But I do think the phrase Lesbian Phallus, by evoking all these specific negotiations as it does for anyone in the know, means to use them as metaphor; part of what's so engrossing about heated debates over dildos, whether transsexuals should be able to go to womyn's musuc festivals, etc. -- aside from their not-to-be-underestimated camp value and the undeniable fact that we all love a good catfight ("Catfight", incidentally, is the name of a film I once saw about the feminist sex wars, it's interspliced with footage of the classic "catfight" scene in porno films) -- is the larger difficulties they raise about *everyone's* identity, and how slippery it is. race, class, nationality or that poor wobbly modernist "self"...that specific history that Yoshie's pointing out is what makes the lesbian phallus riff all the more powerful as a commentary on all categories of identity.
Liza
----------
>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Signs Taken for Wonders (was Re: Lesbian 'Phallus'...)
>Date: Wed, Feb 3, 1999, 5:18 PM
>
>Liza says:
>>I mean, no theorist who talks
>>about the phallus thinks its a real penis, it's by definition an ideation.
>>the phrase "Lesbian Phallus" as I understand it isn't meant to imply that
>>lesbians are fake men -- if we are, then men are also fake men -- but that
>>lesbians can also be implicated in this approximation that so obsesses men.
>>And for many societal reasons are made to feel its failure quite
>>differently, though its a failure for men too. I almost think she picks the
>>phrase for its sexy whimsy and metaphoric elegance, not to convey anything
>>particularly unique to lesbians -- the gist of the arguement could describe
>>almost any of the clashes between psychic identity, social role and body
>>that most of us encounter every day.
>
>Well, yes and no. I think she does owe her intellectual development to our
>contemporary revaluations of earlier lesbian subcultures. I think that at
>the height of the second-wave feminism, butch/femme things may have been
>looked down upon, judging by what, for instance, Susie Bright writes about
>them. It was politically incorrect to do those gender plays, because back
>then the thing to do was either to be a 'woman-identified woman' (think
>Rita Mae Brown or Adrienne Rich + her lesbian continuum) or to look forward
>to a gender-free future (e.g. Shulamith Firestone). Or at least so says
>Bright and many others of her age. In other words, 2nd-wave feminism itself
>also created rigid identities for 'right-on' feminist women within which
>what's taken as signs of patriarchy--butch/femme--and also of blue-collar
>lack of sophistication were not welcome, or so the story goes (I can't
>provide any personal testimony--I was too young to be part of anything). So
>I think that Butler's invoking the 'Lesbian Phallus' is her nod--debt and
>ambivalence--to the history of feminism and lesbians' places in it, not
>just its sexiness.
>
>By the way, several guys have asked on the list what Butler said that was
>truly 'new and original.' As you can see from Liza's post, a part of What
>Butler Saw may be summarized thus: lesbians are not 'fake men -- if we are,
>then men are also fake men'; moreover, the notion of Original which Copy is
>said to imitate is a phantasm _retroactively_ created by casting some as
>Bad Imitations.
>
>Yoshie