Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

undercover punk wrote to ask me if i’d somehow find time to get a Sarah Hoagland article on lesbian separatism back online. It’s buried in the deadness that is the old blog. It’s been hacked because of neglect and I have been too lazy to inspect all the files to find out which they hacked and worked with my provider to get it fixed.

I’ve been sicker than sick — still. I finally caved in and went to the hospital. Anyway, here’s the article from the old blog post:

I’d pointed out at both Pandagon and Punkass that radical feminism just doesn’t stop at actual heterosexual sex, but also subjects lesbian practices to critique — and has a history of claiming that gay male sex — because it is, at long last, men without women — is exemplary of the kind of sex men would want if women weren’t in the way.

Now, if you make a claim that an identity — lesbian — ought to be the basis for a politics, you are naturally assuming a great deal about who, what, and where lesbians are. Yes? This is what causes so many problems — and I’m not saying identity politics is a problem per se. I am saying that The Hummer War, the Mommy War, and so on are arguments over who is the political subject of feminism. That is, the root disagreements underneath it all point at bigger questions: how are women oppressed? who/what is oppressing them? Any critique of existing society which offers a descriptive account of existing oppression is also offering an implicit vision of the good life or the world we hope to achieve. In turn, when answering the questions “who is woman?” and “how is she oppressed?”, one is also implicitly making the case for a set of political practices. Thus, there is an intimate, though not straightforwardly or overdetermined connection between one’s critique, one’s theory of women’s oppression, and the politics one advances to end that oppression.

One of the reasons why I think the Hummer War and the Mommy War and other wars get out of hand is that it’s not just because it’s about sex — for why would the blogosphere get in such a tizzy about motherhood? I think it has to do with different understandings of freedom, autonomy, and agency.

Now, frequently, folks on the sexpos side of this war will trot out lots of talk of freedom and agency, as if no one on the radfem side actually cares about freedom. But they do; they just disagree with yours or, rather, with the defenses of freedom and agency that typically emanate from the sexpos side. And I sympathize. Every single damn time I see Anthony use an appeal to freedom of choice, free will, or freedom … or even when I read Rachel or Belledame or even my favorite slut, Thagmano, I started itching. I invariably disagree with the typical way the words freedom and autonomy are deployed. That doesn’t make me a radfem — far from — it just makes me someone who thinks there are yet other ways of thinking about the free will / determinism (or structure / agency ) debate. But I can totally see how it’s easy to appeal to traditional Enlightenment liberal notions of freedom, autonomy, and agency in this debate.

SEPARATING FROM HETEROSEXUALISM

(excerpted from ‘Lesbian Ethics,’ by Sara Lucia Hoagland (Palo Alto: Institute of lesbian Studies, 1988), 54-68. Available from the Institute of Lesbian Studies, PO Box 25568, Chilcago IL, 60625. (I have no idea if it’s still in existence.) You can also read it in Feminism and Community edited by Penny A. Weiss and Marilyn Friedman, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1995.)

[...]

I want to suggest that it is crucial to acknowledge withdrawal, separatism, as an option if we are to engage in moral revolution. Separation is a central option both as a political strategy and as a consideration in individual relationships. We may withdraw from a particular situation when it threatens to dissolve into a relationship of dominance and subordination. And we may withdraw from a system of dominance and subordination in order to engage in moral revolution.

To withdraw from a system, a conceptual framework, or a particular situation is to refuse to act according to its rules. A system can only function if there are participants. A king can direct his domain only if most everyone else acknowledges him as king, if the couriers carry his messages.2 If the messengers dump their messages and go on to some-thing else, not only is the king’s communication interrupted, so is his status, for the couriers are no longer focused on him and are therefore declaring themselves no longer couriers. If enough couriers lay down their messages, the king will not be able to amass sufficient power to force those messengers to again focus on him.

