Gender Non-Conformity
As I have begun to demonstrate, the values and ideas found in these primary sources, as well as the political time period they represent, speak to a break between sexual object choice and gender non-conformity. None of the voices or spaces I have described so far place sexual object choice and gender non-conformity in the same arena, but rather, work hard to separate them. Indeed, by the 70’s, spaces for and emphasis on gender non-conformity had shifted towards space for and emphasis on sexual object choice. That is, especially in the 50’s and 60’s, but even before that, resistance to hegemonic and oppressive social institutions regarding gender and sexuality in fact did emphasize and make space for gender non-conformity as a marker of dissent.
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By the 70’s, radical cultural feminism had taken up lesbian as a dominantly political category meant to resist patriarchy more than to denote erotic desire. As such, choosing women instead of men as sexual objects became, in these circles, an (or the) act of resistance to patriarchal oppression. The political underpinnings of the category lesbian indeed perpetuated, by this decade, the dominance of white, middle class, and gender normative demographics. This was not the case, however, because a diversity of groups and subcultures did not exist; they very much did. Rather, many of these subcultures strongly embraced various kinds of gender non-conformity, like butch/femme dynamics that were more prevalent in working class and communities of color. These differences perpetuated and sharpened the racial and class-based divides within lesbian and lesbian-feminist groups. Lesbians rejected non-gender normativity for explicitly white feminist reasons, doing so in a way that contributed to the mainstreaming of sexual object choice as the potential for subverting hegemonic heterosexism. This is one of many developments in the 70’s that allowed non gender-normativity and non-homonormative sexual deviance to become continually closely associated with racialized, lower class bodies more than with white, middle or upper class
By the 70’s, radical cultural feminism had taken up lesbian as a dominantly political category meant to resist patriarchy more than to denote erotic desire. As such, choosing women instead of men as sexual objects became, in these circles, an (or the) act of resistance to patriarchal oppression. The political underpinnings of the category lesbian indeed perpetuated, by this decade, the dominance of white, middle class, and gender normative demographics. This was not the case, however, because a diversity of groups and subcultures did not exist; they very much did. Rather, many of these subcultures strongly embraced various kinds of gender non-conformity, like butch/femme dynamics that were more prevalent in working class and communities of color. These differences perpetuated and sharpened the racial and class-based divides within lesbian and lesbian-feminist groups. Lesbians rejected non-gender normativity for explicitly white feminist reasons, doing so in a way that contributed to the mainstreaming of sexual object choice as the potential for subverting hegemonic heterosexism. This is one of many developments in the 70’s that allowed non gender-normativity and non-homonormative sexual deviance to become continually closely associated with racialized, lower class bodies more than with white, middle or upper class