Furthermore, anticipating the arguments of Third Wave feminist gender theory, Ms. Penelope saw the sex/gender categories of “masculine” and “feminine” as inherently related to women’s oppression. In an autobiographical essay from her book Call Me Lesbian, she wrote:

“I believe that, as Lesbians, instead of using our energies trying to transform what we’ve learned from heteropatriarchal cultures, trying to squeeze ourselves into their framework or bending it until it feels comfortable for us, we should be actively unlearning what we’ve been taught by heterosexuals, and busy transforming ourselves. . . . Everything we believe, we’ve learned from the heteropatriarchy — every single bit of it. We have no experience to call our ‘own,’ because, from the day we’re born, our experiences were described for us by heterosexuals, starting with our parents.”

Thus, according to Ms. Penelope, even the beliefs and attitudes of lesbians are shaped by the male-dominated system of heteropatriarchy, so that these attitudes must be unlearned. And this is especially true of femininity:

The United States is a heteropatriarchal society, a culture that assumes that heterosexuality is “natural,” that male dominance is “natural,” and that female subordination is “natural” . . . The words masculine and feminine exist only because they express concepts essential to the maintenance of heteropatriarchal reality. But the existence and continual use of these words doesn’t mean that they denote “real” or actual things. . . .
Sexual dimorphism is the foundation of heteropatriarchal semantics, politics, and personality. Personality, according to heteropatriarchy, is based on biological sex. Biology determines behavior, mannerisms, appearance, emotional style, and how one thinks. This is a monocausal ideology. . . . Contrary to popular thinking, it’s not at all obvious that biological sex or reproductive potential should be the basis of personality. . . .
If one is female, then one must be a heterosexual and a breeder, and behave in appropriate, “feminine” ways. If she doesn’t . . . she isn’t a “real woman.” . . .
It’s way past time for Lesbians to stop using heteropatriarchal words as though they were meaningful. Any Lesbian who defends femininity and compares another Lesbian to a man by labeling her “masculine” subscribes to heteropatriarchal “consensus reality.” . . .
If Lesbians want to deny the “naturalness” of heteropatriarchal categories, and assert the positive value of our deviance, adopting femininity doesn’t make any sense. . . .
Lesbians who can pass as heterosexuals must understand and admit that they acquire specific social privileges because they can hide their Lesbianism. The privileges and rewards of femininity, in addition to money and social approval, are a false sense of worth and self-esteem because they are grounded in hypocrisy and pretense. Furthermore, Lesbians who prize femininity either believe they are superior to “obvious” Lesbians or they sexualize the difference. . . . Because femininity in women is so highly prized by men, femininity cannot be positively valued in a Lesbian context.

This hostile rejection of the values of what we would call normal or traditional society — where the masculinity of men and the femininity of women are accepted as natural — is striking. Ms. Penelope’s claims make sense, however, if instead of viewing them as political analysis, we consider them as psychological symptoms.

Her theories were an elaborate, jargon-laden “sour grapes” rationalization: Being very un-feminine herself, she knew she had no access to the “privileges and rewards of femininity” she described. Within the context of “heteropatriarchy” (i.e., the normal world), these feminine qualities were “highly prized by men,” and her condemnation of “femininity . . . in a Lesbian context” was an attempt to prevent herself (a clearly “masculine” lesbian) from being reduced to an inferior status within her own community.

Feminism has always attracted malcontents and misfits, offering them political theories to explain their unhappiness with the normal world. Yet even as the influence of feminism has changed the world, the grievances of the malcontents persist. In order to explain this — why feminists remain unhappy, despite feminism’s success — the evils of men must be continually exaggerated, and insidious power must be attributed to the male-dominated system of patriarchy. Whatever women are unhappy about must ultimately be blamed on men, even the unhappiness of lesbians within their own lesbian culture.