When we separate, when we withdraw from someone’s game plan, the game becomes meaningless, at least to some extent, ceasing to exist for lack of acknowledgment. Of course if a tree falls in the forest, there are sound waves, whether or not there are human or other animal ears, or whether there are any other sorts of mechanisms in addition to the king’s own ears to detect them. But if the listeners, the messengers, have withdrawn, then the sound waves can’t be translated or even acknowledged. Thus the messages of the king in a certain respect make no sense, and in a certain respect have ceased to exist. So has the king . . . as a king.

Separation is a legitimate moral and political choice. (I mean by saying it is legitimate that it has a political and moral function.) That is, to engage in a situation or a system in order to try to change it is one choice. To withdraw from it, particularly in order to render it meaning-less, is another choice. Within a given situation or at a given moment there are often good reasons for either choice. Further, both choices involve considerable risk; neither one comes with guarantees: while directly challenging something can validate it, withdrawing may allow it to continue essentially unhampered.

What is significant to me is that the choice to separate is not acknowledged as a legitimate ethical choice. There are considerable prohibitions in all quarters against withdrawal. Depending on various factors, including the location within the power hierarchy of the perceiver, the choice to hoping it will go away, (c) an indication of dull-wittedness or an admission of defeat, (d) a refusal to be politically responsible, or (e) a denial of reality, indicating insanity.

For example, during a war that is, a struggle over who will dominate those in power regard draft dodgers and even conscientious objectors not as moral challengers but as immoral quitters, not significantly different from those who collaborate with the enemy. In time of war this moral equation is drawn because, to be successful, those who wage war must have grand-scale cooperation in order to defeat the enemy. And when social organization must be very tight, those who dissent and withdraw are perceived as no different from those who attack. (To some degree, this is an accurate perception.)

Those who withdraw may be perceived by their peers as cowardly hiding from the situation and hoping it will go away or as foolishly ignoring reality. For example, one who withdraws from a fight will often be considered a coward. Such labeling, of course, is an attempt to coerce participation. Alternatively, some who have opposed united states draft dodgers and conscientious objectors charge them with failing to recognize that if the enemy won, they would no longer have the right to dissent. And because of our (at least partial) withdrawal from the institution of heterosexuality, lesbians are accused of foolishly ignoring half the human race and hence of denying reality.

Certainly, there are those who believe problems will just go away. But I am concerned with the choice to withdraw as a political strategy. For example, the Danes refused to cooperate with the Nazi policy of identifying Jews. This was a refusal to participate in the debate over who should be saved, and as a result it rendered the Nazi effort at “purification” meaningless. Pacifism, too, is a withdrawal. And during world war ii, pacifists were perceived as cowards. In fact, the label “passive resistance” itself a contradiction of terms, is an attempt to discredit the actions of those who refuse to play the games of dominance and subordination. Gandhi’s strategy was hardly passive.

Political activists will often perceive withdrawing or separating as simply being politically irresponsible. For example, many will show overt hostility toward those who refuse to participate in the U.S. election process, even though they themselves are horrified by what passes for candidates, campaigning, and voting in this country. Those who refuse to vote, on the other hand, refuse to participate in the illusion. As one female nonvoter stated, “Oh, I never voite, i t encourages them so.”

Lesbian separatists, too, are perceived as not caring about or wanting to end injustice. Separatists are often judged by liberals, socialists, and coalitionists as almost more morally reprehensible than those who control the system.4 As a result, lesbian separatists are scapegoated.

In certain respects, to engage, to participate, in a situation or in a system is to affirm its central values. This is true whether we actively uphold the system, attempt to change it through designated avenues of reform, or rebel against it through designated avenues of rebellion (act in ways named evil or bad within the system). For in acting in any of these capacities, we are operating within the system’s parameters and are thus giving the system meaning by helping to hold its axis (what goes unquestioned) in place.

While a great deal is accomplished through reform, the change that occurs must fit within the (usually unacknowledged) parameters of the system. Thus “votes for women” was achieved only when women’s suffrage was generally perceived as not altering the structure and value of patriarchal, heterosexual society. As Kate Millett points out in Sexual Politics, the first wave of the feminist movement failed to challenge the institution of the family, thereby ending in reform rather than revolution. She argues that without radical change in value, that which reformers found most offensive “the economic disabilities of women, the double standard, prostitution, venereal disease, coercive marital unions and involuntary parenthood” could not be eradicated. Reform perpetuates existing value.

