Callout for the Cuntspeak Carnival!

[demonista]

PREAMBLE FOR THE CARNIVAL here

This carnival takes it name from Jane Caputi's honourific theory of cuntspeak, in Not for Sale and here. This has also been started in part because of the past Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution. However, this carnival will also discuss positive sexuality.

I would like this carnival to be about things such as

Comments

[_allecto_]

I wasn't talking about intersexed or female genital mutilation. They are both very, very different that transsexualism. I don't agree that people born with dicks can have cunts. Therefore cuntspeaking would necessarily exclude persons born male.

but why should we, outside of patriarchy, class each other as such (eg genderneutral language)?

At present time there is no space outside of patriarchy. Gender neutrality does not exist, perhaps one day it will (I'm guessing many decades after I am dead), but for now it does not. Any attempt to erase he and she, merely erases she. I am not interested in being erased.

It was an open question, not a statement.

I would respectfully argue that this is not a question that bisexual or straight women should be opening up. Perhaps if lesbian feminists wanted to talk about it amongst themselves, but I've never seen a lesbian feminist worry about this question. To me, it sounds as if straight and bisexual women want permission to identify as political lesbians whilst still engaging in heterosexuality. I am totally not comfortable with this.

But good luck with putting it together. I hope it takes off, despite my personal disagreement with some of your ideas.

[demonista]

Not to start a confrontation, but do you think Heart is a lesbian feminist? As far as I know, her past partners have been male, as is her current one.

[_allecto_]

No, Heart is not a lesbian feminist.

[_allecto_]

But I don't really see what that has do with anything. I don't get it.

[demonista]

She calls herself one. And you quite like her.

re: erasing she leaves male to be the universal: hells yes. any reference to the female body is labeled essentialist!

have you read jeffreys anticlimax? in the last couple chapters she talks about how people should be classed as homo- or heterosexual not based on whether they are attracted to same or differently genitaled people, but based on whether they eroticise equality and sameness, or injustice and difference. So some heteros would actually be homosexual and vice versa. I really liked that theory. And her talk about virgin wives in the first chapter, and how some of the men weren't interested in sexually coercing their wives into intercourse. eg one couple had been together for 14 years, never having coitus, but engaging in mutual masturbation, which both were happy as clams with..."neurotic collusion" the doctors called it. :) *in short: book is awesome

[_allecto_]

She does? Where has she said she is a lesbian feminist. Link please.

[demonista]

This one says she'll achieve "clear-eyed lesbian gaze" sometime: "When Satsuma talks about the “clear-eyed lesbian gaze” I know *exactly* what she’s talking about, and honestly, it’s something I rarely see amongst heterosexual feminists, and it’s something I don’t think that I have, that “clear-eyed lesbian gaze,” but I’ll get there in time." Satsuma says she already has it. http://www.womensspace.org/phpBB2/2007/08/17/men-boys-sons-something-i-wrote-to-someone-i-love/

this is also ambivalent: http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2007/11/01/support-lesbian-feminist-filmmakers-build-local-womens-communities-order-and-show-the-gendercator/
as is http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/come-together-blog-carnival-march-22-2008-given-to-tears/ : comments 3 and 8

http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/05/28/on-what-radical-feminism-is-and-isnt-2/ : comments 30 and 33m, esp "I like to think of all of the women who are unhappily partnered with men (zillions), who are living miserably surrounded by men, who are lesbians and radical feminists, yet entangled with men and with patriarchy in a million ways, as a sort of “diaspora” of women, and I look to the time when, like me, they will be able to make their way back home."

there are a lot of hints, some strong, but nothing that i could find that was really concrete, eg heart saying "i am a lesbian feminist." i had actually assumed that she said she was, a lot of others have also said she was, maybe i'm wrong! :)

[_allecto_]

I didn't get from any of that that she identifies as or names herself a lesbian feminist. She relates strongly to lesbian feminist politics, she is completely committed to sisterhood with lesbian feminists but she doesn't call herself one, nor does she open it up for questioning that straight and bisexual women should/could identify as lesbian feminists.

I think if you asked her outright whether she was a lesbian feminist she would deny it upfront.

But this is all beside the point. Heart has not posted an offensive question as part of a carnival she is setting up. You have.

If Heart had posted this question then I would take her to account for it too.

Re: Sheila Jeffreys. Yes, I have read anticlimax. While I understood the content of what she was saying in that section, I have problems with her conclusions.

[lisaquestions]

I don't mind if you unscreen this or not, but these two links seem meaningful:

ginmar: Not having to kiss male ass is kind of the point of feminism.

Yes, it is. Kissed plenty of male ass in my day. Them days are long gone. I am a very, very proud political lesbian. If that gives belledame or whomever else Heart burn, well, them’s the breaks, take a couple antacid and call me in the morning. I’m getting old. In the years I have left, I’m going to be *all* about the women. And I’m going to tell the truth about men. You’d better believe it.

The thing is, being a lesbian, again, doesn’t make anyone a feminist. It doesn’t make a woman committed to women or to women’s issues. It doesn’t make anyone woman-centered. A while back I was part of a discussion of what it meant to be a lesbian and of whether specific women were “really” lesbians. Frustrated, one of the women burst out with, “Yeah, but does she f*** women?!” All I could think was, yeah, cause that’s what it’s really all about, huh. My experience is, where I see someone with that attitude, many times, she does “f***” women- in every destructive way it is possible to imagine.

Oh, and Allecto: The archetypal transphobic act is to disrespect a trans person's sex and gender and tell them that they're really their birth sex. You clearly don't know what it's like to be trans, so you should stop trying to talk like you do.