Audre Lorde (left), Marilyn Frye (center) and Monique Wittig (right)
“I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for Humanities conference a year ago. . . .
“I stand here as a black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. . . .
“The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .
“For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.”
— Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” 1979
“I want to ask heterosexual academic feminists to do some hard analytical and reflective work. To begin, I want to say to them:
“I wish you would notice that you are heterosexual.
“I wish you would grow to the understanding that you choose heterosexuality.
“I would like you to rise each morning and know that you are heterosexual and that you choose to be heterosexual — that you are and choose to be a member of a privileged and dominant class, one of your privileges being not to notice.
“I wish you would stop and seriously consider, as a broad and long-term feminist political strategy, the conversion of women to a woman-identified and woman-directed sexuality and eroticism, as a way of breaking the grip of men on women’s minds and women’s bodies, of removing women from the chronic attachment to the primary situations of sexual and physical violence that is rained upon women by men, and as a way of promoting women’s firm and reliable bonding against oppression. . . .
“There is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women: I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
— Marilyn Frye, “A Lesbian’s Perspective on Women’s Studies,” speech to the National Women’s Studies Association conference, 1980
“A materialist feminist approach to women’s oppression destroys the idea that women are a ‘natural group’ . . . What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a ‘natural group.’ A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one . . .
“Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man). . . . For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude . . . a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. . . . [O]ur survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accomplished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression.”
— Monique Wittig, “One Is Not Born a Woman,” 1981
Two of these quotes (Lorde and Wittig) are excerpted from The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle B. Freedman (2007), while the quote from Frye is from her 1992 collection Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism. Readers will notice that all three of these quotes were from the same era, 1979-81. Thus you see how early radical lesbians began consistently demanding that the feminist movement must challenge heterosexuality as “natural” for women, insisting that what Audre Lorde called the “real connection” of “lesbian consciousness” was “feared by a patriarchal world.” Marilyn Frye called for “a broad and long-term feminist political strategy” by Women’s Studies professors of converting their students to lesbianism “as a way of promoting women’s firm and reliable bonding against oppression.” Why? Because only by “the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system,” Monique Wittig said, can women “escape” their “servitude” and “oppression” by men.
Do you think these are obscure “fringe” feminists? Do a Google search for Audre Lorde and you get more 500,000 citations. Marilyn Frye was a professor at Michigan State University for more than 30 years who “was chosen as Phi Beta Kappa’s Romanell Professor in Philosophy for 2007-2008.” Google Monique Wittig and you get nearly 200,000 citations.
Are you tempted to reply, “So what?” OK, then, why don’t you Google the name of the editor of The Essential Feminist Reader — that’s another 200,000 or so citations — and you’ll learn from the Wikipedia biography of Estelle B. Freedman that she is “the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University,” that one of the books she coedited “received the 2013 John Boswell Prize from the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association,” while another book co-edited by Professor Freedman “was cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his 2003 opinion for Lawrence v. Texas, with which the American Supreme Court overturned all remaining anti-sodomy laws.”
Do you still want to say, “So what?” Or are you ready to admit feminists mean what they say, and that feminism should be taken seriously?
BTW, Professor Freedman’s latest book is Redefining Rape, in which she “demonstrates that our definition of rape has depended heavily on dynamics of political power and social privilege.”
People had better wake the hell up.
My thanks to the author for his work. It has helped me greatly to see that liberalism is indeed a religion, even as it is a deity-free one. All issues are “political”, where “political” is really the expression of the common goal via secular policy instruments and institutions.
Were a man and a woman go through some horrible shipwreck and end up alone on a South Sea island with amnesia, what relationship would naturally follow, even when every single vestige of modern society were absent? So when what happens naturally happens, it is now “political” or “ideological”? I think not. I think these lesbian academics are horribly dangerous.
My Marilyn Frye moment:
Me: Honey? Kids? Can you come in here please? There’s something I need to tell you.