In the first place, feminist reform forces women to focus on men and address men’s conceptions of women rather than creating and developing women’s values about themselves. It forces women to focus on men’s reactions and mass media stereotypes of women; it forces women to respond by means of apology to masculinist depictions of witches, man-haters, lesbians, and amazons. It forces women to prove that men’s fears are unfounded to prove that women, or “real” women, are not lesbians or man haters. It forces women to appear feminine and prove they are not threatening. Feminist reform forces women to attend male fantasies and validate masculinist value. As a result men are invited to act out and are given even greater license to project their insecurities on women, while women must soothe and tend male egos. In other words, reform keeps women focused on finding ways of seducing men. I want a moral revolution (Emphasis added).

Secondly, feminist reform makes the actuall success of women’s efforts depend on the intelligence, willingness, and benevolence of the men they’re seeking to convince to enact reform. Efforts in this regard may at times gain relief for women, relief which is badly needed even if selective. But it is a relief of symptoms, not a removal of causes.6 In this respect reform forces the reformer to restrict her imagination and efforts to the limits of those she’s trying to convince. A feminist striving for change by working for reform within the dominant/subordinate framework is like a starving person seeking nourishment in junk food.

Finally, feminist reform sets up women to value change in men more highly than change in women.’ It makes any failure a failure of effort on women’s part, not a refusal on men’s part. And it sets up women to fear risking any small gain they might have gotten. As a result, to avoid offending men, they promote lesbian erasure, thereby reinforcing heterosexualism.8 This is one of the reasons some french-speaking radical lesbians insist that feminism is the last stronghold of patriarchy.9

Aside from reform, there are also serious problems with rebellion, particularly when that rebellion fits the parameters of what counts as rebellion from the dominant perspective. For example, a young woman might rebel against her family by getting pregnant, or a high school student might rebel by becoming addicted to heroin. These actions, while not in conformity with what is called good in society, nevertheless support and uphold it; though they are designated as evil within the system, they are not real threats to it. Further, as I have suggested above, there are serious dangers involved in sabotage when a movement is afoot, when a group is interacting in ways which begin to challenge the consensus which made the individual act of sabotage plausible for the saboteurs.

Another form of rebellion the male pornographic rebellion against the establishment has been challenged by Mary Daly, Susan Griffin, Catharine A. MacKinnon, and Andrea Dworkin, each in her own way. For while pornographic sons rebel against church fathers, they nevertheless operate out of the same conceptual framework — a framework which gives rise to neutrophilic hatred of the body.10 Far from undermining the system, they infuse it with meaning. And when things get too far out of hand, protectors can target pornographers, launching a crusade to clean up our minds, all the while polluting our minds with church imagery which gives rise to pornography.

Significantly, the so-called sexual “revolution” is hardly a revolution of values but simply a reversal of system. Thus, rather than being a “proper lady,” a woman is now a “hot mama.” Either way her sexual subordination to men remains unchallenged. The “sexual revolution” has displaced the women’s movement in the media.

Advocates of sadomasochism also claim to be rebelling against the system, yet they are neither resisting it nor striving for change. In emulating Nazi/Jew or master/slave scenes, for example, sadomasochists con-tribute to the context which allows such institutions to flourish, thereby validating them. And rather than shock us into political awareness, as can a parody, such practices lull us into acceptance and resignation.’ In general, the system of the fathers designates as evil what it can tolerate and uses it as a safety valve. When things threaten to get out of hand, those in power can then scapegoat that which they designate as evil to explain why that which they designate as good marriage, business, education, religion, medicine, for example isn’t working. And this suggests that withdrawal from and change in central values, rather than evil, are the real threats to the traditional framework of ethics and politics.

