ASL and lesbian version of Gotye's "Somebody I Used to Know"

If Lesbians Said The Stuff Straight People Say

the liberated desire of queerness

This French cartoon was created by FHAR, the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action.  FHAR was was founded in 1971 in the aftermath of May 1968.  Guy Hocquenghem and Christine Delphy were members.

In the cartoon, take a look at the women in the right hand corner: you have one woman pointing her finger as if she is telling the other woman how it is, but really her desire for the other woman is blocked, a blocked erotic desire if you will...  a desire that is repressed in society. 

The big bubble emanating from the woman pointing her finger depicts men (and some women) who are unaware of or unable to act on the same-sex desire that they feel.  Rather, they feel this desire through gender and sexual violence or through homosocial bonding.

In the other image of the two women making love in the right hand corner, they are somehow escaping this whole process of violence through their "liberated desire" for one another.

See Michael Moon's introduction to Homosexual Desire by Guy Hocquenghem (pages 11-16) for more on this cartoon.  I credit him for bringing this cartoon to my attention and for the above description.

envisioning a lesbian revolution

thanks goes to carolyn gage for allowing me to reblog her wonderfully written piece on monique wittig's literary works, which i believe have revolutionary potential.

______________________________________________________________

Copyright 2003 Carolyn Gage

Originally published in off our backs, vol. xxxiv, Washington, DC.

Click here to see original link.

 Monique Wittig: In Memoriam

I began writing and researching lesbian literature in the early 1980’s. As a playwright, I was not just looking for my history, but I was searching for different paradigms and new/old archetypes from a culture that had been buried or appropriated. The so-called “classic” dramas were male narratives, obsessed with possession and overthrow, especially of father figures. The women were obstacles, rewards, or objects of exchange in the bloody transactions between men. This was not a template I could customize by the mere switching of pronouns.

And, of course, the so-called universal archetypes of this drama were happy housewives, glorying in their upwardly mobile marriages, or depressing martyrs and victims. The spunky women, like the mid-life, cast-off wife Medea, go mad with jealousy and murder their own children. The women excluded from male hierarchies waste their lives in futile gestures, like Antigone. The captive, raped, colonized survivor, like Cassandra, is doomed to a post-traumatic scenario of recounting her tale of atrocity to a population who will not or cannot believe her. And so on…

This was my “heritage” as a Western playwright. Obviously, I could not tell a lesbian story with these colonial archetypes or dominance paradigms. Nor did I want to write superficial lesbian sit-coms, or endless parodies or critiques of patriarchal drama for a rising elite of post-modern, faux feminists to consume. It is, of course, impossible to ignore this toxic theatre legacy, but rather than batter at the gates of this boys’ club in vain attempts to gain entry, I wanted to look back and down on it from the perspective of a fully-realized, lesbian-centered narrative.

Where would I turn for my narrative histories? Where was the lesbian-feminist equivalent of the Bible, or the Koran, or the Bhagavad Gita? Where was my Iliad, my Odyssey? Who would be my Homer?

And this is when I discovered the writings of Monique Wittig. I found them among the used paperbacks in a women’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon. The Lesbian Body. The Guérilières. The Opoponax. Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary. Wittig was generating archetypes and paradigms. She was writing about ancient matriarchal cultures that, paradoxically, were contemporaneous with ours. She was reclaiming goddesses, students of Sappho, the Vietnamese Trung sisters of 40 AD. She was not just going back in archeological time, but she was also going back in archetypal time by re-membering lesbian childhood from the eyes of the child in The Opoponax, bringing back the magical thinking of children, where the mythical beast of resistance, the opoponax, is congruent with the intense, wonder-filled discoveries of the developing mind.

I am the opoponax. You must not provoke him all the time the way you do. If you have trouble combing your hair in the morning you mustn't be surprised. He is everywhere. He is in your hair. He is under your pillow when you go to sleep. Tonight he will make you itch all over so badly that you won't be able to go to sleep. When dawn comes behind the window tomorrow morning you will be able to see the opoponax sitting on the window sill. I am the opoponax.

Wittig was writing about the fluid social configurations of women not bounded by heteropatriarchal obsessions with virginity and paternity. She was writing about the volcanic fury that formerly enslaved women direct toward each other and toward themselves:

Six of the women are none too many to hold her. Her mouth is open. Inarticulate words and cries are heard. She stamps the ground with her feet. She twists her arms to free them from the grip, she shakes her head in every direction. At a given moment she lets herself fall to the ground, she strikes the ground with her arms, she rolls about shrieking. Her mouth seizes the earth and spits it out. Her gums bleed. Words like death blood blood burn death war war war are heard. Then she tears her garments and bangs her head on the ground until she falls silent, done for. Four of the women carry her, singing, Behind my eyelids/ the dream has not reached my soul/ whether I sleep or wake/ there is no rest.

