It's my choice, not yours!

In “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” Sandra Tsing Loh not only calls off her marriage, but also her willingness to have both a career and a family life. After all of those you-can-have-both! inspirational stories, we finally learn that Ms. Tsing Loh was always more interested in her career than in anything else. This is completely fine, of course, because she is, after all, only following her feminist mantra of “choosing her choice”, something that is possibly the most feminist thing you can do. In her new article, however, she does not only choose her choice, but asks you to choose it as well.

While I could talk about her stance on marriage (she thinks you should avoid it for utilitarian purposes), I’m more interested in her understanding of the new modern woman who, according to her, “embod[ies] what Tocqueville described as America’s “restless temper,” or l’inquiétude du caractère” and her presumption that this woman would, ideally, like to “let those nurturing superdads be the custodial parents” so that she could, in turn, “obsessively work, write checks, and forget to feed the dog.” What Ms. Tsing Loh seems to miss in her self-indulgent narrative is that not everyone is like her, that not every woman is a successful, Type A breadwinner who places her work before her personal life. While many women may fall into this camp, let it be known that nurturing, goddess-worshipping Earth mothers still abound.

While some may argue that Ms. Tsing Loh is everything that feminism strives to be personified—a successful career woman who doesn’t play nice and chooses her choice (dammit!)—under her laissez-faire ramblings lies a dogmatic, traditional, if not somewhat conservative, take on feminism. If feminism is about choice, then why is she convinced that there is only one type of woman and that, even further, this woman is a go-getter who rather play with the boys than with her own kids? Sandra Tsing Loh isn’t the third-waver she tries to be, but more of a traditional old-schooler who thinks that the only way a woman can be equal to men is if she wears the pants—all the time.

Now, mark my words, I am whole-heartedly a feminist. But along with being a feminist comes a need for some self-reflection (consciousness raising anyone?) and a degree of skepticism. After I finished reading Ms. Tsing Loh’s article, I couldn’t help but feel a lack of self-reflection on her part and intense skepticism on mine. Granted, she never officially comes out as a feminist, but if feminism, in its most basic form, is about leaving the private sphere for the public and working shoulder-to-shoulder with men, then Sandra Tsing Loh is the ur-feminist, complete with successful career, domestic ex-husband, and all. And that’s precisely the problem: she’s become a kind of feminist lab-experiment gone wrong. It’s not enough for her to be an independent, newly divorced, highly successful career woman; she needs to dislike men (“I don’t generally even enjoy men”), reject traditional gender norms by refusing to cook (“My own girls are strictly mac-and-cheese-centric”), lament the supposed loss of “real men” (“In our parents’ era, the guy hit 45, got the toupee, drove the red Porsche, and left his family for the young, hot secretary. We are unable to imagine any of the husbands driving anything with fewer than five seat belts.”), choose pragmatism over love (because love is, after all, “demonstrably fleeting”), and do a variety of other macho things to prove to you just how butch she is. Sandra Tsing Loh is, in other words, convinced that the modern woman is one who not only strives to be like men, but additionally rejects all traditionally “female” roles in exchange for those traditionally “male”, becoming a kind of female misogynist. In her ideal world, then, both men and women are yuppie frat-boy beer-guzzling types, not a bunch of wine-sipping, risotto-cooking sissies who talk about love and think about marriage.

While this certainly may be a choice for some women, it’s just not a choice for me. Sorry, but I still believe in choosing my own choice—even if it means spending hours in the kitchen, watching Lifetime original movies, and crying myself to sleep.

What about lesbian desire?

Daniel Bergner’s controversial NYTimes Magazine article, “What Do Women Want?” is a fascinating read that offers several "scientific" responses to the question that it dares to pose. Although I will not discuss all of the responses here, I would like to write about Marta Meana’s. According to her, women desire to be desired. Consider:

“Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need. Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it.

In one experiment, Meana had a group of heterosexual men and women wear goggles that track eye movements while looking at pictures of heterosexual foreplay. According to the study, the men stared far more at the women than at the men; the women, by contrast, gazed equally at both genders. Further, women were also more likely to look at the faces of men—which embody “states of wanting”—and at the bodies of women—which embody “sexual allure,” ultimately confirming Meana’s hypothesis that women crave to be desired and therefore stare at desiring men and desirable women. According to Meana, then, “being desired is the orgasm” for women.


Many feminist bloggers—such as Jill at Feministe and Megan at Jezebel –have written about Meana’s research about female narcissism and argued that, well, duh, in this society where women are objectified and sexualized everywhere and all the time and told that conventional beauty and desirability are the epitome of womanhood, it would make sense that women would equally objectify and sexualize their own bodies and those of other women. For these feminist bloggers, Meana makes the mistake of locating female narcissism in biology as opposed to culture.


Although I agree with these bloggers, I can’t help but wonder: what about queer women? Doesn’t this line of thinking make our experience invisible? If my sexualization and, to a certain extent, attraction to another woman can be chalked up to cultural, misogynistic upbringing then where does that leave me with my lesbian identity? And, even more to the point, how can we dismiss all instances of women staring at other women as pertaining to female narcissism? What if some of them don’t desire to be desired but simply desire other women? I realize that most of this research and writing is specifically about self-identified heterosexual women, but turning to Professor Lisa Diamond’s research (also discussed in the NYTimes article), which has led her to argue that female desire and sexuality are fluid, what if “female narcissism” isn’t about women wanting to be desired? What if it isn’t narcissism at all, but simply, a tiny instance of lesbian desire?

Love your clit!