Upon examining the system, we may find we actually agree with the underlying value and structure. Alternatively, we may find we disagree significantly with it but judge that it is the best structure around or that the existing structure is better than no structure or better than the risk involved in creating a new one. We might even feel that a new structure would be preferable but that the current situation is a crisis which needs immediate relief, even though this results in incomplete solution and co-optation. After all, working to create a new value system hardly solves an immediate problem of starvation.

But what is missing from the focus of traditional ethics as well as from lesbian community ethics is acknowledgment that these choices involve agreement with the system in certain key ways, acknowledgment that such agreement is a choice, and acknowledgment that there is another choice. What is missing from traditional ethics is acknowledgment that there are ethical choices at this level, that participation is one of those choices, and that separation at the very least from the belief system is another.

Now beyond noting that withdrawal or separation is a crucial moral option, I want to suggest that such a choice is central to lesbian moral agency. What I’m calling separation or withdrawal is not a set of rules we live up to, particularly in an attempt to be purists. It is rather a general approach to the world which involves various choices in various circumstances, choices which depend on various factors but which are choices from a lesbian center. (Emphasis added)

Now, I want to point out here that Hoagland is arguing against those who reject separatism who claim that they are the ones with the focus on moral agency. She is pointing out that, not only does she reject purism, she also rejects that idea that women must live up to certain rules to be “real feminists.”

My point? I think that, if you want to engage those who take a different position, then Hoagland’s argument needs to be addressed in its fullness and not as the caricature that is often attached to (man hating) lesbian separatists. That is, addressed sympathetically or internally, rather than as the fantasy you might have of her argument. Same goes for Twisty or any other radical feminist.

Now, whether Heart, Ginmar, Twisty, or whomever buy into Hoagland’s argument, I don’t know. I’m just pointing out that, however well or poorly articulated in the blogosphere, there are published writings that have influenced the folks babbling out here and it’s helpful to consult that body of work for some insight. By their very nature, blogs and blog wars aren’t the best place to spell out an entire philosophy. And sometimes, people are online to name the problem and elaborate and clarify their thinking.

In her history and analysis of Lavender Woman, a Chicago lesbian newspaper published between 1971 and 1976, Michal Brody offers a basic definition of separatism which, while apparently clear-cut, invited “universes of interpretation”:

The fundamental core of separation was separation of women from men. This was desirable for two basic reasons: 1) there was too much frustration and aggravation involved in trying to work or deal with men. Sexism, once perceived, became intolerable, and 2) it became urgent to understand the meaning and essence of womanhood as only we could define it for ourselves.12

[...]

Separatism is, first, a way of pulling back from the existing conceptual framework, noting its patterns, and understanding their function regard-less of the mythology espoused within the framework. For example, within the framework it is said that women don’t resist male domination. However, by stepping out of the framework, we can detect quite another story. Separatism is a matter of deconstructing and revaluing existing perceptions and judgments.

In this way, withdrawing or separating is not the opposite of participating; rather, it is a form of engagement. While it is important for survival to stay in touch with what is going on, by becoming detached from belief in heterosexual values, we can move through the system in very different ways, noting very different things.13

Secondly, separatism is a way of undermining heterosexual patterns. As Marilyn Frye argues, feminist separation is separation of various sorts or modes from men and from institutions, roles and activities which are male-defined, male-dominated and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege this separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women.

The point of this is to undermine male parasitism:

that is, generally speaking, the strength, energy, inspiration and nurturance of women that keeps men going, and not the strength, aggression, spirituality and hunting of men that keeps women going.14

Marilyn Frye goes on to argue that male parasitism means males must have access to females, that total power is unconditional access, that the first act of challenging this must be denying access in order to create a power shift, and that such a denial of access is also to claim the power of naming for oneself: “The slave who excludes the master from her hut thereby declares herself not a slave.”15

Thirdly, separatism is “paring away the layers of false selves from the Self,” as Mary Daly suggests.16 What draws us to each other, I believe, is a sense of female agency, a sense of inner strength. Separatism allows us to expand our imaginations and hence our risks beyond the boundaries of heterosexualism. It allows us an ethical option to the de-moralization that results when we resign ourselves to the categories of the fathers and lose each other.17 Thus, it allows us the possibility of developing female agency outside the master/slave virtues of heterosexualism.