She was writing an eroticism that did not privilege the genitals, one that asked us to envision lesbian sexuality in radical new ways:

The kaleidoscope game consists of inserting a handful of yellow blue pink mauve orange green violet flies beneath someone’s eyelids, m/ine for instance. They are really tiny flies minute insects, their peculiarity lies in the bizarre intensity of their colours. You place them between m/y eyelid and m/y eyeball despite m/y protestations and laughter.

She was also celebrating women’s capacity for savagery.

The women say they have learned to rely on their own strength. They say they are aware of the force of their unity. They say, let those who call for a new language first learn violence. They say, let those who want to change the world first seize all the rifles. They say that they are starting from zero. They say that a new world is beginning.

Wittig reclaimed and venerated the intricacies of the vulva in the “feminaries” that were distributed among the girls of in her tribe of women warriors:

The women say the feminary amuses the little girls. For instance three kinds of labia minora are mentioned there. The dwarf labia are triangular. Side by side, they form two narrow folds. They are almost invisible because the labia majora cover them. The moderate-sized labia minora resemble the flower of a lily. They are half-moon shaped or triangular. They can be seen in their entirety taut supple seething. The large labia spread out resemble a butterfly's wings. They are tall triangular or rectangular, very prominent.

Then, consistent with her commitment to anarchy, she has the feminaries destroyed:

The women say that it may be that the feminaries have fulfilled their function. They say they have no means of knowing. They say that thoroughly indoctrinated as they are with ancient texts no longer to hand, these seem to them outdated. All they can do to avoid being encumbered with useless knowledge is to heap them up in the squares and set fire to them. That would be an excuse for celebrations.

Wittig is clear that patriarchal languages is a language of ownership, and that women must resist it:

The women say, the language you speak poisons your glottis tongue palate lips. They say, the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say, the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated. Whatever they have not laid hands on, whatever they have not pounced on like many-eyed birds of prey, does not appear in the language you speak

The women say, I refuse henceforward to speak this language, I refuse to mumble after them the words lack of penis lack of money lack of insignia lack of name. I refuse to pronounce the names of possession and non-possession. They say, If I take over the world, let it be to dispossess myself of it immediately, let it be to forge new links between myself and the world.

Wittig worked with some of the classical goddesses and myths, envisioning her lover at a gathering with Artemis, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Persephone, and host of other female deities. She retold the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, with a female protagonist descending into hell to bring back her reluctant, self-loathing lover, who begs her at every step to abandon her to her misery. She offers a paean to Sappho, describing a violet rain that irradiates the naked body of her beloved. In Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary, co-written with Sande Zeig, she not only reclaims all kinds of goddesses and mythical figures, but describes various ages (“Steam Age,” “the Concrete Age”), characterizing the present era as “the Glorious Age,” thereby attempting to perpetuate and memorialize a myth of her own making:

For almost two millenniums lesbians had been represented with glories around their heads. This was mistaken for a sign of sanctity and was not yet recognized as a form of energy. When the companion lovers appeared to one another in their brilliance and were able to stand the sight, they caught and used this energy that they immediately called “glorious.” From which comes the “Glorious Age.”

Wittig was, single-handedly, generating ancestral memories and cultural prototypes. She was, as she said, “Starting with zero.” And she did more than imagine a past and a future for lesbians. She realized them—that is, made them real—and then reported back to us from the center of that new reality. She was an anarchistic pioneer, smashing through men’s civilizations to reveal a primitive wildness and promise that have always existed in possibility.

The obligatory and all-but-overtly sneering obituaries for Wittig in the mainstream press do not do her justice. They desiccate and desecrate her work in their attempts to get at it, but it remains inaccessible to outsiders. The succulence of Wittig’s writing is in the juice—which like the vaginal secretions she names “cyprine”– is distinctly lesbian.

The greatest tribute we can offer to this visionary foremother of lesbian-feminism is to take her writings to heart. And she has left us an injunction for this dazzling lesbian revolution that fluttered with such bizarre intensity behind her eyelids… Listen:

There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember… You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.

mary lambert's music video "secrets"

monique wittig's trojan horse

click on the following image to see my infographic that i created.

it is on Monique Wittig's idea of the trojan horse.

it is a call for revolution which Wittig sees as an act of invention and as a breaking away from preconceived notions.

check it out and feel free to share!

