Political Lesbianism as a Viable Option for Feminism
Heterosexual relationships, even in the modern-day, illustrate vast disparities in the gender roles between man and the woman. For example, in terms of housework, women are left with the most work to do in the relationship whereas men, even in more egalitarian households, continually tend to do less work than their wives. Women also bear the weight in the public sphere of taking time off of work to bear children, something interviewers do not take into consideration when interviewing men. In this post, I will argue that political lesbianism, or heterosexual women willingly choosing to end their sexual relations with men, is a viable option for feminism. The lack of sexual relations is used as a defiance to the patriarchy by making a choice that does not put men in positions of male superiority. Essentially, this view allows women to choose their sexual orientation based off of the political results they want as feminists. The argument is outlined below:
1. If feminist, heterosexual women should not make choices that put men in positions of power, then political lesbianism is a viable option for feminism.
2. Feminist, heterosexual women should not make choices that put men in positions of power.
3. Political lesbianism is a viable option for feminism.
In terms of the second premise, heterosexual women who consider themselves feminists should be wary of any actions they engage in that places men above women in the social order. I use the word ‘wary’ as some of these patriarchal actions may not be overtly clear to all feminists. This results in a sort of ‘choosing’ of one’s sexual orientation because even if you choose not to undergo sexual orientation with either gender you would still be choosing asexuality. This can be a viable form of feminism because it allows for the action of sex, which typically demonstrates men as aggressive and dominant and women to be subordinate and passive, to be removed from the sphere of heterosexual interactions. This, as a result, removes the disparity in the treatment of genders through sexual interaction. Also, my argument is not suggesting all women engage in political lesbianism, rather it is suggesting that if heterosexual women find this to be a relevant option towards achieving equality, then it is a viable course for feminism.
1. If feminist, heterosexual women should not make choices that put men in positions of power, then political lesbianism is a viable option for feminism.
2. Feminist, heterosexual women should not make choices that put men in positions of power.
3. Political lesbianism is a viable option for feminism.
In terms of the second premise, heterosexual women who consider themselves feminists should be wary of any actions they engage in that places men above women in the social order. I use the word ‘wary’ as some of these patriarchal actions may not be overtly clear to all feminists. This results in a sort of ‘choosing’ of one’s sexual orientation because even if you choose not to undergo sexual orientation with either gender you would still be choosing asexuality. This can be a viable form of feminism because it allows for the action of sex, which typically demonstrates men as aggressive and dominant and women to be subordinate and passive, to be removed from the sphere of heterosexual interactions. This, as a result, removes the disparity in the treatment of genders through sexual interaction. Also, my argument is not suggesting all women engage in political lesbianism, rather it is suggesting that if heterosexual women find this to be a relevant option towards achieving equality, then it is a viable course for feminism.
Comments (78)
There is not much feminist discussion here on the forum. I hope you find enough positive reaction to make it worth your while to hang around.
Just so you'll know where I'm coming from, I'm a straight male. I have a couple of thoughts:
Is this a call for reverse discrimination?
Quoting Bridget Eagles
This is a call for self awareness. Good advice for all.
I suppose it is a relevant option, however I’m skeptical that one can easily choose their sexual orientation. How is this achieved, through some form of conversion therapy?
Wouldn't it be easier to just find a guy that does his share of the housework? Maybe one that doesn't want children to solve the pregnancy imbalance?
By the way, for the birthers, picking guys that do their share of the housework will likely result in a higher percent of babies born that grow up to be guys willing to do their share of the work.
Quoting Bridget Eagles
Surely any individual has the right to make this choice, but will it affect the "patriarchy" in any way if 8% (18%? 48%?) of women become political lesbians? Surely the biggest offending males (picture the current US president) will still attract most of the remaining females, right? So the system remains, just with a few more disgruntled beta males...some percent of which will unquestionably blame the current (hypothetical) trend of political lesbianism for their problems (even though they are wrong, it shows that your plan may actually increase the number of males that view females as inferior).
Quoting Bridget Eagles
I think this approach is too much virtue ethics and not enough consequentialism. "Giving power to the patriarchy is wrong so one should never do that" seems to be your position, where I would be more concerned with "which actions lead to a more equal distribution of power?" and I don't see how your argument would help with that...but I am a novice around here so I could be missing something :smile:
Hahaha, too bad the women caved once an initial peace occurred. A bit of determination in that direction could have changed the world.
In the animal kingdom, male and female animals always have different roles. If that were not the case, there would be no point in having two sexes. It does indeed not make sense to participate in sexual reproduction, if you object to its very nature.
Participation is not mandatory.
Everywhere across the animal kingdom, males are made to overcome serious hurdles in order to gain the privilege of sexual reproduction. Females can just walk away from sexual reproduction, and they often do. In human society, females are not required to participate either, if they do not need any financial contribution from a male for themselves or any offspring.