Therefore, Julia Penelope accused some of her fellow lesbians of adopting the value systems of heteropatriarchy. Similarly, although for different reasons, Ms. Penelope was hostile to the arguments of liberal “mainstream” feminists:

Liberal feminists have made the word choice so attractive, as though all women were capable of acting as autonomous, self-determining beings. “We must respect all women’s choices,” they say, as though our choices are made in a vacuum, as though every single woman knows what her choices are or might be. Humanism ignores the fact that our choices, such as they are, are made in the context of heteropatriarchy. . . . If there is a “politics of liberal feminism,” it’s nothing more than a way of rationalizing the fact that women continue to choose men. . . .
Many Lesbians cannot “go back” to men because we didn’t start there. One can “go back” only to something she’s previously “left.” The metaphor of “returning” to men or heterosexuality reveals the heterosexism of liberal feminism, because it assumes that ALL women are or have been heterosexuals, first. Heterosexuality becomes the touchstone of their identity. . . .
We’re not engaged in a dialogue with heterosexuals. Most of us, however reluctantly, have decided that our energies must go to other Lesbians; attempts to talk to heterosexual feminists are usually frustrating and depressing. Lesbians are the focus of our lives. . . .
What does it mean to say that one “loves a man” and, at the same time, to acknowledge the male violence experienced every day by millions of women? What does it mean to “love our oppressors”? Women have been loving men for millennia, and I can’t see that it’s done anything but worsen our situation. What does it mean, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, to believe that men, now, today, can be “rehabilitated,” and to commit one’s life to that belief? . . .
Here’s what I believe I know: Men rule the world. Men rape women. Men rape all females, their daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, granddaughters, and any other female unlucky enough to be accessible to them when “the urge” strikes. Men beat women up, cripple them, maim them, starve them, kill them. Men make money and war. Heterosexuality ensures that men will always have a ready and willing supply of females for their uses.
That’s what I see around me every day I live, and some days are worse than others. I would welcome anyone who can demonstrate to me that I’m wrong, that my perceptions are distorted by where I stand in the world. But don’t trot out your “exceptional man” to show me; everyone has one or claims to have one, including me. But I’m not willing to base my entire political analysis on his existence. I wish I had a dollar for every heterosexual feminist who’s challenged my Separatism by claiming that “her man” is “different,” and, then, after she’d become a Lesbian, confided to me that he was a rapist, a batterer, a violent misogynist.

Well, gosh, ma’am, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about men? As extreme as Julia Penelope’s lesbian separatism was, though, isn’t her universal condemnation of men — written in 1985 — fundamentally the same argument promoted by the #YesAllWomen hashtag campaign? In case you’ve forgotten, #YesAllWomen was about making the deranged killer Elliot Rodger a symbolic representation of all men as complicit in misogynistic violence. It’s the same rhetorical abracadabra involved in “rape culture” discourse, where anyone who disputes feminist claims about the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses is accused of being “anti-woman,” if not indeed “pro-rape.”

That this mode of discourse has, in the past three decades, migrated from the extremist fringe of lesbian separatism to become a staple of “mainstream” feminism — and no one seems to have noticed the migration. Nor, for that matter, does any critic of feminism dare point out the source. If you mention that the anti-male rhetoric of feminism echoes the claims of radical lesbians, you will be accused of being a homophobic bigot recycling ignorant stereotypes — even if you cite your sources by name!

Is it “anti-woman” to tell the truth about feminism? Do I examine Women’s Studies textbooks and Women’s Studies curricula because I hate women? Is it ignorance, homophobia or misogyny that leads me to the conclusion that feminism is a journey to lesbianism? No, it’s simply a recognition of the undeniable truth that radical feminists reached by a process of intellectual circumnavigation. The unabashed male-hater Julia Penelope recognized that the differences between men and women — the masculinity of males and the femininity of females — are necessary to their normal relationships.

