All The Rage

Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism

Lynne Harne, Elaine Miller, Lynne Harne, Elaine Miller

• Publisher: Spinifex Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781925950441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Is sexuality political? Is it about identity? Is it about style or preference? These questions continue to be asked. Queer theory, sado-masochism, lesbian chic and lipstick lesbians were all the rage in the late 1980s popular culture. But these so-called glamorous trends were the superficial post-modern disguises of a patriarchal backlash against three decades of radical lesbian feminist advances. Unmasking and challenging the backlash the editors have gathered together seventeen passionate voices on sexuality, race and class, psychology, identity politics and lesbian existence. This anthology is essential reading in Women's Studies and anyone interested in gender critical theory. Contributors include, Julia Parnaby, Lynne Harne, Celia Kitzinger, Rachel Perkins, Sandra McNeill, Carol Reeves, Rachel Wingfield, Sue Wilkinson, Sheila Jeffreys, Elaine Miller, Elaine Hutton, Nicole Humberstone, Jill Radford, Rosemary Auchmuty, Audre Lorde, Janice Raymond, Julie Bindel.

Section Three

REPRESENTATIONS OF LESBIANS IN THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE

This section argues that recent and current representations of lesbians in print and in other parts of the media popular with lesbians give conservative and anti-feminist messages about lesbian identity and lesbian community. In this way, they contribute significantly to the depoliticisation of the lesbian community and support a right-wing version of this community by subverting and undermining radical feminism.

Elaine Miller examines how the backlash against feminism is influencing written accounts of lesbian history in the 1990s which are mis-representing radical lesbian feminism and, in some cases, distorting historical truth to validate currently fashionable anti-feminist constructions of lesbian identity. She outlines a lesbian- feminist approach to lesbian history, arguing that the value of such an approach lies in its potential for uncovering the power dynamics of history in ways helpful to women’s liberation, by opening up, for example, a debate on the historical connection between lesbianism and feminism and putting present day feminists in touch with feminists of the past.

Elaine Hutton examines the way lesbians are represented in contemporary magazines, newspapers, cartoons and popular fiction that are produced specifically for and sometimes by lesbians and gay men. She exposes the ‘disappearing’ of radical lesbian feminists as well as implicit and explicit attacks on them. She demonstrates that the new lesbianandgay conservatism expressed in such publications has influenced different kinds of writing in a more subtle and insidious way; lesbian detective novels, for instance.

Nicola Humbentone analyses representations of lesbians in television programmes. She looks at alternative and mainstream programming, including portrayals of lesbians in popular dramas and soaps. She concludes that the lack of lesbian feminist representations is due to the way the media has demonised feminism, and discusses strategies for more positive representations.

RIGHTING OUR HISTORY

Elaine Miller

The lesbian-feminist movement of the 1970s was the most effective challenge to male power mounted in Britain since the suffragette movement. Out of the initiatives of that decade came the notion of lesbian history as a distinct area for research, study, publication, popular reading and general talk among lesbians and it is today one of those ‘building blocks of the lesbian community now taken for granted by young women coming out’ (Jeffreys 1994 p. ix). Ironically, it is also one of the areas of present-day lesbian community life where the backlash against radical lesbian feminism is operating most virulently. This backlash is now influencing written accounts of lesbian history by attempting to marginalise, caricature or silence radical lesbian feminism and also to validate lesbian sado-masochism, lesbian pornography, butch-femme role-playing, queer politics and ‘lesbians’ who sleep with men.

In present day accounts of lesbian history, the issue is not only one of different political stances producing different written versions of lesbian history, although those differences are clearly there. The issue is also one of misrepresentation, omission and, in some instances, acceptance of, or at least collusion with, the male agendas of literary and historical texts.

Critics of radical lesbian feminists have suggested that radical lesbian feminists are living in a time warp; that radical lesbian feminism is out of date and nostalgic; that its proponents persist in clinging to the ideals of their youth when they were in the vanguard; that they are now sour-faced at being left behind by what is perceived as ‘progress’. Quite apart from the ageism inherent in this image of radical lesbian feminists, the implication here is that history must be discarded in the rush to be fashionable and ground-breaking. On the contrary, I argue here that it is crucial to remember our history precisely so that we can move forward positively. The 1970s was a decade which saw great developments in lesbian-feminist theory and other kinds of lesbian-feminist activism and it is important not to lose sight of the understanding that we gained at that time.

Nor did radical lesbian feminism materialise out of a vacuum in the 1970s. Long before the twentieth century, women were resisting patriarchy to create a world in which sex was not used to control, to flatter egos, to exert power, to inflict cruelty or degradation on another human being. Queer lesbians, in undermining these goals and looking back to a sexuality based on eroticising dominance and submission, can with more reason be described as living in a time warp.