On the other hand, men are not required to make any financial contribution to women who do not need them; also not through government funding. Otherwise, society becomes based on contradictory principles.
Women who say that they do not need a man, often mean that they will still get money from the government anyway. And where does the government get the money from? Mostly from the men, of course.
In a society where women claim that they do not need men, for reasons of consistency, there is a compelling requirement to prevent the government from appropriating resources, as to strictly prevent government-controlled redistribution of male resources to female recipients who do not need males.
The generosity of the posters in this thread to your solution that women should eat pussy in order to alleviate societal male dominance is either (1) heartingly progressive, or (2) evidence of lack of critical thinking. I choose (2), not at all because I'm challenging your thesis that men have certain societal advantages, but because sexual activity is simply not Rosa Parkesque civil rights activity.
Anti-individualist, prejudicial and delusional but worst of all, your argument doesn't make sense even within the framework of tribal thinking and belief in the patriarchy. "Political lesbianism" is toothless, it amounts to nothing more than a hateful and unpragmatic temper tantrum. Whatever authority the group of "man" has won't dissipate just because women refuse to engage in relationships. Whatever authority the group of "man" has could be utilised by women through sexual partnerships with men. And something like women within partnerships withholding sex as others have compared your plan to, which has merit is out the window with your suggestion.
Feminism actually needs to take a step far back from your approach and focus on equality of opportunity, point to instances where women are not free to do what they want to do and doing something about it. Feminists don't diagnose problems correctly, their solutions are pathological and tribal and they're disinterested in complexity. If women are doing X more then men or anything like that, it must be because men are tyrannical and society is prejudiced against women and we need to reform society. That's the feminist diagnosis and solution to nearly every problem they're faced with now.
And yes, as others have said, you can't choose your sexual orientation. That's mistaken and offensive.
Damn. You win this one. I wish I'd have thought of putting it that way. :lol:
I mean, it would be pretty cool symbolically. At best I think it's a reactive strategy rather than a proactive one though; 'stop this specific thing which is bad' rather than 'reshape the world thusly'.
This is really reductive though, all gender disparity in everything will be removed by turning select heterosexual women in committed relationships into sexual gatekeepers? Doubt it.
There is still a difference between sexual orientation and engaging in hate speech on the other gender. I have never heard gay men saying hateful things about women, irrespective of the fact that they don't fancy them sexually. There seems to be a real need to rein in the lesbian hate speech on men.
This isn't exactly helping. I would welcome [I]sensible[/I] discussion on feminism.
Philosophers would rather be in their study on their own writing a lengthy treatise on something that doesn't matter. Conclusion: philosophers aren't men. Conclusion: philosophers must be women. Or cats. No, cats would rather be curled up asleep. Gerbils?
Quoting unenlightened
Precisely. A rather Victorian attitude.
I have two problems with the OP's argument.
Quoting Bridget Eagles
Considering that most women want to continue having heterosexual relationships, how does it help them for feminists to disavow such relationships? How can it achieve the desired political results? Is it a symbolic protest? It seems to me it would make feminism look utopian at best, ridiculous at worst, thus damaging the progress towards equality. Less obviously, for feminists to abandon heterosexual relationships weakens their claim to be fighting for equality within those relationships, because it looks like an admission that those relationships are inherently unequal.
Generally speaking it looks like a political attack on women, rather than on men. Of course, for feminists this is far from unprecedented.
Quoting Bridget Eagles
Not all sex between men and women is like that, but granting that a lot of it is, this still doesn't look like a good move. A feminist should if she wants, without rejecting feminism, desire to be dominated in the bedroom while at the same time fighting for a fair distribution of duties like housework and childcare. To take all differences between men and women as examples of patriarchy is to turn feminism into a caricature. Does equality really depend on a lack of disparity during sex? Do you really want to make feminism depend on that? If male dominance in sex is ineradicable (not to mention desired by and fulfilling and enriching for women), is feminism thereby rendered wrong?
I'm not sure I'd be inclined to stick around to talk much given the level of engagement in most of the responses. Even amongst some of the people who are normally sensible. Look at how many people seemed to have missed the following line in the OP:
Yet here we are, with half the thread acting like someone is proposing every woman desperate to have sex with men is meant to be a political lesbian.
Well now we know the person behind the video cameras in everyone's home, I suppose.
None or very few of the responses assume that she's proposing that, as far as I can tell. I for one did notice that bit, and it doesn't make any difference.
...yet she wasn't proposing it at all, as stated in her last paragraph.
Several responses are working under the idea OP is suggesting every woman be a political lesbian, hence the handwringing over the question of when and if women will have sex with someone they find attractive.
