Curiosity
If we are to piece together a profound feminist and lesbian history, we must begin asking questions about the lives of these women that we have not asked before, and to do this we will have to elevate curiosity to a much more exalted position than concepts of politically correct sexuality would ever allow us to do.[1] Politically correct sexuality is a paradoxical concept. One of the most deeply held opinions in feminism is that women should be autonomous and self-directed in defining their sexual desire, yet when a woman says, “This is my desire,” feminists rush in to say, “No, no, it is the prick in your head; women should not desire that act.” But we do not yet know enough at all about what women--any women--desire. The real problem here is that we stopped asking questions too early in the lesbian and feminist movement, and rushed to erect what appeared to be answers into the formidable and rigid edifice that we have now. Our contemporary lack of curiosity also affects our view of the past. We don’t ask butch-femme women who they are; we tell them. We don’t explore the social life of working-class lesbian bars in the 1940s and 1950s; we simply assert that all those women were victims.[2] Our supposed answers closed our ears and stopped our analysis. Questions and answers about lesbian lives that deviate from the feminist model of the 1970s strike like a shock wave against the movement’s foundation, yet this new wave of questioning is an authentic one, coming from women who have helped create the feminist and lesbian movement that they are now challenging into new growth. If we close down exploration, we will be forcing some women once again to live their sexual lives in a land of shame and guilt; only this time they will be haunted by the realization that it was not the patriarchal code they have failed but the creed of their own sisters who said they came in love. Curiosity builds bridges between women and between the present and the past; judgment builds the power of some over others. Curiosity is not trivial; it is the respect one life pays to another. It is a largeness of mind and heart that refuses to be bounded by decorum or by desperation. It is hardest to keep alive in the times it is most needed, the times of hatred, of instability, of attack. Surely these are such times.
--Joan Nestle, “The Femme Question,” reprinted in The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, ed. Joan Nestle, 1992, originally published in Pleasure and Danger, ed. Carole S Vance, 1984.
