[girlygirlgag]

Any professional therapist, psychologist, etc... would tell you sex and gender are two completely different things.

Sex is what you are born with.

Gender is how you are socialized.

[girltrouble]

nohope, if sex and gender are one in the same, what does that make me? is my gender male, despite the fact most people take me to be a woman? and what of my boobs? that is a secondary sex charecteristic, so are my boobs female and the rest of me is male? or is what is between my legs the over riding charecteristic? as i said, what you posit is absurd. but really, if sex and gender are the same, and males actions, for eg, can only be male, then they are biologically fixed. so there is nothing apart from sex/gender. it is biological fact, and inescapable. and again, absurd. you are thinking in circles, nohope, and those circles aren't terribly logical.

and if you read butler's books/theorizing, in total, she pointedly ignores and disregards trans stories, identities, and views, just as lapis pointed out. transphobic.

as for your interpetation of my quote, only if we are talking about a pop-cultural conception of what biological sex is. but biologically your supposition is false. it applies to gender, but not sex. i think you need to read my first post again. twice. let go of your ideas that sex and gender are the same thing. you are thinking in 2dimentions, you need to think in three. as i said i think this whole urge to jump to some sort of sex or gender blind society, another way of silencing exploration/imagining what a femme power looks like. to say again, it is an exact paralell to how the idea of race blindness is used in american politics. there is no urge for equality, it is more a way of silencing any different ideas.

bean, i don't think that there is an instance where butch must exploit, but rather there is a choice to exploit femme energy by butch means. it's a person's choice to do the explotiation, rather than something forced by a power vehicle. does that make sense? the explotiation cannot be blamed on the means of power.

your last question is an interesting one, but i don't think american society has really explored femme power enough to know. all we do know is how butch power works, so we assume that that is all that there is.

[lapis]

I think it's totally sci-fi to think sex/gender have to be eliminated--and it erases people's very real identifications with categories. It doesn't give you anything to work with--I think there can be intentionality, strategic deployment, agency involved--it doesn't have to be taken for granted or set in stone. It can also be expanded--thinking of Sexing the Body by anne fausto sterling is one less theory-headed way of getting at this. And I know too many femme women who use that power (femme dominatrixes, as a cloudy example) and men who use their girlyness in really strong ways--to suggest that we need to throw that out. We need to make space for all kinds of models of identifications-and recognize patriarchy for the bunk that it is. When I get dressed up, put on make-up to accomplish something, to actually work it, it feels wonderful, not coerced, because it is intentional every step of the way. To suggest it's all coersion makes it feel like no one has consciousness--which is really elitist. I mean, do manly men (not just the one who go to men's weekends to jump over fires and roar) have consiousness? Of course, some do. And everybody else, too.

gt, so glad you could get the point and build on it, cause I wasn't sure it made sense--we can't just naturalize the social--and when you fix those categories, there's an implicit desire for something to get stabilized involved--the thing that's probably in danger. Whiteness is an example, perhaps. And I understand, nohope, how something 'natural' like sex seems to deserve that destabilization, too, but I'm not certain that it's as socially constructed and then it also gets kidnapped into the service of the social, and then you start debating things like whether or not global warming exists...

Thanks for this space to think in folks! Yay!

[greenbean]

GT, yeah, I was thinking in regards to business, particulary business that profits off women/girls. I think that when a woman is in a powerful position in the business world, she usually has to be a bit Butch to get there, since business is still a mostly male realm. My boss is a hardass, and exerts her power in a pretty Butch way, which at first glance seems feminist, like, shes just as good at running a business as a man. But, because she is in the business of selling fluff to women, its arguably anti-feminist...or exploitive..obviously I'm very confused!!

Anyway, bottom line, I think its considered a Butch quality to be a shrewd business man/woman...but maybe it shouldn't be, and if not, is there a way for a MAN to be a FEMME businessman? And what would that look like?

ETA: Actually, my sig line answered my own question...it'd look like John Waters!

[nohope]

“after all, if sex is the same thing as gender, then gender MUST correspond to sex. ie, only females can be feminine, and only males can be masculine. Which, I think we can all agree, is absurd.”

I don’t think we can agree that it is absurd. I think that it is true…. And that is precisely why gender/sex must be eliminated.