Consequently, fourthly, lesbian separatism is a withdrawal from heterosexualism. Following Simone de Beauvoir’s perception that we are not born women, Monique Wittig announces that lesbians are not women.” She argues:

The refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian this goes further than the refusal of the role “woman.” It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man.19

And she concludes:

Lesbianism is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previously called servitude . . . a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation (“forced residence,”20 domestic corvee, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or stay heterosexual.21

Withdrawal or separatism is a refusal to participate in the heterosexual social construction of reality; to practice separatism is to deconstruct the dominant/subordinate relationship of men and women.

Monique Wittig goes on to argue that our task is to define oppression in materialist terms:

to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political and economic categories not eternal ones.22

She suggests that our strategy must be to

suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class “men” disappears, “women” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters.23

Thus she does not advocate resisting male domination by trying to oppose men as men have opposed women, as Simone de Beauvoir seems to imply women must do if women are to resist male sovereignty. How-ever, neither is her strategy a separatist one. She anticipates a struggle between men and women similar to a class struggle, a struggle in which gender categories will finally disappear, thereby ending the economic, political, and ideological order which perpetuates the dominance and subordination of heterosexualism:

The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time it constitutes them as classes. The class struggle between women and men, which should be undertaken by all women, is that which resolves the contradictions between the sexes, abolishing them at the same time as it makes them understood.24

Once this struggle breaks out, the violence of the categories (dominant/suppressed, male/female) becomes apparent, and what was considered natural differences now can be understood as material opposition.

While I agree that heterosexualism is a violent opposition between men and women, my focus is different. I agree with the goal of de-constructing heterosexualism and the categories “man” and “woman.” But in my opinion there can be slaves without masters, there can be women without men. Thus, even though “lesbian” is a concept beyond the categories of sex, nevertheless we tend to embrace the existing categories both in assimilation and in resistance. More often than not, we embrace the values of dominance and subordination.

We tend to seek meaning by subordinating ourselves to a higher order or system because we seek the semblance of security in something constructed outside of us in which we can participate. Heterosexualism is such a system. In another context Marilyn Frye writes of the “mortal dread of being outside the field of vision of the arrogant eye”:

We fear that if we are not in that web of meaning there will be no meaning: our work will be meaningless, our lives of no value, our accomplishments empty, our identities illusory.25

My concern is involved with the sense in which it is true that there are no “masters” without “slaves,” for in that same sense there are no “men” without “women.” A king cannot be king without his messengers attending him. And patriarchy cannot persist without female complicity, regardless of how that complicity is commandeered, complicity that persists as women and lesbians back away from our power to invent.26 My concern in pursuing withdrawal or separation, both ethically and politically, involves pursuing lesbian agency outside the dominant/subordinate values of heterosexualism. To separate, withdraw, refocus, is to cease attending to the existing system. As Alice Molloy wrote:

return no thing to evil, that is the basis of separatism. give it no energy, no time, no attention. no nourishment.27

The no-saying and the struggle are essential, but so is the ability to withdraw from the existing ground of meaning. If we remain riveted on their categories, we will not succeed in creating new ones.

Thus, separatism is, most importantly, a refocusing, a focusing on lesbians and a lesbian conceptual framework. Through our focus, our attention, we determine what is significant and what is not. Attending is active and creative. And by focusing on ourselves and each other as lesbians in all our diversity, we determine, not that we exist in relation to a dominant other, but rather that we can create new value, lesbian meaning. By focusing on ourselves and each other, we make lesbianism possible. In calling for withdrawal from the existing heterosexual value system, I am calling for a moral revolution.

