“Three” by Annemarie Monahan

I’m the kinda gal that hungers for good lesbian feminist fiction more than I do  a delicious, home-cooked meal. Thus, I was incredibly happy to discover Annemarie Monahan’s debut novel, Three. It is political but entertaining, gently humorous while  tackling serious subjects. In other words, Three has serious value as a novel that is both lesbian and feminist.

Three follows the stories of three women, each whose lives intersects with the others. Antonia works as a phone psychic. Reading her “psychic” phone conversations with the women who call is a hoot. However, most of Antonia’s chapters revolve around the past part of her life, where she and her partner helped build an all-womyn utopia. Her former partner, Josephine, was a lesbian with a vision….at least for some time. In Josephine’s voice pours out some of Monahan’s most overtly politically writing. At one point, Josephine roars to a crowd of women, “Why do we need a women’s nation? Aren’t there enough nations, enough divisions? First, let me tell you, there’s only one nation now, the nation of men” (61). And thus, Josephine and Antonia go on, recruiting women to take part in building The Dream.

The second woman, Katherine, is an alternative health physician. The type of alternative health that she practices is not clear, but from the fact that she brings up the names of homeopathic remedies at one point, one might guess that at least part of her practice incorporates homeopathy. Perhaps I found Katherine’s sections to be some of the strongest because when she’s not writing, Monahan is also a homeopath and chiropractor. Like Antonia (and Monahan), Katherine is also lesbian. Katherine is currently single and decides to get in touch with an old flame from her college years. Reading Katherine’s story brought up many memories for me, as I imagine it will for all readers, lesbian or not.

Kitty is the only woman of the three main characters who considers herself heterosexual. After all, she is married with children. But after finishing classes at the local college, the professor she idolizes kisses her. Suddenly her identity as a heterosexual, married woman, is thrown into question. I find Kitty’s character to be incredibly realistic; some of her life story is eventually detailed, so we come to have a better understanding of why she is who she is.

Fiction is an amazing form to communicate political messages. Gloria Steinem recently commented on the power of women sharing their stories with one another as essential to movement building. In a way, that is what a good novel does; the stories from a novel come to represent real women’s stories, which they well could be. A good author helps the reader explore which facets of the characters relate to herself, and which to her friends. Could that be me, if my life had only gone a little differently?

Three is a tale of “what if?” What if I asked out that girl when I was in high school? Where would I be now…and where would she be? We all have “what if’s,” but we don’t generally have the chance to explore them. This book inspires us to consider chance…and choice.

One such chance/choice encounter occurs when a married women decides to sleep with another women. Monahan really shows off her writing ability when she crafts a love-making scene between the two women. I can’t copy the whole scene here (that would be plagiary, after all), so I’ll have to wet your appetite with a few lines: “Down. Uncovering, we marvel at the mirror of each other. Prints from plate, two echoes from one girl’s shout. You trace every silver line, the stretched seams of our hips, our belly. Accepted, I cease to be ashamed. What fragments can she still read there?” (280).  Monahan portrays what it can be like for two women to make love, one for the first time with a woman.

Three has something for everyone: the lesbian who doesn’t (yet) consider herself a feminist, the heterosexual feminist, who can grow from lesbian literature, as from feminist literature, and of course, the lesbian feminist.

I am quite confident regular readers of this blog will be pleased with Three. Monahan sells it directly from her website here. If you must purchase it on Amazon, the page is here.

Because I yearn for good lesbian, feminist, and lesbian feminist fiction, I am wondering what your favorite novels of these genres might be? Anything I and others should know about?

Support Women’s Right to Sexual Autonomy!

If you read this blog, I assume you support a woman’s right to define for herself who she wishes and does not wish to engage in sexual practices with. . Sadly, Planned Parenthood Toronto and the Shearbourne Health Center are organizers to the heartbreakingly anti-feminist  Toronto-based Pleasures and Possibilities conference, to be held March 31, 2012. One of the workshops to be featured is titled, “Breaking the Cotton Ceiling: Overcoming Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women.”