Son: What is it, Mom? Are you OK?
Me: Yes. You see, I’ve been reading the writings of a woman named Marilyn Frye, and I have just come to the understanding that I’m a…heterosexual. In fact, I choose to be.
Husband: WHAT???
Daughter: Mom, no!
Me: As part of that, I am, and choose to be, part of a privileged and dominent class.
Son: But what does that mean?
Me: It means I want to see some action on getting those rooms cleaned up, stat. And honey, see that jar over there? Yeah, you got stuff to do. No, I don’t care about the game! I mean now!
[Family scampers off.]
Me: Oh yeah. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
I think this is what Marilyn Frye means, right?
I agree they’re dangerous. And they’re teaching our kids.
I supervise 21 women (and 1 man)
If I had any latent lesbianism, the experience has burned it out of me.
heh
Familiarity breeds contempt, eh?
Another oppressed victim of patriarchy …
Well that is a LIE! I have loved men since the first time I saw Elvis on TV, I was 6 at the time, I didn’t know why I was infatuated with this man I just was. Of course from there is was Shaun Cassidy etc…heh.
supervise 21 women you poor, poor dear, my sympathies
You poor dear. I suggest you research “threat narratives” to make sure that if an ambitious underling tries to construct one about you, you can recognize it and nip it in the bud. Because people can be devious and ruthless, especially if it’s the only way they know to get ahead.
So Homosexuals are ‘born that way’ and therefore must be celebrated but heterosexual women choose to be so? I wish the left would make up their minds about what we are required to believe. My head is spinning.
Their brains never stop spinning. Dizzy broads.
I will have to remember to be nicer to you in the future – my sympathies.
If they let you send Christmas cards from the Gulag it would resemble these broads.
Your heteronormative microaggressions reinforce the paternalistic paradigm of the uber-patriarchy in subtle yet myriad ways which will require even more obtuse feminist jargon to describe.
So, congratulations on that!
See, you are thinking. That’s your problem. It’s so much easier to just comply with the screeching demands like the leftist constituencies do. You may even qualify for a generous helping of someone else’s money!
I’m guessing no one ever coerced those three gals into heterosexuality.
I stand here as a black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented.
I do love competitive victimhood.
But what would Lorde do if a black lesbian crippled feminist rolled up in her wheelchair?
And what would Lorde and her new friend “Wheels” do if a black lesbian crippled mentally retarded paraplegic Muslim feminist wriggled over?
And what would Lorde, Wheels, and our Burkha’ed Belle do if a black lesbian crippled mentally retarded paraplegic Siamese Twin Muslim feminist who used to be a man materialised in their midst?
Burn him, obviously.
dat internalized misogyny tho
Being a lesbian and a feminist means, inter alia, that one must almost certainly be an atheist, and that entails believing that evolution simply has to be true; there is no separate creator who made us distinct from other animals, but simply that we are the (current) culmination of the development of intelligence among animals.
And that raises the seemingly obvious point: since all other sexually-reproducing animals are instinctively heterosexual, why would heterosexuality, which is still a biological imperative for species survival, somehow not be the normal and natural state for humans as well? What somehow evolved differently in humans which would a feminist believe makes us naturally homosexual?
I s’pose that we’d need a lesbian feminist biologist to explain that one to us, but the problem with that is that to be a radical feminist and a lesbian would seem to preclude any ability to understand a hard science.
The real problem is simpler, as it usually is: the lesbian feminists have a deeply-seated need to see themselves as normal, not only for their own self-esteem, but to help persuade others that they aren’t just plain weird. Therefore, if they can somehow define heterosexuality as a choice, and a coerced one at that, then homosexuality must also be not only a legitimate choice, but, (supposedly) not being coerced, be the more legitimate option.