Only then will we be liberated to be full human beings not tied to any set of gendered expectations. Humans who don't have to look over their shoulder and wonder if they have been assigned the wrong gender, and don’t need to work so hard at changing to another. Because they will be free to do what they want, with whom they want, when they want, and how they want, if they want.

I don't see attempting to create a social contract in which no one bothers to live according to gender roles as anti-trans.

It would be nice to live in a world were the first thought isn't what sex is the baby.

"In any case, whatever the particular realm in which the critique of metaphysical absolutes occurs, one common outcome is the discovery that absolutes of this kind always function as unconscious anchors for a certain kind of identity. So the critique typically involves two most general results: It reveals that a given absolute is in fact a construction of history, culture, and desire, and it reveals that the construction has been misrecognized as an absolute because a certain self or cultural or sexual identity depends on not seeing the construction as a construction."

Your willing to understand this as aplying to patriarchy, but I think it even more so aplies to our conseption of "sex."

[girltrouble]

firstly, g3, you are sooooo my hero. that is so awesome! i wanna bust some guy in the snotbox! that sounds fun! (i think it's the domina in me! lol)

bean, i know what you mean, about femme power. that's why i am so interested in it, it seems like something so seldom talked about in feminist circles, and maybe it's me that seems fucked up. but i don't understand something you said. when does being butch mean exploiting femmes? were you refering to your work? and why do you frame that in a butch power pov?

thank you lapis, you said it before i got a chance. i am not a big fan of butler. i find her to be transphobic, albeit in a less shrill way than janice raymond. i am sure she has toned this down, but all the same, to me, she seems to have an ax to grind.

no hope i don't think you could ever convince me that the tire story is coersion. the person is never threatened, which to me is the start of coersion.

Even with your fervent articulation on how sex and gender are fundamentally different, I still have to beg that you allow me to disagree with you.

i find this a bit odd, considering that you just finished saying that my butch/femme as gender is limiting, when what you suggest, binding sex and gender, is infinately more confining. after all, if sex is the same thing as gender, then gender MUST correspond to sex. ie, only females can be feminine, and only males can be masculine. which, i think we can all agree, is absurd.

...which brings me to another quote of lapis'. i loved this:

I think patriarchy's real strength has been to enslave aspects of nature (like reproduction) and to connect some social forces and make it look like it owns those things--healthy women were hot before the fabrication of patriarchy. and so now, to be a healthy hot women looks like some kind of coersion. To pretend that it dictates aesthetics or power is just falling into its trap. Beauty and power existed before patriarchy and I think it's our jobs to disentagle patriarchy's bullshit from individual desires and maybe even some symbolic meanings.

which leads me to this:
your comment, lapis reminded me of what may seem like an odd leap, but i keep coming back to this article i found on line after watching a movie. the subject is postmodern evolutionary theory in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman.' it's helpful but not necc'ry to have seen the movie/read the book to know what they are talking about. what i like best is how it talks about post modern construction, as well as different darwinist narratives. which is what you were refering to. the perception of the un-natural being made to appear natural.

i feel like such a self-indulgent, pretentious ass, writing about theory, but i do love it. i love reading something and not getting it, and then working till i do. brain stretch!

anyways, it's a bit of a read-- 16 pages not all of it relevant. but here are a couple of snippets:

The elements of postmodern thinking that will be most relevant here revolve, as always, around the fundamental critique of metaphysical absolutes of all kinds, a metaphysical absolute being any representation that is taken consciously or unconsciously as entirely self-contained, self-identical, self-present, and therefore outside the realm of culture, history, desire, and ideology...

...In any case, whatever the particular realm in which the critique of metaphysical absolutes occurs, one common outcome is the discovery that absolutes of this kind always function as unconscious anchors for a certain kind of identity. So the critique typically involves two most general results: It reveals that a given absolute is in fact a construction of history, culture, and desire, and it reveals that the construction has been misrecognized as an absolute because a certain self or cultural or sexual identity depends on not seeing the construction as a construction.

the emphasis, underlined and italicized, is mine, but i think you can see how this is relevant to our little conversation, and what lapis was saying about the patriarchy. furthermore

In any case, whatever the particular realm in which the critique of metaphysical absolutes occurs, one common outcome is the discovery that absolutes of this kind always function as unconscious anchors for a certain kind of identity. So the critique typically involves two most general results: It reveals that a given absolute is in fact a construction of history, culture, and desire, and it reveals that the construction has been misrecognized as an absolute because a certain self or cultural or sexual identity depends on not seeing the construction as a construction.

[greenbean]

Ha! GGG, its fun to beat-up boys, huh? I once clobbered this kid that was acting fresh with me.... I did it in a girly way though! (I punched him in the neck instead of the face cuz I didn't want to hurt my hand!)

Femme power is something I am very curious about. As feminists I think we feel like we often feel like power only comes in Butch form, and that we should try and be Butch. But then sometimes being Butch means exploiting those who are Femme....so then does it become unfeminist?

I mean, I struggle with this question in my line of work. Working for a woman-owned company, with a mostly female administrative and production staff (that are all brilliant and driven) feels pretty feminist...but we are in the business of glorifing the kind of femininity that we (most of the staff) don't even exhibit ourselves! We laugh about it often, how we are tomboys creating girly-girl products....and I don't know if I should feel bad about it or not. Does that make any sense?

Maddy, since you've read Female Chauvinist Pigs, does it go into women that profit from the fashion and beauty industry,..or is primarily about women who profit off of other women in the sex industry? Just curious if I'd be considered a chauvinist or not

[lapis]

I think language is crap, and that's the main flaw in all of Butler's work--that's what she gives primacy to language over bodies, desires, and really power. By aligning sex/gender along the whole linguistics framework, she takes the material and essential possibilities away from bodies. Regardless of what she does in bodies that matter (because it's a weak apology for her previous stuff) it's all play and performance. I prefer models like Volatile Bodies, Foucault, and feminine polymorphous perversity that look at the inside and outside and moving back and forth and models that emphasize desire, basically more psychoanalytic concepts than Butler. I think she does total injustice to real peoples' embodied experiences and to the experience of sex/gender/sexuality because it's more than language--it's embodied practices. And these things are an interplay of projection, imagination and lived experience. And sorry, but patriarchy's just a word among many words--and doesn't really help you to get into the systems of power operating around these things.

I think patriarchy's real strength has been to enslave aspects of nature (like reproduction) and to connect some social forces and make it look like it owns those things--healthy women were hot before the fabrication of patriarchy. and so now, to be a healthy hot women looks like some kind of coersion. To pretend that it dictates aesthetics or power is just falling into its trap. Beauty and power existed before patriarchy and I think it's our jobs to disentagle patriarchy's bullshit from individual desires and maybe even some symbolic meanings. But patriarchy's just a creation of the industrial revolution (in my opinion) to keep men working and women making babies.

[nohope]

“did you read ANYTHING THAT I WROTE?”

girltrouble

I did read everything you wrote and I understand the theory your are articulating. You articulate it very well.

You also made me rethink my position of what I include under the label “power” I think I was way to limiting.

However, I beg to differ with you on the question of whether “flirting with a man to get him to change a tire is coercion.” I think it is and I hope I can do so without being labeled “insane.”

Regarding whether sex is gendered or gender is sexed. Even with your fervent articulation on how sex and gender are fundamentally different, I still have to beg that you allow me to disagree with you.

I believe that to conflate the two is warranted and backed up by Judith Butler, who challenged this idea in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity which she fallowed up with Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex."

Ultimate I think our disagreement is predicated on an even deeper level than what we have been discussing. Namely how we know the world. Does language simple describe the world we see? Or is it irreversibly interwoven to the point that it creates as much as describes reality.

I fall in to the school of thought that thinks language creates as much if not more than it describes. That the human brain is constructed to not just make sense of patterns that indeed exist but to actually perceive patterns when non exist.

That, if I am right, and then it is not just sex that is culturally constructed but all of perception. Which does not mean that everything is subjective and that we can’t know anything. But simply that what we do know has limits and that when we speak we speak and understand the world via ideas which have no basic foundation in reality and are not even necessary for reproduction.

[maddy29]

Even better! Hee hee

I had a dream the other night, it was so vivid-and I was screaming at these guys who were harassing me on the street-so satisfying! In real life I'm usually like "huh? What?" and then 5 minutes later "fuck you!"

[girlygirlgag]

Love this!!!! Heh heh

hehehe

I saw him when I was leaving and yelled " Hey Asshole, you got beat up by a girl!"