They've entirely missed that the political lesbian is being considered from the point of individual here. It's not being posed as a grand goal all woman partake in to achieve the grand society.
The question is focused on something far more localised: whether women avoided sexual relationships/sexuality with men is a viable individual response to avoiding certain patriarchal relationships in their lives (which it is, since a man cannot dominate one in a patriarchal relationship order if he is not there).
There are some responses that seem quite hysterical here over the suggestion that women can exercise their right to withhold sex, calling it a "tantrum," "hate speech," and derogatory descriptions of lesbian sexual acts.
Has the suggestion touched a nerve for some? Is the idea of women being sexually independent from men so scary for some?
But yes, most here are hearteningly unthreatened and rather open to curious discussion.
I think the suggestion is impractical, because the women open enough to feminist ideas to consider it are probably already with progressive, egalitarian men. It's people like Trump and Pence who need a dose of this, but somehow I don't see the likes of Melania and Karen considering this.
Seems to me BE's posts are getting more "out there" like she's (?) testing to see how far we're willing to go down the feminist rabbit hole.
It's more than just a notion of women withholding sex. To think that supposes women were there to have sex with men in the first place, hence the withholding part, rather than just not partaking.
The very idea of political lesbianism is drawn up against this notion. Political lesbians aren't heterosexuals in relationships with men in which they withhold sex. They are (sometimes) heterosexuals who make the choice not be with or for men at all. Rather than withholding sex from men who would otherwise get it, the political lesbian is holding a position she is not for the desire of men at all.
I know. :confused:
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
You already said that, and I can't see much evidence of it, as I've already said.
I assumed the OP was just being sensational.
Although, the greatest advocates of Christian sexual suppression were women. It freed women from the chains of childbirth and allowed them to simply be human within convent walls. We have birth control now, though.
Fair enough. Although I don't think their rude dismissiveness was a reaction to the idea that women choose to "withhold sex" from men, but to the arresting idea that feminists' avoidance of heterosexual relationships is in some way progressive.
No, I think it supposes that both men and women are sexual creatures for whom that is an important part of a fulfilled life.
I think there is value in analyzing even sensational ideas, because it allows us to uncover why we think it's so sensational in the first place.
See for example the difference between posters here pointing to the obvious impracticalities of the notion, versus those who just dismiss it as "man-hating."
Quoting Bridget Eagles
A small semantic point, but you should be using the term "sexual behaviour", not "sexual orientation".
I think the idea is more radical and interesting than that, namely that one intentionally takes on a different sexual orientation by sheer political will. It's radical and interesting because we're accustomed now to thinking that sexual orientation is not chosen, so self-consciously choosing a different one becomes a striking act of subversion. At least, that seems to be the idea.
This is so stupid, I'm not going to bother responding.
Ok. It's true. When you meet your first one, think of me.
It's astonishing that someone could be so entitled.
Newsflash, someone not being interested in you sexually, is not malice. It just means you don't do it for them.
Wasn't it you who asked about touched nerves?
Because I'm calling out bigotry for what it is?
Some women hate men. Some of them embrace lesbianhood and feminism with malice.
Are you not familiar with the word "Breeder?"
Under what rock have you been living?
I don't see how this is an appropriate reply to @frank's comment. He simply pointed out that there are sexist women as well as sexist men. Accusing him of entitlement and making presumptions about his relationships (or lack thereof) with women is a non sequitur and an ad hominem.
He's calling embracing "lesbianhood" malicious. How is that not both entitled and bigoted? Sure, only "some," but it still means he thinks not having sex with men is about being mean to men.
For the record, I don't think we should ever allow the assumption that any woman under any circumstances not having sex with men is somehow malicious and meant to harm the man.
That's not what he said. He said that "there are women who hate men and embrace lesbianhood and feminism with unveiled malice".
Quoting Artemis
It doesn't mean that at all.
It means that it sometimes is, which is just as disgusting.
What he's saying is that there are some women who hate men and so embrace lesbianism and feminism. The SCUM Manifesto might be a notable example of that.
Yes, there are women who hate men.
Yes, there are feminists and lesbians.
No, you cannot be malicious toward a person by refusing to bed them.
He's not saying that they're malicious because they're lesbians; he's saying that they're lesbians because they're malicious.
Where's the difference? Both ways it assumes malice behind refusing to sleep with someone. Whether your malicious for refusing it or maliciously refusing it makes little diffference.
They aren't just hateful toward men. They also hate heterosexual women because they see them as upholding patriarchy. If you're heterosexual, they hate you.
You said we should examine sensational messages to see what we may learn. What you've had a chance to learn is that there are aspects of the world you don't know about.
There's a difference between saying that their lesbianism is an expression of malice (which frank isn't saying) and saying that their lesbianism is a consequence of their malice (which frank is saying).
It's presumptuous to assume that because I don't agree with you, I don't know what you're referring to.