"dear straight people" by denice frohman

5678! by butterfly boucher

You wanna know how love is made
You wanna see the world change
Well gather all your people 'round
And listen for the countdown

(Five, six, seven, eight)

It's a science
And the beat is our alliance
But once you have it
There is method to the madness

The sky is falling, this is true
Been falling since I fell for you
The feeling of deja vu
And no one does it like you do

It's a science
And the beat is our alliance
But once you have it
There is method to the madness

(Five, six, seven, eight)

Oh, it's a chemical attraction
Can you feel it?
It's the sound of satisfaction

(So you think you can dance, do you?
So you think you can dance, do you?
Honey, everybody thinks they can dance
Watch me dance)

And no one does it like you do

(Five, six, seven, eight)

It's a science
And the beat is our alliance
But once you have it
There is method to the madness

(Five, six, seven, eight)

Oh, it's a chemical attraction
Can you feel it?
It's the sound of satisfaction

(Watch me dance)

STAR Consent Campaign PSA

i developed this Consent Campaign PSA for STAR, Sexual Trauma Awareness & Response.

renversement

renversement

noun

1. the act of beginning anew without naturalization or predetermination

2. the creation of new forms

3. the act of invention, upheaval, revolution, subversion

4. freedom

renversement is the refusal to install another political form.  it is the idea that freedom cannot be founded.

to be free and to act are the same.

Sources:

On Monique Wittig: Theoretical, Political and Literal Essays edited by Namascar Shaktini

The Straight Mind by Monique Wittig

break free by ruby rose

A short film about gender roles and what it is like to have an identity that deviates from the status quo.

Cameron Esposito

"I was walking on stage not too long ago, and before I even hit the mic, this dude sitting in the front row just yells at me ‘you look like a woman who doesn’t sleep with men!’. He yelled that at me like as if I don’t know. He yelled that at me like it was going to be a surprise, and an insult. Here’s the thing: I look like a woman who doesn’t sleep with men because I am a lesbian… and that’s one of the biggest parts. This look, this is on purpose. To attract women."

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Oppression

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers asks a panel of scientists what genetic differences could explain why there are fewer women in science.

Neil deGrasse Tyson responds with his experiences as a black man growing up with the many societal roadblocks to becoming a scientist: i.e. "Don't you want to become an athlete?"

Tyson says: "Before we start talking about genetic differences, you have to come up with a system where there is equal opportunity. Then we can have that conversation."

I love that he does this gracefully without tearing down or resorting to attacking President Lawrence Summers. He gives his own perspective based on his experiences rather than focusing on attacking someone else's perceptions.

http://www.upworthy.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-reveals-that-hes-been-black-his-whole-life-hilarity-and-wisdom-follow?g=2&c=hpstream

Take a look at what sexual consent looks like. Laci Green gives really clear visuals and she's incredibly funny!

Religious Patriarchs

so last night was the vagina monologues... and we had protesters. a few of us went out to talk to them, telling them that their posters and presence may be triggering to sexual assault survivors... at one point one of the women said that the play promotes lesbianism. i immediately shouted out, pointing at myself, "lesbian, right here!" proving her point no doubt, which i actually have no problem with -- what is wrong with "promoting" lesbianism after all? why is that a "bad" thing to do? -- i could not help declaring my existence, an act of confirming my existence and making myself visible to them.

they were preaching that women needed to "get back in place" in order to be "moral" beings again: chaste, pure, de-sexed... they also had a sign that said the vagina monologues demeans women. they said the play encourages masturbation, which they considered dirty and immoral. i asked them what was wrong with masturbating. i knew it was futile to say anything (they *knew* my soul was condemned to hell and that I had "lost" my way... paternalism at its best), but it's just such a curious worldview, one i can't help but want to understand... i know understanding it, understanding their beliefs, will help me figure out how this patriarchal society keeps itself alive.

The Incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls in Love

A love story between two young women in high school of different social and economic backgrounds who find themselves going through all the typical struggles of a new romance. Released in 1995, it is a great example of the social struggles lesbians go through.

Review by Sarah Warn on afterellen.com

Randy Dean (played by Laurel Holloman), a white girl from the wrong side of the tracks who lives with her lesbian aunt and her aunt’s girlfriend after her fanatically religious mother left her to work with Operation Rescue full-time. Randy is the school outcast, laughed at and called a “dyke” by the other kids because she looks kind of butch and “acts like a man”.

The girl she has a crush on is Evie (Nicole Ari Parker), a feminine, college-bound upper-class black girl who has lived alone with her mother (a developing-nations consultant) since her father divorced her mother when Evie was four to marry a white woman.