[maddy29]

I did knock a guy out for being a threatening, invasive, pervert a few months ago

Love this!!!! Heh heh

[girltrouble]

s'ok. mornington, i read lots of books on SSG, and it wasn't until i read a book about crossdressing that described their activity as "male femaling", and insisted on a separation between sex and gender, and explained the difference clearly, that i started to really get it. (male/sex, femaling/gender)it doesn't really help that words like feminine, female/male masculine can be used for sex and gender.


as for shegoes' question, i'll pipe in on that a bit later. i gotta get going.

[girlygirlgag]

i've been the "femme" in a relationship with a woman and i've been the "femme" in relationships (but not all) with men. i found it i had more power as a femme with a woman than i have as a femme with men. has anyone else had this experience?

Hmm. I guess I have been in my relationship for such a long time, those areas are pretty grayed by now. I'm a "femme" woman, I like clothes, (all kinds) I have long hair and wear make up. But I am also pretty physical, I have been known to through a few punches (not at my honey, but I did knock a guy out for being a threatening, invasive, pervert a few months ago), I don't shrink at "creepy" things, (I kill spiders with my bare hands and catch snakes to chase the kids around with for fun), etc.

But, I feel the power struggle in my relationship has more to do with personality than with roles? He is a control freak with everything, I am not. That is our biggest problem. He can't do change, or I have to ease him inot it, so that is where he holds the power.... I am rambling.

[thereshegoes]

i've been the "femme" in a relationship with a woman and i've been the "femme" in relationships (but not all) with men. i found it i had more power as a femme with a woman than i have as a femme with men. has anyone else had this experience?

[mornington]

gt, I think I'm just several steps behind you; I agree with what you're saying, but I'm still trying to fit it into my head and world-view (i'd define myself as a heteronormative straight girl, as are most of my friends; ergo my community doesn't have the wide range of genders yours does).

give me a few hours more. I think I did mean to say sex-neutral. I've got the two twisted round in my mind.

[girltrouble]

*beats her head against a wall*
argh!

did you read ANYTHING THAT I WROTE?

back to the basics:
there are three componants of human sexuality: sex, sexuality and gender or SSG.
contrary to what most people think, these three componants are SEPARATE. they are non-interchangeable, as each deals with a different area.
sex is strictly biological, having to do with one's body. but even this is not as simple as most take for granted. even on an genetic level, there isn't just xx or xy but xxy as well. essentually, while sex may seem like it is either male or female, this is an illusion. human sex is more a matter of addition rather than either/or. professor of sociology ken plummer says "biologists can classify the hormonal, chromosomal and reproductive differences."

sexuality: this one is just as complex, but pop-culturally is much less simplistic. but it is more accurately called 'sexual orientation.' since this is the least germane to what we are talking about, i will leave it at that.

gender: contrary to what we have been told about this, gender is NOT THE SAME THING AS SEX. gender is very much a social construct and changes with time, culture and location. what may be very "masculine" may be considered very "feminine" in another culture, or even in the same culture. to prove my point, if you go back before the 1900s, the color blue, as an eg, was actually considered a color than indicated femininity. so. gender is a shifting social construct that while it insinuates sex, is much more slippery. a man may be quite "feminine" but his sex, all the same is male. think about it this way: gender is more like a frame. it is a border to tell you how to value what it holds. or think about gender in different languages. a ship is a she. it has no sex organs, but it is she because of a cultural perception. in the same way, i am to all appearances female gendered, but because i have not had "the big operation" my sex is male. that is the sex and the gender, sexual orentation is who i am attracted to, which in my case is females. so am i gay? am i straight? it depends on if you want to classify my orientation by my gender or sex. so can you see why there is the need for a difference, yet?

now, that said, your opening para is not quite correct. to be accurate, sex isn't gendered, gender is sexed. the difference is one of imposition. and while sex may be way more categories than we normally perceve, it is quite concrete and can be tested. gender changes. sex is objective. gender is all appearances and socital consensus.

That this sorting is culturally subjective. To substitute male and female or feminine and masculine with butch and femme dose not in my mind simplify the questions we are raising but actually complicate them even more.

the point, as i said before is to remove it from a context of patriarical system of man vs. woman which is more sex based rather than gender. if it complicates it or makes it more difficult, i suggest that you re-read my posts until it makes sense to you. but there is a method to the madness. it is crucial for the point i am trying to make.