I found this post over at Sociological Images simply fantastic: "Orgasmic Birth and the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". Lisa explores the societal obsession with vaginal orgasms, unpacks the way they are considered to be more "mature" than clitoral ones, and discusses how the myth of the vaginal orgasm is constantly being perpetuated (its most recent manifestation is orgasmic childbirth). She then quotes a selection of Anne Koedt's The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm (1970) which I find simply brilliant:

All this leads to some interesting questions about conventional sex and our role in it. Men have orgasms essentially by friction with the vagina, not the clitoral area, which is external and not able to cause friction the way penetration does. Women have thus been defined sexually in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analyzed. Instead, we are fed the myth of the liberated woman and her vaginal orgasm - an orgasm which in fact does not exist.

Of course, some women do in fact experience vaginal orgasms (according to Lisa, one third of women regularly do), but Koedt still has a point: namely, that society's obsession with the vaginal orgasm has framed women's sexuality in terms of men's and made it difficult for women to know their own bodies. Even as a woman who has sex with another woman (and who has barely ever been confronted with "what pleases men"), it took me years--years!!--to really know my body. The vaginal orgasm is still considered to be at the center of women's sexuality and affects queer and straight women alike.

"Offensive" stickers and no apologies.

This is just terrible:

A lesbian in the San Francisco Bay area was gang raped by four men and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building on December 13th. Authorities are characterizing the attack on the 28-year-old victim as a hate crime because she was specifically singled out for her sexual orientation.

Now get this: the attackers learned about the victim's sexual orientation from the rainbow sticker on her car.

From a sticker. On a car.

Granted, we do not yet know the full story and the precise reasons why this particular lesbian was singled out. The sticker, however, continues to be a central part of the story.

And that's why it's terrifying. It shocks me that a rainbow sticker--not exactly the most subversive or blatant form of gay visibility--prompted such incredible violence and hate. I shudder to think of the next time I kiss my girlfriend on a sketchy street at night.

And yet, it's precisley this kind of tragedy that shouldn't stop me from being affectionate with my girlfriend. It's precisley this kind of hate that shouldn't stop us from being visible. Yes, we need to be careful and we need to be aware of our surroundings. But we will not be defeated.

Our Bodies, No Babies

Alex Kuczynski's NYTimes magazine article, Her Body, My Baby, is a subtle toast to the triumph of heterosexuality in conquering all--and I mean all--of science and the world. It therefore seems both empowering and offensive, especially in its I-won't-let-my-body-determine-what-I-can-or-can't-do attitude couched in heteronormative rhetoric. Consider:

And, at that moment, having a biologically related child felt necessary. What began as wistful longing in my 20s had blistered into a mad desire that seemed to defy logic. The compulsion to create our own bloodline seemed medieval, and I knew we could enjoy our marriage — our lives — without a child. Yet I couldn’t argue myself out of my desire. A child with our genes would be a part of us. My husband’s face would be mirrored in our child’s face, proof that our love not only existed, but could be recreated beyond us. Die without having created a life, and die two deaths: the death of yourself, and the death of the immense opportunity that is a child.

Die without having created a life, and die two deaths. Well, shit. As a lesbian, I'm screwed. My lover's face would never be mirrored in our child's face because we would never, could never, have a child that was, biologically speaking, both of ours. According to the author's logic, this means that our love isn't really true love because it cannot be recreated beyond us. The article might be about unconventional forms of reproduction, but the author seems to only endorse the most conventional forms of love. Real love, then, becomes measured by a union's reproductive capacity, making it exclusively a hetoerosexual experience.

Perhaps even more unnerving is that the article actually tries to celebrate the alternative, the different, the "unnatural"--all the while, completely ostracizing me. While the author reasons almost apologetically that, where there is a will, there's a way, I can't help but wonder: what about me? What about my desire to reproduce with my lover? I'm sorry but I beg to differ: where there is a will, there simply isn't always a way.

I am thankful for...

The Florida gay adoption ban is ruled unconstitutional!

Robert Rosenwald, the director of the LGBT Advocacy Project of the ACLU of Florida said, “The court for the first time after hearing all of the evidence determined that the scientific evidence is crystal clear. There is no dispute that children raised by gay parents fare just as well or better than children raised by straight parents.”

Although this is a big victory for us, I was struck by this interesting piece of information: Some states, like Mississippi and Utah, ban gay adoption through laws that prohibit adoption by unmarried couples. So, even though Florida was the only state that banned gay adoption, other states are still finding ways (by denying us the right to marry) to deny us the right to adopt. And again, we find ourselves thinking about marriage...

This is what the media wants us to think

Source

Alright, let's talk about Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson (you're probably wondering how I managed to avoid this juicy piece of celeb gossip for so long). More specifically, let's talk about this:

Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson fall out

Why the fall out? Because Lindsay was dancing with ex, Calum Best, and Sam, who "is said to get jealous of Lindsay's former male lovers," got angry. Now, let's take a good look at this: according to the media, Sam isn't just getting jealous of LiLo's former lovers. She's getting jealous of her former MALE lovers.

It's a battle of the sexes. It's a war between hetero and homo. It's the media giving sexual fluidity a big fuck-you. It's a classic case of penis-envy and lesbian inadequacy.

Or so the media wants us to think.

Clearly, Lindsay Lohan isn't a real lesbian (because it's a black/white world with no room for bisexuality). She's too feminine and too conventionally pretty. And clearly, Sam is going to be threatened by males because, as a more boyish-looking dyke, she secretly strives to be one of them. And clearly, this means that their relationship is doomed. Sam couldn't possibly be jealous of LiLo's former lovers for being, well, just former lovers. It's clearly because they are male. At the end of the day, it's a war between dykes and men: who will get the prettiest girls? According to the media, dykes always lose and pretty girls are always straight.