Those of us who are (basically) normal people tend to joke about ourselves being odd, weird, unusual or abnormal, because we know, deep down, that we really are normal enough to not take it too seriously. But the lesbian feminists take themselves so very, very seriously that they have lost almost all sense of humor, and cannot afford to joke about themselves in any public way.
Yeah, but what about the one man?
If those pics were typical of all women rather than just feminazis, most men would have to be coerced into heterosexuality.
You frighten me.
[…] I mean it just has to be hard to be a perpetual victim, to be eternally bitter, AND crazy as a pet con all at the same time. Stacy McCain is spending lots of time of late focusing on the study of the crazy that is Radical Lesbian Feminism, but I repeat myself. Here are some choice quotes […]
You have to get the Spankerphile at Slate together with these Rad Fems.
Every time pictures of these feminists pop up Rush is proven correct. He has said since the 80s that feminism is all about the ugly forcing you to accept them under the banner of feminism and those “women” are ugly, even men would have to be forced to be hetro, gay men are more feminine. /swish!
If RSM had included 3 more rows of these pictures he could have titled the post “Twelve Angry Men”
If I may, can we stop calling it “liberalism” because there is nothing, nada, not even a smidgen, liberal about it.
It is Leftism. And to quote Prager, the most dynamic religion of the last and current century.
There is a reason Leftists make excuses for Islamism — like recognizes like
The center is not the center. Or some such shit.
Reminds me of an old joke.
Q: “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?”
A: (Shrieking, snarling) “ONE! AND IT’S NOT FUNNY!”
As a male from the ’60s, my heterosexuality became evident due to Barbara Eden.
Blink! Boing!
These are damaged people. Damaged, loony, paranoid people need to be taken care of, not given a seat at the table that organizes the culture, the community and the society.
In old European villages they would let a nut roam around babbling to himself. They’d give him a coin here and there and take him inside when it was cold. But they didn’t ask him to shape the culture.
Yup. It’s all fun-and-games when they’re the lunatic fringe…
… until they’re the lunatic national culture.
lol
you forgot “cis-gendered”
wow, he probably walks on eggshells
Many are calling it “gender-feminism”
By forcing us to use their language…they de-facto control the definitions, and control the format of the discussion. Why do you think that ever other day gender-feminists are spinning a new obscure word into society??? they know they can control the narrative by doing so!!
They may in fact be damaged people….but they somehow persuaded congress to start sending American law enforcement federal pork bloating dollars ……to do as they tell them to do!!
“…most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
Because there is no such things as biological imperatives!
“Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your soup”
“Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it!”
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
No fair. I had to stop myself from getting up to carry out the trash while reading that.
I always feel like crying after these articles. The denial of reality and biology in preference for politics is insane, wrong, and will require actual violence to impose. I understand, on a gut level, that the radicals have no problem with that; however, on a practical level, it’s utterly futile.
It’s grotesque.
They’re going to regret that, you know.
They don’t believe their ideology the way the islamists do. Conviction is a powerful thing.
The center cannot hold?
medically retired cop — he’s very capable of handling dangerous people. 😉
Point of Order: Catwoman–Julie Newmar’s Catwoman. I will not argue about that.
Subconsciously, they know they can never succeed, nor do they really want to. If tomorrow, “The Patriarchy” disappeared and their New World Feminist Lesbian Order became the rule, they would lose all power and influence because they would be one of many. As it is, they have the luxury of wallowing in “otherness” ad shocking the bourgeoisie with abandon. It’s like how Facebook stopped being cool when people started getting “Friend” requests from their grandmothers.
Sort of. It’s a Derrida quote that kind of alluded to Yeats.
I don’t recall being pressured and coerced. My mother (and other adult women in my life) never even mentioned there was a choice. I was a girl and I liked boys. I even had two of them as brothers, and one for a father. A few uncles and cousins as well. No one even had that all important talk. In fact, I remember a gaggle of girls tended to be very mean to their own.
These women are quite loony and unfortunately very dangerous – especially for the vulnerable girls who don’t have loving role models.