Society dose not for instance ask is this new born femme or butch. But if they did, they would still assign sex according to those categories.

*sigh.*
exactly. this is NOT ABOUT SEX, IT IS ABOUT GENDER. your illustration above is you confusing the terms sex with gender. the societal perception of an action, or power is gender. for my point, there needs to be a disticntion between the two. we are talking not about what is between your legs, to be blunt, but rather cultural and sociatal perceptions of action, and their perceived gender that results in what we are labeling power.

Butch is a tem which caries with it an intrinsic femme element. To call a man in other words a butch is to challenge his masculinity.

butch carries no such intrinsic femme element. if any woman said a man is butch, i doubt the man would bat an eye, but would rather take it to mean he is very masculine. indeed, even in the gay community, a butch is not in any way femme, but rather an extreme of masculinity.

When we use words like Butch and femme to categorize human potential we limit the ability of men and women to fully express themselves. Because these categories reinforce hetero-normative power structures.

yes, i'd agree with you, IF, we were talking about sex, but as i said, GENDER IS NOT THE SAME THING AS SEX. a man can quite easily be a femme. and just as easily a female can be quite butch. it is only a limitation be cause your "hetero normative" culture puts those restrictions on it, and tells you that sex and gender are for some reason bound/the same thing. THEY ARE NOT. but the subject at hand is femme power as an alternate/means of resistance to the patriarchy. we can wish for a system that is non patriarical, but that isn't gonna happen tomorrow. but again, i think you are conflating sex with gender after all, the category of butch dyke is not a reinforcement of the hetero-normative, since that system says that only men can exercize a masculine power. a butch woman is a troubling of those waters. it is only seen as a limitation, if you bind butch with maleness, and femme with femaleness. neither is mutually exclusive.

as for the point that you make for mornington's post, you miss my point. i am talking about power in a subcultural context first (queer communities), before we talk about it in we wider (patriarical, american) culture.

To say that feminism is in the “habit of erasing/discounting/erasing femme avenues of power.” Doesn’t address why. The why is your own fault? You are erasing femme power but moving one type of power out of the femme ledger and into the butch ledger. That is a choice you are making.

how? how am i erasing femme power? again you conflate sex with gender.

Once we accept power as gender neutral we can simply talk about what works when how best.

power is not gender neutral. it is sex neutral. there is a difference.

Men do not have power in patriarchy because we value “butch power” more than “femme power.” Men are in power because they use effective strategies to subjugate women.

wrong. one of the strategies that men use is to minimize/erase/discount and dismiss the contributions of women. much as you are doing here. it is obvious that women are not paid the same, but their contribution is erased, as is a counter means of power or means of resistance. in many ways feminism played into this with many of the tactics of the 70's-- ie saying that the only way to be free of the patriarchy is to be without sex or to be blind to sex (sound familiar?) it's exactly what your are proposing now. it's nothing new. it's the thing that said that both butches and femmes in the dyke communities were traitors to the patriarchy, and women could not date men, or wear makeup, or skirts, and on and on and on. tried, failed, crash and burn.

Women need to be able to use those same strategies with out having to have their gender challenged by being categorized as “butch.” Similarly men need to be able to relinquish domination strategies with out being label femme.

lol. you're telling me what? is that supposed to be something i don't know? i want to agree, but i don't think the solution is to be without labels, but rather, without stigma. i think what you are proposing is similar to repulicans saying they "don't see race" when talking about affirmative action. it should be nice, but it ends up being something that benefits white people. in the same way what you propose benefits men/patriarchy, because it says that if you examine femininity, or see it then you are submitting to the patriarchy or hetero normative systems. as i said above. i reject that. i think any human being can use either butch or femme or other forms of power at any time, they are not bound by one or the other by their sex. gender power, again, is not bound by sex.

[your] line of reasoning ...will never value women’s contributions beyond some narrow archetypal norm. Femme is just another prison for every woman who want to free to not have her every action categorized and held against her by thought who believe a women can only be one thing.

