This is a podcast of a discussion by the WDI USA Lesbian Caucus of the book Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value, edited by Sarah Hoagland. The participating Lesbian Caucus members are KC Bianco, Mary Ellen Kelleher, Katherine Kinney, and Lauren Levey.
Lesbian Ethics was first published in 1989. The Goodreads description says: “Challenging control in lesbian relationships, this book develops an ethics relevant to lesbians under oppression.” A Wikipedia article on separatism says that the book “alludes to lesbian separatism’s potential to encourage lesbians to develop healthy community ethics based on shared values.”
This is a discussion of the book’s introduction, written by Hoagland; it takes up the first 23 pages of the book. The introduction deals with why lesbian projects sometimes fall apart; the culture’s denial of lesbian existence; lesbians’ option to resist oppression and refocus; the problem of heterosexualism; the nature and degree of lesbians’ moral agency under oppression; and finally language: as a tool for perception, for consensus — or for coercion.
Click on the ‘play’ button below to listen to the podcast:
