Why some lesbians don't recognize themselves as women
"Lesbians are not women," said philosopher and lesbian feminist activist Monique Wittig. The phrase has become iconic. Lesbian activists explain why they don't recognize themselves as women and what lesbian identity means to them.
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"Lesbians are not women," said the French philosopher and lesbian-feminist activist Monique Wittig in the late 1970s. The phrase became emblematic of the lesbian activism that carried on her legacy. She explained that being a lesbian isn't limited to a sexual orientation (who you like) but rather a way of inhabiting the world and escaping the heterosexual order.
To find out why some lesbians don't identify as women, Presentes spoke with lesbian activists Vic Sfriso, María Eugenia Sarrías, Mariana Rodríguez Fuentes, and María del Milagro Mariona.
As the origin of this thought, they all pointed to the influence of Wittig . The philosopher uttered that phrase, which caused concern in her time, at the close of her speech "Heterosexual Thought" at the 1978 Modern Language Association Convention. Two years later (1980), it was published for the first time in the French journal Questiones féministes (Feminist Questions).
In her theory , Wittig recognizes heterosexuality as more than just a sexual orientation. For her, it is a political and economic regime . This organization of the heterosexual world is based on the submission and appropriation of women by men , according to the French activist.
Photo: By Succession littéraire de Monique Wittig – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96055288
Fugitive lesbians
"One might think my point of view is too crude, and I'm not surprised, considering the centuries of thought that have gone against it," the writer says in the introduction to her essays. In this context, for Wittig, lesbians are fugitives from the heterosexual regime; that is, they escape from this order.
The interviewees agreed that being a lesbian implies a specific way of inhabiting the world, different from that of a heterosexual cis woman . Therefore, they consider it to be a gender identity. They also emphasized that it is a way of being that is neither fixed nor the same for all lesbians.
To explain this, they answered the questions: What does being a lesbian mean to you? and Why do you identify as a lesbian and not as a woman?
Gender identity and political expression
María Eugenia Sarrías, social worker and member of Lxs Safinxs, from Rosario, Santa Fe
Lesbian is a revolutionary word ; it names a political subject that is neither binary nor male nor female. It is a gender identity and a political expression . It is also a way of life that breaks with conventional forms and ways of relating to one another, to nature, and to ourselves.
Furthermore, lesbian is an identity that is home to the many diverse ways we choose to inhabit it. There are lesbians of all colors : Indian lesbians, poor lesbians, neighborhood lesbians, intellectual lesbians, scientific lesbians, cis lesbians, trans lesbians... just lesbians. I identify generically as lesbian because I don't identify with other categories and ways of inhabiting this world.
What is the lesbian conceptual space?
Vic Sfriso, teacher and translator, lives in the City of Buenos Aires
She recently translated and published Wittig's Paris, the Politics Editorial Asentamiento Fernseh in Córdoba. She also studies how small publishing houses, such as Bocavulvaria Ediciones , promoted lesbian activism.
I think of lesbian identity as a place we've collectively created by constructing words and building a semantic field where we can recognize ourselves in different experiences. In this context, there are different interpretations of the identity proposal in political terms. I like Wittig's proposal that lesbians are not women and that they constitute a way of being in the world that doesn't operate generically like women . But I also think that lesbianism is a conceptual space in terms of the deviant, or even what we could update today as queer.
One of Wittig's closest friends described Wittig's conception of the lesbian as a hologram. As if it were something that can only be seen in moments, that isn't fixed, isn't static, isn't ontological, that has no essential features: that there's nothing that makes a lesbian in and of itself except those movements to find deviant places of sexual inhabitation. I'm interested in the lesbian as a sexual space that produces disturbances in the generic. Not as an identity that encrypts itself, as if lesbians are a certain way and that creates the category of the lesbian .
Identity on the run
María del Milagro Mariona, journalist, feminist activist and lesbian activist
She edits and directs the cooperative newspaper La Nota de Tucumán , which focuses on feminist and LGBT+ issues. She lives in Tucumán.
For me, being a lesbian is a much deeper identity than who I'm sexually or emotionally attracted to. It's a way of being in the world, of inhabiting it, of navigating it, breaking with the binary of female/male or heterosexual/homosexual.
Being an identity outside the norm, it is pierced, on the one hand, by the violence of the heteronormative system. It constantly seeks to prevent you from being that, or if you are, to prevent it from being noticed, heard, or known. And on the other hand, by the resistance and ties that are woven around this escape from the system and this violence.
I experience it as a vanishing identity , an identity that has no form or rules. I didn't always experience it that way. It was a process, a maturation, a collective construction with other lesbians who inhabit the world from a similar perspective, where we can find intersections in our experiences.
An understanding of the world and community building
Mariana Rodríguez Fuentes, graduate in Communication and trainer at ESI
Together with Mariona, she hosts the podcast Antro de Lesbianas and is also from Tucumán.
Identity is a position you move with everywhere. In my experience, it has to do with trying to legitimize or constantly challenge the legitimization of my lesbian identity in many places where I'm not expected to be. I work as a teacher or teacher trainer, and I can't help but share my experience as a lesbian there as well and claim it. For me, there's a vision or understanding of the world that isn't the same as a heterosexual one , and I feel more comfortable in that space.
Thinking about the nonlinearity between sexual orientation and gender identity is something we will always strive to promote. Sexuality is a dynamic form of expression. For a non-binary identity to also be identified through lesbianism is a way of reclaiming a way of life, of building community , as the lesbian movement has done.
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