“Cotton ceiling” is:

“a theory proposed by trans porn star and activist Drew DeVeaux to explain the experiences queer trans women have with simultaneous social inclusion and sexual exclusion within the broader queer women’s communities. Basically, it means that cis queer women will be friends with us and talk day and night about trans rights and ending transmisogyny, but will still not consider us viable sexual partners.

The term cotton ceiling is a reference to the “glass ceiling” that second wave feminist identified in the workforce, wherein women could only advance so high in the workforce but could not break through into positions of power and authority. The cotton represents underwear, signifying sex.

The theory of the cotton ceiling is useful in identifying the dynamic trans women are experiencing, and is meant to open up conversation around desirability’s intersections with transmisogyny and transphobia.”

Only MAAB [males assigned at birth] will be allowed in the “Breaking the cotton ceiling” workshop.

Note how the focus of DeVeaux’s theory is around getting women to have sex with MAABs. It is not men’s social role to be coerced into sex: that’s what women are for. So, even within a supposedly “radical” community born-women are not allowed in a discussion about how to reshape our sexual desires, so MAABs can say we “consented” to sex with them. I would add that if a group of female-born persons were sitting around plotting how to reshape other women’s sexual desires so they would jump into bed with them I would also be appalled. It is important to keep in mind though that women have good reasons to stay away from sexual activity with MAABs, including the fact that we may have to start taking birth control if we get involved with them. Bottom line is, this workshop is taking place in a global male supremacist society. It cannot be removed from these conditions.

If this seems as outrageous to you as it does to me, please take a moment to sign the petition asking for the workshop, “Overcoming the cotton ceiling: Breaking the sexual health boundary for queer trans women” to be removed from the Pleasure and Possibilities conference.

Also, you can e-mail Planned Parenthood Toronto at ppt@ppt.on.ca and ask them to make sure this conference is removed.

You can also e-mail Kate Klein, who is in charge of workshop planning at: kklein@ppt.on.ca

Guest post on lesbian feminism

Since I’ve been so busy with school–insert groan here–I haven’t had time to do what I really love: write posts for this blog. However, a wonderful writer and staunch feminist, Karla Mantilla, said it was okay for me to republish an article she wrote some time ago.

Here it is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

A Lesbian’s Perspective: Biology, My Ass

by Karla Mantilla

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The religious right’s recent media blitz about how gay people can change comes as no surprise to me. Partly that’s because I have a long commute and so listen to a religious right radio station to keep abreast of their thinking. And partly it’s because I have long thought the strategy
used by the gay rights movement of saying that it’s biological is incredibly lame. In a strange way I agree with the religious right. Of course it’s a choice–how could it not be? We make decisions (constrained choices, but choices nevertheless) about everything else in our lives–where we want to live, what we like to eat, how to dress. So we cannot make a decision about who we are lovers with? Of course we do.

If that’s what it takes to be a lesbian, then all women are lesbians. When I was coming out I went briefly to a support group for women coming out of marriage. At one point I asked, “How do you know you’re a lesbian?” One woman answered that she had never felt emotionally close to men and that she always could talk better with women. Another chimed in, saying she too had felt that way, that she could only be emotionally open with women. The rest nodded in agreement.

What’s wrong with this picture? Practically all women feel that way. Every straight woman I have ever known has felt more comfortable confiding in her girlfriends, felt closer to them, felt more understood by and able to open up to women. If that’s what it takes to be a lesbian, then all women are lesbians. The age-old complaint of straight women is that their men don’t talk to them, don’t understand their feelings, and don’t seem interested in what they are saying. One of the most common article topics in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and Woman’s Day, is how to get your husband to open up and talk to you.

Clearly, if the reason these women felt they were lesbians was because they felt emotionally closer to women, then being a lesbian cannot be biological. First of all, since most women feel that way, we would have to say that most women are born lesbians and that can’t be true (except perhaps on a theoretical level). Secondly, whether you feel emotionally close to someone does not seem likely to be biological: it seems much more plausible that it has something to do with the emotional and psychological characteristics of the person.

