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Reading Notes
- Course
- 21046
- Institution
- Clark University
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Compulsory Sexuality and Lesbian Existence● “Men have only one innate orientation – a sexual one that draws them to women, – while
women have two innate orientations, sexual toward men and reproductive toward their
young.”
● Bias of compulsory heterosexuality
○ Women are “innately sexually oriented” toward men
○ Lesbian experience is perceived on a scale ranging
■ Lesbian choice is simply an acting-out of bitterness towards men
● Problems of feminist theory and critiscm
○ Why women’s choice of women as partners are forced into hiding and disguise
○ Total neglect of lesbian existence
● “Any theory of cultiral / political creation that treats lesbian existecne as a marginal or
less ‘natural’ phenomenon, as mere ‘sexual preference,’ or as the mirror image of either
heterosexual or male homoesexual relations, is profoundly weakened thereby, whatever
its other contributions.”
● For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women
○ Thesis: advice given to to American women by male health professionals echoes
the dictates of the economic marketplace and the role of capitalism
■ Become consumer victims of cures to embody and preserve the sacredness
of the home
● Reflection of male needs
○ Does not include a basic prescription against lesbianism (yay!)
● Toward a New Pscyhology of Women
○ Written off lesbians as them not existing
● Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise
○ Sees women and men as equal partners in making of “sexual arrangements” (red
flag!)
■ Ignores rpeated struggles of women to resist oppression
○ Women only are responsible for child care (red flag!)
○ “Women have learned to deny the limitations of masculine lovers for both
psychological and practical reasons”
■ Barely looks at historical constraints
○ Dimisses lesbian existence by seeing lesbian relationships as “mother-daughter
connection”
■ Has a weird fetish for her mom or somthing (it’s really giving
Freudianism)
■ Gives the message that women who choose to be with women only do it
because men are oppressive and emotionally unavailable
● Heterosexuality is a political institution - by those individuals who feel they are the
precursors of a new social relationship between sexes
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