The two girls go to the same school, but move in completely different circles: Evie hangs with the popular girls, and Randy with her geeky gay friend Frank. They meet late in their senior year when Evie has car trouble and asks for help at the gas station where Randy works, then later, end up in detention together. The girls form a friendship outside of school in which Evie introduces Randy to the wonder of opera and Walt Whitman, and Randy introduces Evie to her unique family and the wonders of being a social outcast.

 Click here for full review.

Malcolm X

Whenever someone doesn't quite understand the world as I do or if they don't quite get what they're saying is problematic, I always think of this quote by Malcolm X:

“Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.”

"If these Walls Could Talk 2" on Lesbianism

Review by Sarah Warn on afterellen.com

"If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000) focuses on lesbian lives in three different eras/segments over a forty year period, framed within a single house. This is a thoughtful, issue-driven drama about some of the challenges lesbians face, and the change in cultural attitudes over time towards women who love women.

The first piece is set in 1961 and it opens at a screening of The Children’s Hour, a movie that was at that time extremely provocative and controversial because of the suggestion of lesbianism as the central theme. We see two older women, watching the movie together with tears streaming down their faces.

The viewer has to make the leap that if these women are at least sixty years old, they were born around the turn of the century and hit adulthood, possibly coming out to themselves and a select few other women, in the twenties. So they have been probably been exposed to social scorn and ridicule their entire lives.

This segment sets up that feeling of contemporary uneasiness between the couple and the society around them, but doesn’t fill in much of a backstory for the women.

Tragedy strikes when one of the women, Abby (Marian Seldes) is injured and her long time partner Edith (Vanessa Redgrave) cannot see her in the hospital. This piece is really about silence, and how Edith must remain silent about her relationship to Abigail, and then mourn silently. Much of the subject matter in 1961 is very timely to the recent focus on same sex marriage, since it deals not just with the emotional loss of a partner, but the rights lost because these women couldn’t claim each other as legal spouses.

"1972", the second segment, is a story about Linda (Michelle Williams), an out lesbian in a group of budding young lesbian feminist college students, including her two best friends played by Natasha Lyonne and Nia Long.

Linda and her friends decide to visit the gay bar in town for some consolation and adventure, but find a surprising clash of cultural values, philosophy, and wardrobe there. Not fitting into that environment either, the group decides to leave — but Linda, enchanted and intrigued by the politically incorrect butch lesbian Amy (Chloe Sevigny), decides to stay. Linda finds herself falling for Amy, she must deal with the disapproval not only of society as a whole, but her own friends, who mock Amy for her appearance.

The final segment, "2000", introduces us to an affluent, middle aged lesbian couple in the process of trying to conceive a child. Ellen DeGeneres is hilarious and touching as Kal, the doting partner of Fran (Sharon Stone). This is a charming story of the agony, for two women, of not being able to bring about the intentional physical manifestation of love, a child, without outside intrusion/assistance.

Ellen is surprisingly good in the role of the supportive, non-child bearing spouse who would like nothing better than to get her partner pregnant. Stone is a goofy, screwball femmey lesbian that shines in her moments of grounding the couple and showing tenderness to her partner.

See original link to this article here.

Sports and Homophobia

"Dale Hansen, a host on Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate WFAA, took it upon himself to point out the inherent paradox of this entire homophobic debacle. Watch him perfectly sum up what's wrong with the NFL being uncomfortable with homosexuality while simultaneously tolerating a host of other questionable behaviors from other men in the league like sexual assault."

See the article here.
 

Ellen Page

Watch Ellen Page come out as gay in this amazing speech. It's very moving.

"It’s weird because here I am, an actress, representing—at least in some sense—an industry that places crushing standards on all of us. Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me. You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard."

queer reflection

everything is drag.

young and gay in putin's russia

last june 2013, russia banned queers from coming out, banning them from publicly displaying their identity.

since this legislation has become law, there has been a dramatic increase in violent attacks against queers.

similar to america banning queer self-expression by outlawing or ignoring queer marriage here in many states in order to save the (heterosexual) family, russia has banned queers from self-identifying in public in order to protect the children.

both america and russia continue to subjugate queers to a life of second class citizenship.

these laws instituted in america, russia, nigeria, and increasing all around the world have legitimated hatred against queers.

watch the 30 minute documentary below where stonewall international travels to russia to investigate the situation.

monique wittig

freedom

if we are not free now, we are not free at all. freedom is not something we fight for. it is something found within and spreads like wildfire.

a real woman

You are a member of society
You are a member of reality
Do you think it's time that you are called upon?
Do you think it's time that you are seen to be you?