Ms. Penelope angrily denied that these traits are “natural” — a reflection of basic biological differences — even while paradoxically insisting that all men are naturally violent, oppressive and sexually predatory. She accepted that there is such a thing as male nature (evil!), but insisted that what is considered natural for women — “femininity . . . so highly prized by men” — is actually an artificial imposition of the heteropatriarchy. Yet if there is nothing “natural” about women’s femininity, why would a lesbian like Julia Penelope be attracted exclusively to women? If differences between men and women are just figments of our imaginations, imposed by society, shouldn’t all of us be basically bisexual? Why is it that only traditional heterosexual relationships — and the cultural and social norms associated with these relationships — are subjected to this kind of criticism by intellectual theorists?

Julia Penelope died in January 2013 without ever answering those questions, and probably never even thought to ask them. She also died a few months before the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision, which declared as a matter of law that a lesbian relationship is no different than the marriage between a man and a woman — and one wonders what Ms. Penelope might have said about that.

She was a critic of lesbians who sought to assimilate (to “pass”) within the context of a society she condemned as “heteropatriarchy.” It is therefore difficult to see how a lesbian separatist who urged lesbians to make deviance the “core” of their identity could have reconciled that philosophy with the Supreme Court’s declaration that lesbians are just like everybody else. But being a feminist means ignoring contradictions between radical theories and the reality of most women’s lives, and in that regard, Julia Penelope was quite typical. R.I.P.

Category: Feminism, Gays

Comments

59 Responses to “What Is Radical Feminism? ‘Make Deviance the Core of Our Identity’”

Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:23 am

I like many of Ayn Rand’s books (a lot), but there is a lot of bat shit crazy in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

Is taking acid and fondling the rolls in the supermarket bread isle weird? Who hasn’t done that at least once in their lives?
theBuckWheat
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:32 am

“‘Make Deviance the Core of Our Identity’” When “deviance” is the social norm, then what? What manner of society will that be and how “sustainable” when conception itself is a form of oppression? This is suicide of humanity by those who hold themselves out to be the intellectual guardians of progressive ideals. As such, then the meta narrative is to progress to the end of humanity.

What an evil world view.
robertstacymccain
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:41 am

The proliferation of radical theories — each incompatible with others, many based on narrow conceptions of identity — leads ultimately to the Hobbesian nightmare of “all against all.” Cultural decadence and social fragmentation, the loss of a moral consensus and its replacement by competing systems of political ideology — all these trends point in the same direction. We have been traveling in this direction for at least 50 years, and are now within sight of our destination: HELL.
RS
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:43 am

When “deviance” is the social norm, then what?

Therein lies the rub. The radical feminists’ raison d’être is fighting an alleged social construct which defines “normal” a certain way. They achieve their validity–both within their self-selected group and within their own tortured minds– by remaining outside the norm, always waging battle against evil, ever beaten but never defeated, etc. All of that disappears with victory, however they imagine it. It is for that reason that they must always be at war with East Asia, as evidenced by the ever greater indignation expressed by ever lesser supposed injuries ostensibly wrought at the hands of The Patriarchy.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:44 am

Do you think Julia Penelope Stanley created her own little hell to live in? And then they screen themselves off so they only get reinforcement and encouragement from other mentally ill individuals…

Of course that is what lefties think about sites like TOM!
Quartermaster
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:46 am

Please don’t squeeze the Charmin.
RS
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:47 am

Do you think Julia Penelope Stanley created her own little hell to live in?

She and those like her don’t see it as “hell.” No matter how they perceive their reality, however, it is nonetheless an obvious coping mechanism for dealing with the ordinary vicissitudes of life.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:51 am

They were all on acid when they were doing that? It explains a lot!
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 10:51 am

I know and agree. It is easier to see how crazy it is from the outside looking in.
CrustyB
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:01 am

She was a lesbian who never saw a world where heteropatriarchy was banished. But maybe her children will, or her children’s children, or her children’s children’s children…
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:05 am

You are a funny funny guy!
RS
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:20 am

I was struck by this quote (Emphasis Added):

But don’t trot out your “exceptional man” to show me; everyone has one or claims to have one, including me. But I’m not willing to base my entire political analysis on his existence.