…that it was biological, appealed to them because it absolved them of guilt… When I replied to the group, “But all women feel closer to women,” the conversation slammed to a halt. They were not going there. Instead, the line was, “my husband is a great guy, really he is, it’s just that I’m a lesbian–that’s why I have to leave him.” Over time, it became clear to me that these women experienced tremendous guilt over leaving their husbands at a time when divorce is billed as the cause of all social ills. So the idea that they couldn’t help being a lesbian, that it was biological, appealed to them because it absolved them of guilt, and of responsibility for their actions. When I tried to suggest that they were dissatisfied with the current state of relations between women and men, their husbands in particular, they could not think about it because that took away their special dispensation to feel less guilty about leaving their husbands–the dogma was they had to since they were lesbians. (Even conservative radio talk show “psychologist” Dr. Laura approves of gay people getting a divorce while allowing no other legitimate reason for divorce except extreme circumstances like battering or alcoholism.)

Biology as an explanation

Biology is evoked all the time to explain or justify human choices and social patterns. There is a long history of using biology to justify inequality as inevitable due to the genetic characteristics of women or people of color. In general, biological explanations serve to delude people into believing that they can’t help their choices; that it can be no other way; that their actions are not borne out of human volition or choice but rather inborn inescapable drives. But while the idea that if gays can’t help it because they are born that way seemingly might arrive at our acceptance into society, it also diminishes us as thinking purposeful beings.

Hunger may be biological, but eating M&Ms is a choice

Clearly, there is some biological element to sexuality, but it is limited to the generic desire for sex, in the same manner that hunger is biological which leads us to want to ingest food. But what we end up eating is as varied as human cultures are; what we are convinced is nourishing varies as well. And our gastronomical proclivities change over time too. In the United States, during the first part of the twentieth century, a healthy and nourishing diet was considered to be one which included plenty of meat and potatoes; only the poor ate beans and rice and greens. It has now flip-flopped almost completely, and the tony restaurants will serve rice and beans long before they will serve meat and potatoes (admittedly some obscure variety of bean and specially flavored rice) So while hunger itself, in its most basic state is biological, the means with which humans have acquired to sate it vary to a large extent.

Bagels vs. cow’s blood

Yet, when we crave some food, we feel it is biological. It seems that our body cries out for bagels, perhaps. But if we were Maori tribespeople, our stomach would surely cry out not for bagels, but cow’s blood.

In a like manner with sexuality. I know someone who believes he was born to have a sexual penchant for wearing lacy silky women’s underwear. But, come on, how could that be biological? Would some random Maori have a sexual fetish for underwear from Victoria’s Secret any more than he might have a hankering for a bagel with cream cheese and lox? Clearly, however early in youth this man perceived his sexual proclivity beginning, there is no gene that codes for Victoria’s Secret.

But how can people’s experience be denied? If a gay man says that he was born that way, how can I deny his experience? First, no one can deny someone’s experience, but people’s interpretation of their experience is what is truly in debate. And I think people’s interpretations, even about their own experience, can be and have been wrong. I had one friend who was born in Nicaragua and a very committed catholic. He told me that the reason he was so committed to catholicism was that he could tell that it was the true faith. I asked him if he didn’t think perhaps growing up in a country where 95% of the population was catholic might have influenced his beliefs. Absolutely not, was his answer. I then asked him if he had been born and raised in Saudia Arabia, whether he would still see the truth of catholicism, and he was positively certain that, having been raised muslim, he would still have seen the truth of the catholic religion and changed his faith.

I think he is wrong about his interpretation both about his religion (catholicism is not the one true religion) and his experience (of course he was influenced by his culture whether he was aware of it or not). People can and frequently do underestimate the influence of their culture on their own beliefs and tastes. So just because people think they were born a certain way, that is they were that way ever since they can remember, this does not mean it is true. And I also do not agree with the increasingly popular compromise position that maybe for some people it’s biological and for others it’s not. I see no convincing evidence or plausible explanations that it is biological for anyone, I only see that some people feel they know what its etiology is.

Finally, why do we think that individual people have more insight into their own genetic make-up than science has? Just because something feels fundamental to a person, does that make her an authority on her genetic structure, able to authoritatively interpret her feelings as having biological roots? I think not.