Lesbian feminists objecting to sado-masochism and pornography, butch-femme role-playing and ‘lesbians’ sleeping with men have also been accused of being anti-sex. Radical lesbian feminism neither is nor ever has been anti-sex, in either theory or practice. It is not sex but oppression as a result of particular socially condoned sexual practices, including sexual violence and the objectification and degradation of women, that this politics opposes. Confusing the two obscures radical feminist analysis of the connections between sexuality and power and has been a singularly effective patriarchal ploy. Many lesbians have been taken in by this confusion, believing they are being radical, rebellious and breaking new and exciting boundaries by engaging in sado-masochism, pornography and other practices that objectify, exploit and degrade women in exactly the ways that feminists have described and rejected after years of hard fought struggle. As a result, the lesbian community is now fractured. There are certain vocal groups who adopt these practices and who, as a consequence, gain a great deal of media support; there are the liberals retreating comfortably into individual lifestylism; and there are the radical feminists who are caricatured as old-fashioned prudes with no sense of adventure or fun. (This stereotype, too, is familiar. It has been used through the ages to silence women who have objected to degradation and exploitation.) This is a tragic division, adding to the ever-difficult task of making gains for women.

This chapter embraces lesbian history, remembers the lesbian feminists of the 1970s warmly and positively, critiques the politics of queer and s-m, is pro-lesbian sex and radical. The particular accounts of lesbian history I critique are: Lillian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers - A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America and Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women - British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801.1 have chosen these two because their political perspectives reflect the dominant trends in present-day lesbian culture and because they are being widely read and will, no doubt, be highly influential. Faderman’s simplistic and distorted picture of 1970s lesbian feminism, in particular, is becoming a received opinion about the true nature of that movement. It is therefore essential to present a feminist challenge to the ideas contained within these texts. Part of this challenge is to remember the good feminist work that has gone before, so that we do not isolate ourselves in time but gain, instead, a sense of our place in the feminist continuum and learn from our history. For that reason, I have included a re-appraisal of Faderman’s earlier book, Surpassing the Love of Men — Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present.

BEGINNINGS

The concept of lesbian history was one of the many creative outcomes of the 1970s women’s liberation movement. As more and more women in the movement made the link between feminism and lesbianism and discovered the possibility of a new identity as radical lesbian feminists, the women’s history discussion groups which sprang up as a result of consciousness-raising groups and the subsequent release of feminist energy, failed to satisfy them. The historical experience of heterosexual women was central to the work of such groups, but lesbian experience was not. Radical lesbian feminists set up informal, autonomous discussion and study groups and/or began individual reading and research into lesbian history. These included many oral-history sessions in which lesbians shared ‘coming out’ and other personal experiences.

In the 1970s, many women were more concerned with writing for each other in such publications of the movement as newsletters, magazines, pamphlets and conference papers than in producing academic records of the movement. Academia was quite rightly regarded by many radical lesbian feminists as patriarchal and hostile to their political analysis. It was also seen as crucially important not to separate theory from activism. It was the establishment of feminist presses in the mid-1970s that made possible more formal publications of the movement’s history, including the emergence of lesbian feminism. Lesbian feminists also set up their own study groups and, in the late 1970s, often taught adult education classes (see Auchmuty this volume). As interest in lesbian history mounted and more lesbians became aware of how very effectively their foresisters had been ‘hidden from history’, the vital importance of leaving a record of their own became only too obvious.

So a tradition began. Reading, writing, recording and theorising lesbian history are now all well-established practices. There are opportunities for some lesbian feminists in colleges and universities to get their work on lesbian history into print. This has helped to spread ideas and to encourage further interest among lesbians, an interest that continues to increase today.

WHY DO IT?

Doing lesbian-feminist history has always included but always gone beyond the uncovering of individual lesbians’ lives, past and present. These stories are often experienced by lesbians who read or hear about them as personally inspiring and validating and for that reason alone are invaluable. However, they cannot give, on their own, enough insight into the power dynamics of history: an insight essential if lesbian historians are to make a contribution, through the study of lesbian history, to the continuing development of a radical lesbian-feminist ideology which is a historically relevant force for change and which provides a theoretical basis for lesbian-feminist activism.

Radical lesbian-feminist historians postulate and critique two historical constants: patriarchy and heterosexuality. This approach clearly exposes patriarchal values and the relationship between sexuality and male power. It opens up debate on the historical relationship between lesbianism and feminism. It is also about gathering strength from remembering. It documents and celebrates feminist resistance, analysing the struggles and recording the gains. It gives encouragement to feminists. It reveals mistakes made, so that we can learn. It exposes the forces ranged against us, so that we can be prepared. Informative patterns are discovered. One that so often emerges is the pattern of resistance/reaction/retreat/resistance with new formulations of the struggle and of the strategies for engaging with it. These patterns tell feminists what they need to know. They provide what Mary Taylor, a Victorian radical feminist, called ‘daylight to fight by’ instead of ignorance to flounder in (Taylor 1890 Chapter 7).