You are real, you exist
You are sane, you're alive
You are here, you are fine
You are you, because you're real

Do you think a lot about the world today?
Do you think a lot about what to say?
Everything you say, it should be listened to
Everything you say, well, it should be understood

You are real, you exist
You are sane, you're alive
You are dreaming, you're a person
You are happy, because you're real

Please show me what it's like to be real
Please show me what it's like to be you
Everything, that is, including me
That's how it is in reality
Everything, that is, including you
That's how it is in reality

Do you have an edge of satisfaction?
Do you have an air of satisfaction?
I want you to tell me that it's what I'm worth
I want you to tell me that I'm significant

You are real, you have feelings
You're important, you have feelings
You are worth it, you have feelings
You're really real, you have feelings
You are real, you exist
You are sane, you're alive
You're impressive, you're important
You are smoking, because you're real

genderqueer

I identify as genderqueer. This is both a personal and political identity. I reject society's need to categorize us into feminine and masculine roles that limit our human ability to be authentic. Why must we live up to these standards of being a 'real' man or the 'perfect' woman? I say we are more than these categories, and we can only achieve authenticity when we can break free from gender roles.

Feminism was and is the idea that gender roles are oppressive and limiting. I respect second wave feminism and radical feminism and have read many from that time period. I have learned a lot from them and continue to read them. I have read Dworkin, Firestone, Wittig, de Beauvoir, Carol Hanisch, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, radicalesbians, etc.

I understand that the queer movement suppresses and/or ignores the needs of women and those assigned female at birth (i.e. ‘girls’). How often do we hear about transwomen but not of transmen? How often do we hear of the needs of gay men, but not of lesbians? Those assigned female at birth are ignored and dismissed because under a system of patriarchy the concerns of "girls" are second to men.

However, I do believe that the queer movement has validity, and I respect them just as much as I respect feminism. They have given us a language to speak about breaking down these barriers of femininity and masculinity, to diffuse these roles so that others can take them up and transform them.

Firestone says, “The sex role system divides human experience; men and women live in these different halves of reality; and culture reflects this.” She goes on to argue that women need to be fully integrated into larger society… that women’s role in society need to be diffused into the wider culture so that women are no longer oppressed by their roles as mother, wife and sex object.

The queer movement to me is one process that is conducive to this process… they are attempting to break down these strict, oppressive identities where all females are to embody femininity while all males are to go along with masculinity. A queer identity allows for difference, something other than what has been possible to imagine.

It is not the queer movement that I have a particular problem with. It is a system based in heterosexism I have a problem with…

Our entire society is built around the suppression of women and ‘deviants.’ Even feminism is not free of it. Women’s oppression is a societal problem, not just the problem of individual movements.

existence and subordination

"Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making, the subject seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination." -Judith Butler

I would argue that these gender categories give us a sense of existence, a way of feeling we are real. For example, I identify strongly with being a lesbian queer feminist. The way I dress, the way I move and act and talk is informed by this. It is a political act because we know that what we think of as personal is in fact also political. It is a political and personal act because it helps define us and find others who identify similarly or find others who are open to us. When we identify as something or present ourselves a certain way, we are sending out a signal to others about what we do with our bodies (even if erroneously). Gender can also be subversive when it breaks norms. For example, I break what it means in our society for a female to be a woman. I have short hair, wear men’s clothing, often don’t shave nor wear makeup, and identify as a lesbian. Because I break these norms, my identity is often questioned, often even to the point of harassment. This is because my identity is not supposed to exist. Only “straight” “women” and “men” are supposed to exist. Everything outside that is subordinate, deviant.

Yet, this identity is also oppressive, as all identities are a type of subordination, whether you identify as “straight”, “man”, “woman”, “gay”, “trans”, etc. A gendered identity is an oppressive identity because gender is a mechanism of perception that automatically categorizes us, even falsely. We are caught up in something our language has defined for us. And our language is caught up in heteropatriarchy. Under an oppressive society, our language is oppressive, therefore those identities formed under that language are oppressive. As someone who identifies as a “lesbian,” I am caught up in a heteropatriarchal identity that can never fully define me nor my sexuality. Same goes with “queer” and any other identity formed under heteropatriarchy.

Heteropatriarchy is obsessed with categorizing our gender and sexuality so that it may keep us under a system of subordination instead of allowing us our full fluidity. 

fear

witches

I'm trying to learn more about the history of the witch burnings during the 1500-1700. This was an historical event that delegitimized and wiped out women healers (i.e. witches) in order to establish the male medical model. These healers were once respected members of society, but a smear campaign began in order to gain power over healing. This new model of medicine took over and professionalized healing, barring women from entering the profession since only men were allowed to be trained. Women were allowed back in but only as helpmates, who we recognize today as nurses.