So, her reality is based upon a generalization, i.e. all men are bad, and the existence of one “good” one does not disprove her generalization. Logical problems aside, note she claims all women including herself,/b> know one good man. If we assume some overlap, i.e. the same good man is known by more than one woman, we still have situation wherein there are a substantial number of good men by her own admission. Query, how many grains of sand must we remove from the Patriarchal heap before it ceases to be a heap. It seems, Ms. Penelope refuted her own reality in one sentence.
RS
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:21 am

Buns. Muffed the HTML.

Again.
RKae
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:46 am

You’re not taking into account science, which pretty much always comes to the rescue of very bad ideas so they don’t have to go down in well-deserved flames.

Just as birth control turned sex into a nihilistic and narcissistic entertainment, they will soon make childbirth a non-involvement function – replete with test tubes and cloning.

“Why should you go through pain and danger to produce a child that might not be perfect when you can have it done for you by a corporation and get exactly the child you want?”

Science always aids the Cult of Choice.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:47 am

Who knows what her history was. Oh shit, I said his-story. How patriarchal! I denounce myself.
robertstacymccain
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:52 am

Penelope was referring there to her deceased father, who apparently died when she was quite young and who was described to her by her mother as a good man. Elsewhere, Penelope has described how she was molested by her stepfather, i.e., the man her mother married after her biological father died. One could make an obvious connection between these circumstances, if one were interested in helping women understand the etiology of their problems, rather than just demoninizing men. But of course, no feminist cares to understand this.
Radical Feminist Julia Penelope Stanley RIP | Batshit Crazy News
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:01 pm

[…] TOM: Julia Penelope Stanley RIP […]
firefirefire
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:20 pm

I remain a Lesbian trapped in a mans body.
pabarge
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:21 pm

“What is Lesbian identity? What does it mean to be a Lesbian, live as a Lesbian, think as a Lesbian, in a Lesbian context? “

I’m pretty sure it means you munch the carpet.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:25 pm

These persons are obviously damaged goods. As much as we can denounce the man-bashing, I suspect in the majority of these cases there is a bad individual (often a man, but not always) involved that set these radical feminists on this road.

And that is often the case with a lot of self destructive sexual deviancy.
Bill O’Reilly Calls Sheila Jackson Lee a Moron | Regular Right Guy
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:25 pm

[…] What Is Radical Feminism? ‘Make Deviance the Core of Our Identity’ […]
Dana
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:50 pm

And here is the problem:

Lesbians who can pass as heterosexuals must understand and admit that they acquire specific social privileges because they can hide their Lesbianism.

What is “passing” as heterosexual other than not making your sexual orientation the total be all and end all of every waking moment, and every public action, of your entire life.

Isn’t there more to life than just with whom you sleep?
RS
July 10th, 2014 @ 12:52 pm

Consider how philosophically bereft these people are. How else to explain reducing the wonder that is Humanity to nothing more than a set of organs and glands.
Quartermaster
July 10th, 2014 @ 1:03 pm

Like many of us. The metrosexuals, not so much.
Matt_SE
July 10th, 2014 @ 1:03 pm

The problem with making deviance your core is that you’re still defining yourself relative to the norm.
By this logic, and given the SCOTUS ruling, these “deviants” would now have to find some other way of defining themselves, since both hetero- and homosexuality are now accepted.

Robo-sexuality, anyone?

