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Tomorrow I am driving to Virginia. I'm looking forward to it so much. I also have to do laundry so I have clothes to wear while visiting Ev + Corto.
Um, yeah, fuck. I finally got an email from my professor about the "Lesbian Sex + Politics" reading course I was supposed to do with her last year. Due to, well, the fact that she never got in touch with me, I'm just doing it now. So anyway she sent me a very nice email telling me I'll have plenty of time to do the readings and the essay, and giving me a list of books to read. Okay. ( An excerpt, because I don't want to rehash it ) Right.
So, on one hand I am excited at the prospect of colliding with a view that very clearly does not have the same assumptions I do about a feminist project of gender and sexuality. I am excited at the prospect of reading more explicitly 'historical' work and theorists who focus more on 'lesbian and gay' than the 'queer' to which I have become accustomed.
On the other hand, holy fuck. Sheila Jeffreys?? This is so scary for me. The dichotomy between "masculinity" and "a redefined Other" seems so false to me. The very problematic of "80s lesbians are now 21st century trannyboys" fucks with me. There is a knot in the pit of my stomach at the prospect of having to read reams of Jeffreys' bullshit about how S/M and body modifications are self-mutilation and misogynist, about how butch/femme and other dynamics are inherently patriarchal and oppressive, about how trans people are anti-feminist. Having to read her consistently fuck up people's pronouns. I am seriously starting to cry right now.
So yeah. It will be a really great academic exercise to talk about how transgender identities have emerged as viable for folks who in other historical contexts might very well have identified otherwise. It will be great to get some bearing in lesbian history (and I love Audre Lorde). But the assumptions that I see underlying this coursework strike really close to home. I feel like my heart and my body and my ways of knowing and loving and fucking are laid bare.
Um, yeah, fuck. I finally got an email from my professor about the "Lesbian Sex + Politics" reading course I was supposed to do with her last year. Due to, well, the fact that she never got in touch with me, I'm just doing it now. So anyway she sent me a very nice email telling me I'll have plenty of time to do the readings and the essay, and giving me a list of books to read. Okay. ( An excerpt, because I don't want to rehash it ) Right.
So, on one hand I am excited at the prospect of colliding with a view that very clearly does not have the same assumptions I do about a feminist project of gender and sexuality. I am excited at the prospect of reading more explicitly 'historical' work and theorists who focus more on 'lesbian and gay' than the 'queer' to which I have become accustomed.
On the other hand, holy fuck. Sheila Jeffreys?? This is so scary for me. The dichotomy between "masculinity" and "a redefined Other" seems so false to me. The very problematic of "80s lesbians are now 21st century trannyboys" fucks with me. There is a knot in the pit of my stomach at the prospect of having to read reams of Jeffreys' bullshit about how S/M and body modifications are self-mutilation and misogynist, about how butch/femme and other dynamics are inherently patriarchal and oppressive, about how trans people are anti-feminist. Having to read her consistently fuck up people's pronouns. I am seriously starting to cry right now.
So yeah. It will be a really great academic exercise to talk about how transgender identities have emerged as viable for folks who in other historical contexts might very well have identified otherwise. It will be great to get some bearing in lesbian history (and I love Audre Lorde). But the assumptions that I see underlying this coursework strike really close to home. I feel like my heart and my body and my ways of knowing and loving and fucking are laid bare.
