I’ve been away for a few days, hence the blog/Internet silence. I’ll try and get my act together and come up with something new in the next few days, but meanwhile here are some interesting posts from around the blogosphere that have caught my attention in recent weeks:
antiplondon over at Anti-Porn Feminists has been thinking about the “sex positive” response to prostitution.
Laurelin thinks it’s bleeding obvious that “if you are a consumer of pornography, you have a vested interest in it, you benefit from it, and therefore your word on how wonderful and harmless it is is seriously compromised.”
redmegeara is definitely not “cisgendered”.
Harriet Jacobs at Fugitivus doesn’t find rape jokes funny
And last but by no means least (in fact this one’s my favourite, for obvious reasons), apostate thinks younger feminists should have a bit more respect for us oldies.
Too Much To Say For Myself 
I’m definitely not cisgendered either, but this pissed me off a bit.
Another example is that of butch/femme relationships within lesbian culture. The “butch” may suffer discrimination and violence because she does not “pass” and in this respect, her “femme” (read: gender-conforming) partner is privileged. However, to the extent to which traditional heterosexuality is imported wholesale into lesbian relationships “butches” are privileged, at least within the confines of their relationship. This is because masculinity corresponds to the privileges which are assigned to the political class “men”, the dominant class under heteropatriarchy.
This is nonsense surely? Butch lesbians don’t have male privilege just because they’re in a butch-femme relationship. Not only because butch femme lesbian relationships DON’T in fact mirror male-female relationships, but because they’re not men. That’s kind of basic.
And -most of the femme lesbians I know are actually pretty arsey.
Hi Polly
I wasn’t trying to suggest that “butches” have male privilege or that butch/femme relationships always mirror male-female relationships. What I wrote was: “to the extent to which traditional heterosexuality is imported wholesale into lesbian relationships “butches” are privileged, at least within the confines of their relationship.”. Specifically, I was referring to butch/femme role-playing– as opposed to what might be called “aesthetic presentation”- although I don’t necessarily think they’re unrelated
I was thinking of butch/femme relationships in which role-playing encompasses the sexual division of labour characteristic of traditional heterosexual relationships. Or cases in which intimate partner violence in butch/femme relationships is clearly gendered. (Which is not to suggest that non-gender conforming lesbians are never victims of domestic violence or that gender-conforming lesbians are never perpetrators either.)
Clearly this kind of privilege is narrow and circumscribed and it wasn’t my intention to downplay the danger and disadvantages of being visibly lesbian (read: butch). The fact that both partners belong to the same sex-class is also significant and perhaps the word “privilege” is not the best fit. The broader point I was trying to make was that “masculinity” and “femininity” are not free-floating, valueless “things” but are always attached (however tangentially) to relations of dominance and submission.
I hope that makes sense. I’m a bit spaced-out on meds.
Thanks for the shout out Cath!