It’s really quite childish.
David, infamous sex puppet
July 10th, 2014 @ 1:20 pm

We here at Robosexual, Inc. want every human being to realize their full potential by allowing them to experience the joy that comes only through the love and caring of fellow person. For that reason, we create “Affection Symbiotes” (please note that the term “sexbot” has been ruled a hate term by recent court order) that are personalized to your needs. Never again will you have to ask permission or suffer under the humiliation of PIV sex! Your delusional ravings are our emotional blueprints. Call and order yours today, 1-800-ROBOSEX.
RS
July 10th, 2014 @ 1:29 pm

Eventually, everything which is avant garde eventually becomes bourgeois. Case in point: I recently heard a Muzak version of the Stones’ Let’s Spend The Night Together at a local nursing home.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 1:40 pm

The end times are here…(sooner than some of us would like to consider)

What a drag it is getting old…
Obama #NotInterestedInPhotoOps | Regular Right Guy
July 10th, 2014 @ 3:18 pm

[…] What Is Radical Feminism? ‘Make Deviance the Core of Our Identity’ […]
Quartermaster
July 10th, 2014 @ 3:31 pm

Mr. Whipple might have been. He seemed pretty spaced out on TV.
Quartermaster
July 10th, 2014 @ 3:34 pm

If you can consider what they create in that infinite space between their ears “reality.”
Quartermaster
July 10th, 2014 @ 3:35 pm

getting old ain’t for sissies, and you’re seeing why.
Zilla of the Resistance
July 10th, 2014 @ 4:48 pm

I have a brain infection, but nothing makes my head hurt more than trying to read the crazy gibberish (crazibberish?) of radfems.

Today I am making hamburgers, does that count as a sammitch for my husband? I sure hope so, but I think I’ll also show him my boobs just to be safe.
Matt_SE
July 10th, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

I wonder if Obamacare covers “mother’s little helper?”
Cube
July 10th, 2014 @ 5:42 pm

So a feminist admitted that there’s something wrong with them. The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have one.

And it’s not even National Offend a Feminist Week.
Adjoran
July 10th, 2014 @ 5:53 pm

I always thought he was a pervert.
Adjoran
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:01 pm

She spends so much time worrying about the heteropatriarchy that the homopatriarchy is going to bite her on the ass. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Dan Savage, call your orifice.
Dana
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:08 pm

Miss Stanley “described herself as a “fat, butch dyke who never passed,”” and the obvious question is: how much of her philosophy — if you can call it that — was for the reasons she gave, and how much was because she was simply ugly? A woman can be attractive and still be a lesbian, and I have to wonder just what differences there might be between the standardly attractive ones and the uglos. Is it possible that the reasonably attractive lesbians are more positive in their attitudes toward men, even if they aren’t interested in them sexually, because men have responded more positively toward them?
Dana
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:08 pm

Can we see them too? 🙂
DukeLax
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:09 pm

Many folks ( including many women) are starting to realize that todays “gender-feminism” is not yer mothers “equality feminism” of 30 years ago!!!
slow wit
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:27 pm

Anyone have a link to the Cliff Notes version?
wiier9l
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:50 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OdQGbVNa4
wiier9l
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:51 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4zSRkBMPng
wiier9l
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:51 pm

…
wiier9l
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:51 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4zSRkBMPng
wiier9l
July 10th, 2014 @ 6:51 pm
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 10th, 2014 @ 8:02 pm

Yes, but the co-pay is a real bitch!
maniakmedic
July 10th, 2014 @ 11:40 pm

Wow, the US is a heteropatriarchy? Then what the hell is the Middle East? Or even the Far East? Africa? They make us look like a big lesbian street fest in comparison.
M. Thompson
July 11th, 2014 @ 12:16 am

And, we can note, that none of this implies an oppression of feline Americans by single women.
DeadMessenger
July 11th, 2014 @ 2:50 am

There’s the problem. The time spent worrying about stupid, trivial crap.

May I therefore offer the Popeye Unified Field Theory of Social Science™, which is: I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.

Popeye was a genius. Now get over yourselves radfems, and anyone else who insists upon “defining” yourself in some way, and try some actual living. None of us are guaranteed another day, so stop squandering your precious time.