[A few choice quotes:
"A personal decision in favor of heterosexuality is not the same as an analysis of its normative status. [...] You may think that you could not be anything other than straight, but that does not alter either the normative status of heterosexuality or the need for a feminist analysis of that status."
"Being gay does not determine your view of heterosexuality as a norm. [...] Rejecting straight relationships in your personal life is not the same as analyszing the norm that would make straight girls of us all."
"We reject the normative status of heterosexuality but not heterosexuality as one type of relationship among other, possible types."
I did a search on Google for Purple September, and aside from this essay, I saw only one comment about the group being involved in any early fight to open up a club called COC in Amsterdam to women/lesbians.
This essay says a lot, I think, that is relevant today, which is why I've bothered to take the time to type it up for distribution. Again, it doesn't seem to have gotten wide distribution in the academic community, but it seems to me that a pioneering analysis like this deserves broader consideration. It is also, much more less denigrative of women who choose a heterosexual path (although it doesn't mention bisexuality at all) than the article which follows it in the book, Bisexuality, which I distributed separately.
As bisexuals, we implicitly reject the heterosexual norm... and yet, in our heterosexual relationships, we constantly have to deal with the implicit conditioning we're given (I see this operate in my relationship all the time) and, yet... to me, as a bisexual, even my "straight" relationships have a queer tone to them. This article demands that we all consciously examine the presumption of heterosexuality that pervades our culture... twenty-seven years later, this is only just beginning to be discussed, even in the queer community and that of our allies... and that, I think, is as much a product of the emergence of the trans community into the light of day as our own internalized dialogue.
I like the way the debate is framed in this article, and the conclusion that it reaches. But then, I'm male, so perhaps I missed something?
Regards,
Thomas Leavitt]
The following article was sent to us from a group of Lesbian/feminists from Holland who put out a newspaper called Purple September. We are printing the article because we feel it furthers the discussion: Lesbianism is a Political Choice.
To many, feminism and lesbianism are two separate things that have little to do with each other. Feminism, they say, struggles against the oppression of all women and so its ranks are open to all women, straight or gay. What the feminist movement needs is solidarity among women regardless of the sexual and emotional preference of individual feminists.
An attractive line of thought, to be sure, but also one that overlooks a few things. To struggle against oppression--and to decide what is and what is not relevant in that struggle--you must first know what it is and how it occurs. You must know what the monster looks like, where it rears its ugly head and how it stays alive. All we can be sure of so far is that the inferior status of our sex continues to be reinforced in a great many different ways. The monster has many faces. We have been staring at one of them in particular over the last few years. Its name is female conditioning. The process known as consciousness raising has made women of all ages and every class aware of their childhood conditioning toward 'feminine' behavior, and of the catastrophic effects of that conditioning in their adult lives. As we grew up 'femininity' was definied for us in all sorts of ways, some explicit ('girls don't play football'), some implicit. One of the implicit definitions of 'feminitity' was heterosexuality.--'You just wait until you have a boyfriend.'--All parents view their daughters as future lovers of men; few realize that this is where conditioning begins. For parents not only cherish the thought that their little girl will grow into a normal woman, they also make sure she does.
No, oddly enough our heterosexual conditioning seems to be systematically barred from feminist analyses of women's oppression. I can think of only one explanation for this, and that is that boys are conditioned toward heterosexuality as well as girls. A 'real' man is a straight man, a 'real' woman is a straight woman. A gay fellow is effeminate, a gay woman, masculine. The straight norm applies to both sexes and thus does not count as part of the female conditioning as such.