Now, beginning with the first aspect of separatism, by withdrawing or separating from the conceptual framework of heterosexualism we can understand a number of things central to lesbian moral agency and the creation of new value. We can realize male domination persists through both predation and protection. We can realize that what it means to be a woman is a creation of the patriarchy, and that “femininity” makes male domination appear natural. We can realize that what men call “difference” is actually “opposition,” and that women have resisted male domination, though not necessarily by challenging heterosexualism. We can perceive women as moral agents, making choices as best they can within the framework of heterosexualism. And we can also understand that lesbians have made other choices, choices not among the designated options.

Describing her first trip to a gay bar, Judy Grahn writes:

Nothing distinguished the Rendezvous Bar from any of the others except that its reputation among queers was that it was “ours.” .. . In those days homosexuality was so closely guarded and so heavily punished that it might as well have been illegal just to gather in a bar together. . . . But the sleazy Rendezvous was where we bottom of-the-world overt Gay people could go and be “ourselves.”

I went there one night with another Lesbian I had met in the service; I remember the fear I felt on the bus ride downtown. The bus passed through a dark tunnel and the driver had a black curtain wrapped around his seat. I felt I was on a journey to hell and had to laugh at my young self for undertaking such a perilous journey. There would be no turning back for me once I had entered such a place; I knew very distinctly that I had “crossed over.”

From the minute I entered the doors of the Rendezvous . . . and gaped in thrilled shock at the self-assured, proud Lesbians in pants and the men in makeup and sculptured, displayed, eerily beautiful faces, I saw myself as part of a group that included some very peculiar characters and characteristics. I ceased then to be a nice white Protestant girl with a tomboy nature who had once had a secret and very loving Lesbian re- lationship with another nice girl who was attending college to become a teacher. That definitions no longer applied as I stepped into my first Gay bar to become a full-fledged dike, a more-tha-a-Lesbian

[...]

Yes, these were political choices. In her essay on butch-fern relation-ships in the 1950s in the U.S., Joan Nestle articulates the political nature of many lesbians’ choices:

In the 1950S this courage to feel comfortable with arousing another woman became a political act. Butch-fern was an erotic partnership, serving both as a conspicuous flag of rebellion and as an intimate exploration of women’s sexuality.34

In reply to the charge that lesbians were merely copying heterosexual choices, Joan Nestle argues:

Since at times ferns dressed similarly to their butch lovers, the aping of heterosexual roles was not visually apparent, yet the sight of us was enraging. My understanding of why we angered straight spectators so is not that they saw us modeling ourselves after them, but just the opposite that we were a symbol of women’s erotic autonomy, a sexual accomplishment that did not include them. The physical attacks were a direct attempt to break into this self- sufficient, erotic partnership. The most frequently shouted taunt was: “Which one of you is the man?” This was not a reflection of our Lesbian experience as much as it was a testimony to the lack of erotic categories in straight culture.”

In other words, lesbian relationships of the 1950s were a challenge to existing values. Lillian Faderman adds that there were in several eras and places many instances of women who were known to engage in lesbian sex, and they did so with impunity. As long as they appeared feminine, their sexual behavior would be viewed as an activity in which women indulged when men were unavailable or as an apprenticeship or appetite-whetter to heterosexual sex. But if one or both of the pair demanded masculine privileges, the illusion of lesbianism as faute de mieux behavior was destroyed. At the base was not the sexual aspect of lesbianism as much as the attempted usurpation of male prerogative by women who behaved like men that many societies appeared to find most disturbing.36

Of course, to claim the prerogative of men is not necessarily to try to become men. Judy Grahn argues that the point was not to be men but to be butch and get away with it:

We always kept something back: a high-pitched voice, a slant of the head, or a limpness of hand gestures, something that was clearly labeled female. I believe our statement was “Here is another way of being a woman,” not “Here is a woman trying to be taken for a man.”37

Joan Nestle adds:

The irony of social change has made a radical, sexual, political statement of the 1950s appear today as a reactionary, non-feminist experience.38

Nevertheless, there has been copying of heterosexual roles. Some lesbians worked to become like man and wife; some even became trans-sexual men. And that is to say that the choice to affirm lesbianism does not make lesbians immune to heterosexual social organization. Further, the choice to affirm lesbianism does not make lesbians immune to racism. As Audre Lorde writes:

