Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 09:02:59 -0500 (EST)
From: "Mary L. Keller" <mlkeller-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: more on/for/about "men in feminism" (thinking about Irigaray)


On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Danne W. Polk wrote:
> In her essay entitled "Commodities among Themselves," Irigaray claims that
> the violence directed towards gay men in our society is due not to the fact
> that same sex relations are forbidden because homosexuality is considered
> "unnatural," but rather because "the very possibility of a [patriarchal]
> socio-cultural order requires homosexuality as its organizing principle." 
> In response to this, Irigaray believes that gay men are oppressed because
> they publically affirm what always must remain hidden.  She goes on to say
> that the "transmission of patriarchal power and its laws" always moves
> symbolically from the "pederastic love" of father to son (and I would
> venture to say, traditionally from masculinized teacher to masculinized
> student), and that this transmission must necessarily remain symbolic else
> crisis ensues. 
> 
>  What intrigues me here is the question that arises concerning the meaning
> of a politically motivated gay identity.  That is to say:  If a feminist
> political reaction to the patriarchal objectification of women as object
> and commodity is "political lesbianism" (a determined self-conscious, if
> not metaphorical strategy chosen by politically motivated women as a
> transformative move to a non fascist future), then what are men to do? 

> danne polk
I hope that, in the spaces where political identities are practiced, there
is room for bodies that exceed, subvert, and work together.  Whatever
power Irigaray's analysis of gay "meaning" is for patriarchal culture, and
I find it quite powerful, there are nevertheless gay bodies that need not
be held "responsible" or put into positions of "suspicion" for being gay
bodies.  I believe a similar tension runs in Black/White politics in
America.  No matter what the social symbolism is of a white body, if it
works for social justice it is a body that a black body may choose to work
with, love, etc.  Bodies do that.  I know many committed social activists
who love bodies that they are supposed to be suspicious of.  The symbolic
analysis has its place, and maybe what rarely gets said in social
symbolism is that trusting those who do good work, as you see it in your
struggle, is also part of political engagement.

 Mary Keller, Ph.D. Candidate
Syracuse University




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