Margaret Jackson, in her recent book The Real Facts of Life: Feminism, and the Politics of Sexuality 1850-1940, provides a historical perspective invaluable in illuminating current debates among lesbians. Jackson’s thesis is that

sexuality is and probably always has been (though in different ways at different times) a critical area of struggle between the sexes: that the process by which sexuality is constructed is to a large extent the outcome of those struggles; that female sexual autonomy is the sine qua non of women’s liberation; and that the history of feminist struggles for sexual autonomy, which includes the history of male resistance, is of vital political importance to our continuing struggles (Jackson 1994 p. 2).

Radical critiques, such as the one that Jackson provides, gives feminists today both the opportunity to learn from feminists of the past and the strength and confirmation that comes from being part of a long tradition of resistance. In particular, it is vital that young lesbians have access to such an analysis, to avoid what Adrienne Rich has called

… a leak in history … The poorer we become, the less we remember what we had … The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle (Rich 1993 pp. 72-82).

Tracing the historical presence of these bonds of support between women is one of the principal concerns of lesbian-feminist history. It is concerned with women who loved and were loved by women in the context of feminist resistance to patriarchy and in particular to sexualized violence; with women who loved each other passionately and sexually, whether or not this love was expressed through genital sexual contact; with women who, as lovers, groups of friends and through networks, resisted male power; with women who found out from experience that politics and political activism are capable of transforming desire.

This does not mean that radical lesbian-feminist historians are concerned to trace a fixed identity throughout time. As members of the London Lesbian History Group have written

… there can never be a fixed definition of what it means to be a lesbian. The task for the lesbian historian is to try to create the past as women living then would have experienced it and to locate lesbians within it. But we must also try to reinterpret the past in the light of our own lesbian-feminist understanding of what was going on (Not a Passing Phase 1989 p. 14).

Such an approach to history clearly demonstrates that neither radical feminism nor the oppression that its politics seeks to address are particular to a decade or a generation but are part of a long historical process. Within that process, lesbian feminism can be understood ‘as a historical project not yet fully realised’ (Miriam 1993 p. 14). So often misrepresented nowadays as old-fashioned, out of date, out of touch, the radical lesbian-feminist movement of the 1970s was, in reality, the newest formulation of this ancient and continuing process of feminist resistance: a conflation of lesbianism and feminism on such a scale as to produce a powerful visible presence with its own theoretical base within a mass movement.

The radical lesbian-feminist political philosophy generated then and continuing to develop now still holds that challenge. The current backlash is the reaction to that challenge: the reassertion of patriarchal systems of control in all the subtle, indirect ways illustrated throughout this anthology.

SURPASSINGLY GOOD FEMINISM

Lillian Faderman’s first book Surpassing the Love of Men is an example of that challenge being made by writing history from a lesbian-feminist perspective. Using a mass of biographical, literary and documentary evidence, Faderman traces feminist resistance to patriarchal power, misogyny and sexual exploitation throughout her chosen period and concludes that lesbian feminism holds the answer to the oppression of women that she has exposed throughout her book. As she puts it,

… until men stop giving women cause to see them as the enemy and until there ceases to be coercion to step into prescribed roles without reference to individual needs and desires, lesbian-feminists will continue to view their choice as the only logical one possible for a woman who desires to be her own adult person (Faderman 1989, p. 415).

The political values which inform Faderman’s perspective on lesbian history were inspired by lesbian feminism, which she obviously then saw as the ideal form of lesbianism, writing about its ‘compelling logic’ (Faderman 1985, p. 391) and enthusiastically enumerating its considerable achievements.

Her methods of analysis include: feminist deconstruction of male texts and, in particular, critiques of misogynist representations of lesbians and lesbian sexual practices; analysis of available biographical information about these authors and the personal events that surrounded the creation and production of the texts; and analysis of the wider historical context. The connections that these methods enable her to make with the position of contemporary lesbians is extremely illuminating for lesbian feminists.

Faderman exposes to feminist historical analysis the gross oppression of sado-masochism, male-conceived pornography, essentialist notions of female nature and butch-femme role-play. She celebrates women’s resistance to all this and their love for each other which she presents as a force for change because of its political potential. This love might or might not have been expressed by genital sexual acts. About this she is scrupulously tentative, since no pre-twentieth-century woma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Authors
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Section One: Individualism, Identity and the New Lesbian and Gay Conservatism
• Section Two: Lesbian Sexuality and Sexual Practice
• Section Three: Representations of Lesbians in the Media and Popular Culture
• Section Four: Lesbian Feminism and Academentia
• Section Five: Moving Forward
• Contributors’ Notes
• Further Reading