In a strange way, the christian fundamentalists have this right–they believe homosexuality is a choice people make and that people can choose another way to live. I cannot conceive of rationally arguing otherwise. Of course any homosexual could choose tomorrow to reject homosexuality and attempt to find a partner of the opposite sex. But they don’t want to, it would not feel right, they would be unhappy (why they think fundamentalists would care about the little detail of personal unhappiness only reflects their thorough misunderstanding of the fundamentalist project).

But this is the point. Homosexuals choose to be homosexuals because something about homosexuality appeals to them, they like it, they prefer it to heterosexuality. When this is attributed to biology, any further examination must stop there. Why do some people prefer same sex partnerships over opposite sex partnerships? What seems preferable about it to them? What don’t they like about heterosexual relations? That is the rub right there. What if there are reasons that people reject heterosexuality and embrace same sex relations? What reasons would people have to prefer same sex relations over heterosexuality? Calling it biology does not allow us to even ask the questions.

The truth is, a lot of heterosexuals don’t like heterosexual relations either. When Ellen came out on the Oprah Winfrey show, she said that she tried having sex with men, but something was missing, she just didn’t feel something she hoped to feel. What was overlooked in the hubbub was Oprah’s response: she responded, “A lot of heterosexual women feel the same way [about sex with men],” kind of under her breath and meant to be taken only as a funny complaint. But it is true that a lot of heterosexual women are deeply disappointed in heterosexual sex, or to their thinking, with sex. To wit, the great Ann Landers survey in which over 70% of women answered that they would prefer cuddling to “the act,” a survey which was taken to mean that women don’t like sex much. No one thought that it meant that these women don’t like heterosexual sex as it is currently played out in the problematic gender relations between men and women.

They would be special rights for fundamentalists

Well, I don't know about the "love" part...

The reason fundamentalists think homosexuals can change to heterosexuality is that they know people can force themselves to adapt to circumstances which they do not find particularly pleasurable. And so they resent the assertion by homosexuals that they must do what feels right; for fundamentalists, this is giving homosexuals special rights which they themselves do not have–doing what feels good or right for themselves is not something they do, after all. So there are millions of heterosexual women for whom sex does not feel right; they would prefer not to have it and only cuddle, but they do not follow their feelings and abstain from sex–they continue to have sex without liking it much or without getting that “special feeling’ that they would like. This explains the romance novels which so many heterosexual housewives indulge themselves in–it is what they are lacking in their own lives. They dream of it, and yet console themselves that it is an impossibility and so settle for their husband.

That might explain lesbians, but what about gay men?

It is my suspicion that similar forces operate for gay men. They don’t like being in heterosexual relationships perhaps because they rebel against the role that straight men must play to a woman counterpart. They find themselves dissatisfied –it seems uncomfortable–certainly too stoic and self-restrained. They prefer being more emotional, more spontaneous, more pleasure-seeking, so they conclude that they are gay, rather than critique the role of men in patriarchy. Of course I do not mean to characterize all gay men as being the same on this count; I only want to suggest one scenario in which preferring men might occur which comes out of problems with the expectations of being a straight male and not biology.

Reasons for women to be dissatisfied with heterosexuality

Unfortunately, rather than looking into what parts of sex heterosexual women don’t like and what things they do like (ie., cuddling–does this mean they don’t get enough affection to feel like sex?), many heterosexual women feel that they simply don’t like sex. But what does “sex” mean? It can be can be many different things. Clearly sex between same sex partners is very different from sex between opposite-sex partners, enough so for sizeable segments of the population to exclusively prefer one or the other. Sex can be construed any way we choose–if we like more cuddling, then cuddling could be construed to be an integral part of sex. Sex does not have to be the heterosexually male model of sex–very little foreplay, cuddling, tenderness or caressing, followed by intercourse, followed by little or no talking. It could be entirely different. Sex between women, for example, involves a much longer time span than heterosexual sex, with more communication and expressions of affection.

The discontents of heterosexuality

So we have a situation where sizeable numbers of heterosexuals are dissatisfied either with sex or their heterosexual relationships or both, and yet think that “that’s life,” sex and relationships are just like that. And then we have a group of people who are also dissatisfied with heterosexual relations and think “I’m gay.”

