The Woman-Identified Woman Analysis

Radicalesbians – The Woman-Identified Woman In their paper “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970), the collective Radicalesbians, much like Wittig will do in the following decade, focuses on the marginalized sexual standpoint of ‘women’ and ‘lesbian’ that emerge from the intersection of the personal and the political circa late 1960’s/early 1970’s. It is the agenda of the political environment of the day, Radicalesbians argue, that the former is policed in part by weaponizing the latter as a stigmatizing ‘spoiled’ identity (Goffman 1963). And, as will Wittig years later, “Woman-Identified Woman” notes that this shaming can only be as effective as it is as a social control mechanism from within the tightly-framed, highly regulated framework of
Radicalesbians reminds us how the term ‘lesbian’ was historically utilized by men (and by other women) as a mechanism of humiliation. By highlighting this politics of this socially constructed stigma, Radicalesbians also demarcate the equally-constructed boundary of hetero-patriarchal normalcy and, as importantly, the sexual subjectivation underscoring that border. Yet this oppressed sexual subjectivity can in turn be used as leverage to both decenter hetero-patriarchy and prioritize same-sex desire as a literal, political, and spiritual means of resistance. In taking this argumentative turn, Radicalesbians pull back the cover on the underlying concerns of this hegemonic interpolation noting that “when you strip off all the packaging, you must finally realize that the essence of being a ‘woman’ is to get fucked by men” (Dear Sister 2000 108). Lesbianism becomes by default the means to disrupt being literally and metaphorically getting ‘fucked by
The only effective (re: disruptive resistance) response to the self-fulfilling hetero-patriarchal cycle is to physically (the personal) and publicly (the political) embrace lesbianism. This not only validates and empowers the marginalized (lesbians) at the detriment of the hegemonic gender (males). (It is interesting to note that some in the current trans-lesbian community will use the same argument – a physical and public display – to call for a disruption of oppressive cisgender/binary