My assertion of your bigotry rests solely on your assertion of malice.
How do you not see how that's a disgusting claim to make? No one is trying to hurt you by choosing to sleep with women. They just hate men and would rather die than be touched by them.
Go down to the LGBT community section. Read what it says about various uses of that word.
One of the uses will give you a window on some psychologically screwed up people. The coolest thing about this is that it gives you a way to aee that not all sexist men are really sexist. They just hate women because they're sick in the head.
A man-hating lesbian is also sick. Meet one, you'll see what I mean.
frank isn't claiming otherwise.
Quoting Artemis
That's exactly the point he's making. Some women hate men and so only engage in lesbian relationships (if any at all).
This conversation is going in circles. We're clearly just not going to agree. Which is sad, but I guess it is what it is.
The other threads received more amiable responses though, but there was no further engagement.
I am no expert, but I would assume the notion that ” the action of sex typically demonstrates men as aggressive and dominant and women to be subordinate and passive" is a controversial notion among feminists, and the premise of this thread would be considered a fringe position.
I don't think @Bridget Eagles's idea for gender segregation makes sense and reflects a lack of respect for men, but it isn't hate speech. I don't think it will be effective in meeting her goals on a societal scale, but it may on a personal level.
There was a thread started a bit more than a year ago by a man speculating that technological advances in the near future will make it possible for women to give birth without men. He proposed men be allowed to die out so that only women remained as a way of ending violence in society. I reacted ....vigorously to that thread. I said that writing something like that about women would never be allowed on the forum. Ultimately, the thread was deleted and the poster quit the forum.
@TimeLine and I talked that over and she made me recognize that pitting men against women here was not the way to deal with these issues. I wish she were here to participate in this discussion. She had a unique attitude toward relations between men and women. I'd like to hear what she has to say. Alas.
I certainly didn't miss that, and it certainly doesn't change my assessment of the opening post. It's not viable if there are much better, more sensible ways of dealing with the problems mentioned. It's not realistically viable at all for heterosexual women, purely on the basis that they're heterosexual women.
Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction by which offspring arise from a single organism, and inherit the genes of that parent only; it does not involve the fusion of gametes, and almost never changes the number of chromosomes. Asexual reproduction is the primary form of reproduction for single-celled organisms such as archaea and bacteria. Many plants and fungi sometimes reproduce asexually.
Instead of progress it rather looks like a throwback to the level of bacteria.
Humanity is a non-human technology. Well, life in general is a non-human technology. Saying anything that is provable about life means that it necessarily follows from the unknown construction logic, i.e. the real blueprint, of life. So, real progress would come from answering the question if it is even possible to discover that blueprint? To illustrate his understanding, this person could, for example, throw dead organic material in a glass and make it come to life. There are other things he should be able to achieve to illustrate the soundness of his purported blueprint, such as growing an artificial arm or a leg and reattach it to living body.
Fiddling with artificially-fabricated sperm without having a copy of the blueprint of life sounds quite dangerous to me. It is probably even more dangerous than inundating the market with opioids ...
But then again, I don't really care, because every misbehaviour tends to be its own punishment. I will just be laughing when it predictably goes wrong again.
And where do I fall in that? You have no idea how inappropriate those comments could be. How much do you know about me?
Yes indeed, otherwise it's a huge misnomer, and should instead be called political sexual abstinence, not political lesbianism. There's a huge difference there.
You tell me.
It's really not a small semantic point. It's very important. Getting that wrong is pretty offensive.
Okay. It might have touched a nerve, but certainly not based on your presumptuous suggestion that women being sexually independent from men is so scary. I tend to keep my sexuality rather private and ambiguous, and resist labels, but I can tell you that I've slept with both men and women, and I'm going to see a band tomorrow with my best friend and her girlfriend. I'm also largely asexual and haven't had sex for ages. Does that put things more into perspective for you?
I'm not threatened at all by any of this, but I'm only open to what my good sense will allow.
I wasn't writing about the issue we discussed in that previous thread, i.e. getting rid of men, I was writing about the attitude I try to take into discussions like this one.
So then why?
Heterosexual Men will desire political lesbian whether she likes it or not, depending on what she looks like. Shallow, sure, but likely true. Maybe political islamism is a better approach, because the best way to portray that you’re not for the desire of men is to walk around in something like a burka all day.
But that is not what women (lesbian or otherwise) are FOR.
All things contrary to good sense can touch a nerve for me. The topic could have been about almost anything, but if it's absurd then I'm not the type to shy away from saying so.
True that.
Wouldn’t it protect from the male gaze?
This feminist said as much regarding her conversion to Islam.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/14/opinion/muslim-convert-irpt/index.html
That's not a response to my post.
Let me check. Well, yes it was actually.
Nope.