The problem with the biological explanation is it does not allow people to seek to understand what precisely it is about heterosexual relations they did not like, what made them uncomfortable, what was unpleasant. Homosexuals in a way have an edge, because they are willing to have enough imagination to seek something better when they do not like (hetero) sex. But they don’t have enough imagination to see that they are not alone in their dissatisfaction with heterosexual relations.

Conclusion

I think that using the biological explanation is a poor strategy for several reasons. First, it maintains the current social order (the way heterosexuality is socially constructed currently) as stable and only gives individual escape hatches to a small number of people. Calling it biology is a neat way of sidestepping any critique of patriarchy or gender relations by attributing rebellion against the current structure to biology rather than dissatisfaction. Secondly, it does not allow people to think very deeply about why they choose on thing or another and so helps maintain the status quo of heterosexual relations. If people could say, heterosexuality sucks, and that’s why I’m gay, then we could begin to see more clearly that patriarchy sucks, that male-female gender relations suck, that marriage sucks, etc. Third, it inhibits agency among gay people. Rather than being responsible for and proud of our choices, it makes us seem we are helpless pawns reacting to our biology. Fourth, it keeps other who are dissatisfied with patriarchy or gender relations from making the choice to become gay. We ought to recruit–we don’t have much of a movement if we restrict new members only to those “born” to be gay. And finally, it is an exceptionally inadequate defense against the religious rights assertions that we can change. We would do better to say of course we could change if we wanted to, but we don’t want to, because it is better to be gay.

Why I am not queer, or the trials of dating as a radical lesbian feminist

The men are not on our side! (no duh)

In my last post, I gave a very partial overview of my journey into lesbian-ville. Just as I never felt comfortable with men, I never felt comfortable in the boy-based GLBT movement. I would go into my local GLBTIQ shop and find a small section of lesbian fiction with an increasing amount of erotica. I attended a regular lesbian discussion group, and many women there dis-idenfied as feminists altogether. (Hey, if I’m going to be a lesbian, I can still get attention from the boyz by not being a feminist!) S/M, dildos, and porn were all the rage. I have been teased by a lesbian friend for spending so much time hanging out with het women, but honestly, the ones I hang with are not into boy-based sex. I have becoming increasingly in despair about where young lesbians are headed. Most totally erase anything to do with woman identification, by referring to themselves as “queer.” As I very much would like a girlfriend, and one I can actually talk to, not just make love with, I am having intense trouble finding a partner.

I have signed up for lesbian dating sites and begun to chat with a few of the women. When I said I was looking for an egalitarian relationship and described myself as a radical feminist, one woman said she had never heard of ever concept, but looked both  “egalitarian” and “radical feminist”  up on Wikipedia (She also said I intimidated her because I wrote in paragraphs, although her writing was not bad at all).

Coming out as a lesbian: let’s get personal

Suffice it to say, my dating life has been anything but simple since coming out as a radical lesbian feminist. I came into feminism almost immediately after coming into my lesbianism, so I don’t know what it’s like to date as an apathetic, twenty-something lesbian in the 21st Century.

I never felt comfortable around men, not after I started every encounter with them had to be turned into something sexual.  As a sophomore in high school, I can recall attending the movies with five guys. I thought nothing of it, although my mom remarked that it was rather odd. The guys did not care about other people’s feelings (they did not offer to pay back the mother who bought us the tickets for the R rated movie, though I did), but they also were totally laid back. I remember one boy, who I would later go on to date, trying to wrangle free tickets from the cashier. They also bought loads of snacks, which they ate without saying how fat their thighs were. Since we were almost the only ones in the small theater, they ran up and down the aisles,  not giving a damn what the few others in the theater thought.

Radical Feminist Seminar: Sheila Jeffreys on Trans Politics

After the heaviness of Saturday’s sessions, I was rather nervous about what Sunday had in store for me. However, I arrived to the conference hall bright and early, because I knew Sheila Jeffreys was starting off the morning by expressing a view that is likely to cause one to become treated as a leper. That is Jeffreys’ was explaining a critique of the queer and transgender movements.

