Current mood:	geeky
Current music:	"Ani Difranco With Indigo Girls - Not A Pretty Girl(live)"

So, I wrote my very own manifesto...
In our Gender Studies class, we've read manifestos by various feminist groups. Our midterm assignment was to write our own, incorporating what we liked from the others and rejecting what we didn't like, and adding our own ideas. I thought I would share mine. Any comments would be welcome--especially before Monday at 2 PM!



Each wave of feminism had presented a new face to the world, centering on a fresh definition of womanhood and a list of grievances that women face in society. These statements have come from a wide variety of sources: Marxist feminist, black feminists, lesbian feminists, and even transgender feminist. The communities agree on the inequality found in our world, and the necessity for the advancement of women, but directly after making this assertion they differ on what must be done, how it is to be realized, and even who must act. While Shulamith Firestone calls for a change to be made in the "capitalist" family system using Marxist theories of communism and modern theories of reproduction, the Combahee River Collective sees the problems of women ignored in their community in favor of the issue of racism, Radicalesbians pushes for absolute separatism of women from "our oppressors" (Radicalesbians, "The Woman Identified Woman," The Second Wave, p.156), and the transfeminists concern themselves with the definition of "woman" and the problems in society centering around that definition. It is disheartening to find, however, that, except to some extent in the "Transfeminist Manifesto," there is no understanding in these pieces of the fluidity of sex and gender-from homosexual to heterosexual and from male to female, from which must follow the cry for not simply feminism, but equalism.

In her piece, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Adrienne Rich theorizes the existence of "a lesbian continuum to include a range-through each woman's life and throughout history-of woman-identified experience" (Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience," Powers of Desire, p.192). This makes more sense than the current sex-gender system, which relies on categorizing male and female, homosexual and heterosexual in a binary fashion and divides everything, including rights and respect, down these lines. Rich creates her continuum within the boundaries of lesbianism, however. It is her claim that heterosexuality is often forced on a woman by the male-dominated society, but that in actuality women have lesbian tendencies from birth, the strength of which depends upon the individual woman, and which can be observed in her friendships with other women. In Rich's article this theory is useful both to debunk the myth that "most women are homosexual" (Chodorow qtd. in Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience," Powers of Desire, p.192) and to challenge the sex-gender system, but as a gynocentrist she does not stretch this theory to its logical end.

Starting with Rich's theory, which states that women are not innately heterosexual, but most are lesbians to different degrees, one wonders if it may be applied in other situations. Rich herself deals with the issue from a Freudian perspective, claiming that the Oedipus complex creates a world in which both women and men are attracted to their primary providers, their mothers. She explains that women become involved in heterosexual relationships because of society's pressure, which originally stems from domination by men who are afraid they will lack any power among the naturally homosexual female community. This can be taken as fact or as psychological tripe, as one wishes, but it fails to explain why there are so many other variants of sexuality besides lesbianism and heterosexuality. If all people are attracted to women, why are there homosexual men? Doesn't this break the mold of society, as well as fail to give men the power they "desire" from women? Why do some men and women identify themselves as bisexual, pansexual, or even asexual? What about those who go further than to deviate from sexual norms, and cross the gender barrier? The Radicalesbians remind us that lesbianism is used against women in power, as a slur. It is blatantly evident in today's world that not only feminists and lesbian are put down for their sexual and political orientations, but instead that a much larger population is discriminated against for deviating from the assigned gender and sexual categories. At one point, lesbianism and feminism were just hitting the societal radar screen, but in this new millennium new categories have been discovered and people are struggling to accept them, and many dismiss them just as feminism was once dismissed.

It is a tragedy in this world that we consider ourselves so advanced and yet so many people don't "fit in" our sex and gender system. The questions about why these differences exist may prove rhetorical, or they may someday be discovered by scientists, but the fact remains that our sex and gender categories are inadequate and exclusive, and that those who do not "fit in" end up standing out as much as a powerful woman in an office full of men did 30 years ago, and are subject to as much ridicule and discrimination as this so-called "lesbian" would have been and in too many cases still is. I propose that a new sex/gender system must be created, based on Rich's continuum, but broadened to cover each of the sex/gender systems. Certainly there are biological females in the world who are uniquely attracted to biological males, but there are also transmen who are attracted to people whose gender is in flux, undetermined, or dual (genderqueer, intersexed), and everything in between. Labels do not help us in these cases because every person is at a different point along each of these spectrums. In our obsession for categorizing, would we attempt to distinguish between a biological male who feels female 10% of the time, and one who feels female 15% of the time? This is counterproductive, as it only acts to divide us. Instead we must understand gender and sexuality to be as different in each person as each personality, and as unique each person's fingerprint. The new sex/gender system would allow for this individuality which is so regularly and inexpertly smoothed over.

The goal of the sex/gender spectrums would be to go beyond feminism to equalism. Too often, feminism rejects even supportive men, and it has unfortunately become a faction which desires power beyond equality for women, moving into supremacy and separatism. It is counter-productive for any members of our society to remove themselves from the whole, and deprive others of their talents and abilities. We must return to the root cause of feminism, which was equality: equal rights, independent of gender. To this we must add "independent of sexuality." Once freed from categories into which many people do not evenly fall, we would be free from any discrimination inherent in the system, not simply heterosexual men against hetero and homosexual women. Society would become truly free and merit-based, with no impediments created for us simply because of who we are or how we see ourselves within the two spectrums.

Feminists of the first wave suffered to create a world where women were equal to men, and those in the second wave continued this struggle and still do today, often growing frustrated with, asserting superiority over, or attempting to secede from the society of men along the way. Wrapped in this struggle, however, they did not notice the similar struggles of homosexual men, intersexed children, bisexual and pansexual people, and the transgender and genderqueer communities. Rather than continue to separate these communities, it would be most effective to combine and assert each person's individuality within the entire spectrum of society. Only then will we reach the original goal of feminism: the equality of all people, independent of sex or gender, so that no one need be in the "state of continual war with everything" (Radicalesbians, "The Woman Identified Woman," The Second Wave, p.153) that the current binary sex/gender system has forced upon us.