Or so it seems, perhaps, to some, though not to me. The overall objective of female conditioning is to make women perceive themselves and their lives through male eyes and so to secure their unquestioning acceptance of a male-defined and male-derived existence. The overall objective of male conditioning is to make men perceive themselves and their lives through their own eyes and so to perpare them for an existence in and on their own terms. The combined effect of both ways of conditioning is , therefore, the perpetuation of a power relationship between the sexes. The fact that both sexes are exposed to straight conditioning does not prevent the *concept* of heterosexuality from being linked, in male and female conditioning respectively, to opposite things that have opposite meanings. In male conditioning, male heterosexuality is linked to the male prerogative of a human identity; in female conditioning, female heterosexuality is linked to the denial of that same identity.
As long as feminism is out to abolish the existing power releationship between the sexes is cannot ignore the normative status of heterosexuality. Yet this is precisely what it has, so far at least, ignored. True, there are feminists who claim to be fully conscious of their conditioning in sexual as well as other terms. That they continue to be straight is, they say, a matter of personal preference. The trouble with this is that we live in a culture which sanctions only heterosexuality. As a result you cannot convince anyone that you are straight by choice. But that is not all. A personal decision in favor of heterosexuality is not the same as an analysis of its normative status. And feminists cannot go on pretending that such an analysis is not needed. That is true whether you are a feminist who claims to be straight by choice or one that regards here hetereosexuality as fixed and unchangeable, a given as the color of her eyes. If it is a given in the life of one person, it has to be a given in the lives of all of us. And if that were so, no one would take the trouble to condition her children toward heterosexuality and culture could dispense with its taboos on, say, homosexuality. You may think that you could not be anything other than straight, but that does not alter either the normative status of heterosexuality or the need for a feminist analysis of that status.
Being gay does not determine your view of heterosexuality as a norm. If you are gay but have not come out, chances are you'd rather be straight. If you are gay and have come out, you may still consider yourself the victim of a cruel fate. If so, chances are you, too, would prefer to be straight. Rejecting straight relationships in your personal life is not the same as analysizing the norm that would make straight girls of us all. But as things stand now, not all the lavendar girls onor their straight sisters seem ready even to discuss it critically. Instead, the join hands in the struggle aginst the consequences of a norm which by tacit agreement is itself left undiscussed. As a result, gay women often are unable to ascribe to their own lesbianism a postive value that reaches beyond their personal lives. They cannot, that is, translate the value in feminist terms (nor integrate the two) because feminist terms are not personal. This is the gay counterpart of the impossibility of translating in feminist terms a personal decision in favor of heterosexuality. And so it turns out that from a feminist viewpoint it is indeed irrelevant whether feminists are straight or gay, but that is not the end of the story. Feminism does require that feminists *critically assess the normative status of heterosexuality* whether or not they abide by that norm in their personal lives.
The women of *Purple September* will take the bull by the horns here and now, if you wil pardon the expression. We reject the normative status of heterosexuality but not heterosexuality as one type of relationship among other, possible types. We do not doubt that there are straight relationships that derive their meaning and content from the people involved and not from the norm alone. But even in those relationships the male partner always has the option of falling back on 'masculine' behavior in the sense of his conditioning, thereby forcing his partner to fall back on 'feminine' acceptance in the sense of her conditioning. He has that option because the oppression of women by men has the status of a universal axiom: no one is surprised by 'axiomatic' behavior, but this is precisely how everyone confirms it. That is why the important thing is not that there are men who do not exercise the option they have. The important thing is that the option exists whether or not it is exercised.
The normative status of heterosexuality forces women to limit themselves sexually and emotionally to relationships with members of the caste that oppresses them, while denying them the possibility of establishing meaningful relationships with other women. Viewed in this light the straight norm is not really a sexual norm at all, but a powerful instrument in the perpetuation of the power relationship between the sexes.
Lesbianism can do nothing for the feminist cause as long as it is experienced and interpreted on the basis of tacit acceptance of the straight norm. For that reason we are not propagandists for the 'Greek way' (Lesbianism). But since we ourselves reject the straight norm we are able to experience our lesbianism as a (relative) given that integrates our feminism with our personal experience. Thus it is not lesbianism as such which is our choice, but its integrative function.