Being gay-girls without set roles was the one difference we allowed ourselves to see and to bind us to each other. We were not of that other world and we wanted to believe that, by definition, we were therefore free of that other world’s problems of capitalism, greed, racism, classism, etc. This was not so. But we continued to visit each other and eat together, and in general, share our lives and resources, as if it were.39

Nor are lesbians immune to deeply internalizing heterosexual value, the value of dominance and subordination, as Julia Penelope notes:

Just as I based my own sense of power on making love to other wimmin, I perceived their willingness to let me make love to them as a “giving up” of power. When they yielded to me, surrendered themselves to me passionately, made themselves “vulnerable” to me, I became powerful. I was absorbed by the anticipatory thrills of the “chase,” and my sexuality was dependent on the sexual charge I experienced when I made a new “conquest.” By identifying my own sexuality with power, and making satisfaction dependent on controlling another Lesbian’s body, I’d bound myself to the constant need to rekindle that “charge” over and over again. Because I saw sex as a way of empowering myself, I saw the wimmin I made love to as giving up their power to me, and it was never long before I had to find another “conquest.” If I was “getting” power, then my lover of the moment must be “losing” power, and I would begin to disengage myself from a Lesbian I’d begun to despise because I perceived her as “powerless” and “weak.” The very “femininity,” the softness, that had first drawn me to her would now repulse me, and I would refuse to make love to her. My refusal, like my previous love-making, became an assertion of my “power over” her.4°

The need to control and be controlled in relationships is central to the dominant/subordinate values of heterosexualism, and, as I will argue, it is central to the values of the Anglo-European tradition of ethics. Through all of this, I am not trying to argue that heterosexualism is the “cause” of oppression. I do mean to suggest, however, that any revolution which does not challenge it will be incomplete and will eventually revert to the values of oppression. Heterosexualism is the form of social organization through which other forms of oppression, at times more vicious forms, become credible, palatable, even desirable. Heterosexualism that is, the balance between masculine predation upon and masculine protection of a feminine object of masculine attention de-skills a woman, makes her emotionally, socially, and economically dependent, and allows another to dominate her “for her own good” all in the name of “love.” In no other situation 41 are people expected to love, identify with, and become other to those who dominate them to the extent that women are supposed to love, identify with, and become other to men.42

It is heterosexualism which makes us feel that it is possible to dominate another for her own good, that one who resists such domination is abnormal or doesn’t understand what is good for her, and that one who refuses to participate in dominant/subordinate relationships doesn’t exist. And once we accept all this, imperialism, colonialism, and ethnocentrism, for example, while existing all along, become more socially tolerable in liberal thought. They become less a matter of exercising overt force and more a matter of the natural function of (a) social order.

Heterosexualism is a conceptual framework within which the concept of “moral agency” independent of the master/slave virtues cannot find fertile ground. And it combines with ethical judgments to create a value whose primary function is not the moral development of individuals but rather the preservation of a patriarchal social control. This will require a discussion of the feminine virtues of altruism, self-sacrifice, and vulnerability, and how we use them to gain control in relationships.

In discussing what I call Lesbian Ethics, I do not claim that lesbians haven’t made many of the choices (heterosexual) women have made or that lesbians haven’t participated in the consensus of straight thinking or that lesbians have withdrawn from the value of dominance and subordination and the security of established meaning we can find therein. I am not claiming that lesbians have lived under different conceptual or material conditions. I am claiming, however, that lesbian choice holds certain possibilities. It is a matter of further choice whether we go on to develop these possibilities or whether instead we try to fit into the existing heterosexual framework in any one of a number of ways.

Thus I am claiming that the conceptual category “lesbian” unlike the category “woman” is not irretrievably tied up with dominance and subordination as norms of behavior. And I am claiming that by attending each other, we may find the possibility of ethical values appropriate to lesbian existence, values we can choose as moral agents to give meaning to our lifes as lesbians. In calling for withdrawal from the existing heterosexual value system, I am calling for a moral revolution, a revolution of lesbianism.