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:
so long as women who have past romantic/sexual experiences with males call themselves “lesbians” we are gonna continue having issues with people not seeing lesbian as a real thing….
I think, though, that this points to a double standard. Men who come out as gay are taken seriously, no matter their heterosexual pasts. Most people recognize the fact that everyone is expected to be straight and that there are social and economic consequences for being homosexual.
Why are lesbians held to higher standards of purity than gay men?
Lesbians are female homosexuals and carry the double oppression of being female and same-sex attracted. As females, we are sometimes unable to escape compulsory heterosexuality. In some places, we are forced to undergo conversion therapy or subjected to corrective rape. Some of us have been sexually trafficked.
I think the root problem is that women are not allowed to set their own terms of their own bodies. Being a lesbian is one way to draw a boundary. I think that women, regardless of their pasts, should be allowed to determine who has access.