Jeffreys began by discussing how we have arrived at this  point where there  really is no lesbian feminist movement. Jeffreys’ hypothesizes that as lesbians become more involved with gay men, for example through taking care of them during the AIDS crises, we picked up their ways of being sexual with one another. Also, from what I know, gay men in general have always been much more likely to state that their sexual behavior was innate, despite all the historic evidence to indicate otherwise.  Anyhow, as time progressed, women too, have become more convinced that our sexuality is innate; when we “come out” as lesbians, we change our life narrative to highlight the parts we would like to display. Jeffreys’ mentioned a student of hers who completed researching showing that there really has been a change in time over how lesbians view their sexual preference: i.e. innate versus environmental.

When did this become a problem?

“I kissed a girl and I liked it,” –Kate Perry, not a lesbian

‘Cause I’ve kissed a girl and I liked it too
In fact I’ve kissed a few in my day
So how come I’m not famous for it yet
Well I don’t care if my boyfriend minds
Oops, I forgot I don’t got one to hide behind
See I’m not just here for some trendy joyride

–Kate Reid, Emergency Dyke Project

lesbianism in the 21st century

If you have carefully read this website, including the “About” section, this should be needless to say, but I am a lesbian. A PROUD dyke. As I am so womon-identified (read carefully: I DID NOT SAY I “identify as” a woman) I have tremendous trouble fitting into the mainstream lesbian community. In fact, I feel what was once dyke-community way-back-when has now been hijacked by the LGBTQI movement (if I got the letters wrong, sorree, but I can never keep up with what letters are now in the alphabet stew).

My complaints against the LGBTQI movement are many, and I plan to spend a large portion of this blog discussing them. However, I thought I’d start with one anecdote that aptly illustrates my frustration.

There is a discussion group that meets not so far from where I live that is for lesbians, bi-sexual, and transgender women. It usually ends up being only lesbian and bisexual women that show up. Anyhow, one night we got into a discussion about sex-ed in the school system. When I went to the public school system in my county, NO talk about homosexuality or lesbianism was allowed. I do remember a boy asking the teacher a question; the teacher looked very uncomfortable, and, clearly as instructed, told the boy we did not discuss homosexuality in that class, he would have to ask his mother.

Anyhow, the school system was planning on implementing a NEW! PROGRESSIVE! curriculum that would include gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender material. Not only that, it was to show us in a “positive” light. By positive, I mean, the school system planned to show a video that said being LGB or T was NOT a choice. This is the message all the male-dominated LGBTQI rights organizations have been sending out to the public for years, figuring it’s the most strategic way to fight for our rights…not like we couldn’t just fight under the rubric of equality for all people or anything.

It’s become increasingly less popular to say that being a lesbian is a choice when studies show that most women experience physical attraction to both sexes. Thus, sleeping only with womyn HAS to be a choice. It may not feel like one; we hear so many times that our sexuality is not a choice that it is easy to believe that it really isn’t. And perhaps, for some womyn, it isn’t…but rather we have never fit into the prescribed category of femininity and thus OTHERS have labeled us lesbian, and this eventually became a label we took on.

But getting back to the story at hand…

The idea of genetic determinism didn’t faze the group of women I was with one bit. No, what bothered them was that, due to a lawsuit from the religious right, the section on TRANS might be cut. There were gasps from women, and immediately, the group, became, well, transjacked.

Trans-rights have become the issue of our time, generation Y’s struggle.

And yet, while we insist there be an inclusive EDNA, there still is no Equal Rights Amendment. How many women even know about the Violence Against Women Act, which the National Organzation for Women has hailed as “the greatest breakthrough for women in nearly two decades”? And of those that know about it, how many know that the civil rights remedy portion of VAWA was struck down in 2000?

I’m guessing not as many of you know about VAWA as are aware of the fighting around EDNA. All the energy women and lesbians are putting into “working for trans” reminds me of the way women and lesbians went off to help men with HIV/AIDS in the ’80s. And how exactly have these men repaid us? By letting their brothers watch more and more pornography, much of it featuring supposed “lesbian sex.”

Am I the only one noticing this trend?

Am I the only one who’s tired of women putting ourselves LAST?

Seriously, I would like to know.