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ftr i’m a lesbian, who didn’t realize this from any discourse of political lesbian, whoes been in heterosexual relationships and am deeply fucking bitter about it.

i cautiously support a lot of actual political lesbianism- i think its foolishly sometimes used to cover a really broad spectrum of ways of relating to lesbianism, and i fucking despise all of heterosexual ”political lesbianism” (which ftr, isn’t any of the people i follow who talk about it)

my contention is not that its inherently bad- but rather than a lot of it doesn’t go far enough- theres a lot of notion of choice and deciding not to partner w/ men b/c men are bad or w/e  but i feel whats its missing is an analysis of how compulsory heterosexuality traumatizes all women and specifically how that necessarily creates a division between what lesbian desire is and what heterosexual desire is.

so a lot of the discourse takes desire as neutral, but merely that men are bad. And i think this is a problem for the way it takes truamatized desire as a given- and specifically doesn’t address leaving a desiring relation to men, and i question the lack of addressing that as the effects that that continuing to take desire for men and desire for women as both just desire causes— both on lesbians generally, but especially people finding ways of leaving compulsory heterosexuality. 

its not a shutting down critique, but rather a hoping to expand the possibilities for women fleeing heterosexuality without taking their seeming hetero desire as a given, or identity or fact of life. 

there is a difference between having notions of us being part of a power structure that abuses and destroys us being applied to us, and needing to offer a coherent explanation of our existence to our self and others in a social order where we are not supposed to exist. 

i think its ultimately self-destructive to imagine “masculinity” and “femininity” as being just presentation or behavior or originating within ourselves and not out of a power dynamic- both of which are destructive for women and lesbians- and attempts to liberate the two ultimately find ways to replicate that division, but that’s totally not the same as having to explain our existence.

so, like, that question implies the two are the same, but they aren’t.

we desire to be annihilated by men for the horrible comfort of our selves not existing and merely the image of us as women remaining- the enactment then of the foundational structuring of women as Lack. Compulsory heterosexuality then becomes indistinguishable from an endless trauma- desire for men comes from exhaustion without escape.

the artificial separation between "mere" desire between women among lesbians and the political centering and reciprocal care taking for other women that has come to define the political aspect of lesbianism is a false, deeply destructive one.

desire should never have been framed as neutral and equivalent between hetero and lesbian 

the failure of ''political lesbianism'' then is the lack of a real understanding of and reaction to the difference of desire and the inevitability of our traumatized place in compulsory heterosexuality and the constrains that trying to coherently speaking of ourselves to men has induced.