*eye roll* no. to the contrary. i am not suggesting that because your sex is female you must/can only operate withing a femme power mode. it is simply an option. i think you are projecting here. trust me, i am more than comfortable with very butch women. i admire them just as much as femmes. my community is composed mainly of seattle's dykes and f2ms. i am familiar with more gender identities on the gender spectrum than you can shake a stick at. i could never, would never talk about this in some sort of restrictive manner. i want to talk about this, because this is something that is rarely discussed. there are umpteen books about female masculinity, and seeing as we live in a patriarchy we are all too familiar with male power. but looking at femme power, femme identities is something that is not often discussed/delved into. in many feminist circles there is still a bit of a taboo about it. older feminists have a hard time with "girl culture," to say that femme identities and femme power are erased/omitted/discounted/rejected is not an over statement. and i for one don't know why it's such a scary thing.
one more time everyone, SEX DOES NOT EQUAL GENDER.

i am interested in femme power. i feel it's been shunned/neglected/erased from feminist theory, and while we know all kinds of things about male power, feminists are just now starting to explore femme power, after having neglected and shuned it for decades and having been introduced to it, i want to poke and prod it. but please don't tell me that we need to go beyond gender. for all your rah-de-rah talk, i've got walk. i live this. this isn't some cute intellectual, hypothetical, academic exercize for me. i've lived years between genders. i've been a boy, and i live as a woman. if you choose to go that route you talk so much about, eshewing "the patriarchy, gender, and "hetro-normality," please do. i'd love to see people put their money where there mouth is when they talk about living outside the bounds of gender/sex. but, as one who doesn't exactly fit into sex or gender roles, and is hardly "hetero-normative", i think you will find it more difficult than you think.

[nohope]

Girltrouble- I don’t think we can ignore that sex is a gendered concept in it’s own right. That male and female are not objective, empirical absolutes, but rather are categories in which people who are born with an infinite range of genital variance and even chromosomal complexity are sorted.


That this sorting is culturally subjective. To substitute male and female or feminine and masculine with butch and femme dose not in my mind simplify the questions we are raising but actually complicate them even more.

Society dose not for instance ask is this new born femme or butch. But if they did, they would still assign sex according to those categories.

Butch itself raises even more problematic issues in that, from my experience at least, Butch is a tem which caries with it an intrinsic femme element. To call a man in other words a butch is to challenge his masculinity. It says even though you have many of the markers of masculinity, under it all you are surprising a femme proclivity.

So which means that in a range of power categorized form the most masculine to the most feminine, butch lays somewhere in the femme power field.

Off course mornington points out that this is very problematic.

A man can do what ever he use whatever form of coercion he wants to assert his authority and gain a power advantage. Whether that is brute force or seduction.

A woman on the other hand is limited by the very definition of women. Women and femininity as defined with in patriarchy are repressive. Which is the whole point of expanding what it means to be both femme and butch or whatever.

When we use words like Butch and femme to categorize human potential we limit the ability of men and women to fully express themselves. Because these categories reinforce hetero-normative power structures.

It’s hard enough to stop thinking of our selves in polarizing gendered terms. It’s hard enough to try to reconceptualize what it means to be human with out one more piece of baggage walling in our minds.

How does conserving of the world as Butch and femme help me be a whole person? How dose that lead me to a unified gender theory in which my genital variation no longer becomes a social expectation.

Butch and femme to me are just one more prisons of the mind.

And feminism vs. patriarchy? Feminism is a product, a reaction to patriarchy. They are inseparably liked.

To say that feminism is in the “habit of erasing/discounting/erasing femme avenues of power.” Doesn’t address why. The why is your own fault? You are erasing femme power but moving one type of power out of the femme ledger and into the butch ledger. That is a choice you are making.

Once we accept power as gender neutral we can simply talk about what works when how best. Men do not have power in patriarchy because we value “butch power” more than “femme power.” Men are in power because they use effective strategies to subjugate women. Women need to be able to use those same strategies with out having to have their gender challenged by being categorized as “butch.” Similarly men need to be able to relinquish domination strategies with out being label femme.

The line of reasoning you are taking us down will never get us there. In fact it will never value women’s contributions beyond some narrow archetypal norm. Femme is just another prison for every woman who want to free to not have her every action categorized and held against her by thought who believe a women can only be one thing.

My fear is that many third wave gender theories will be and are twisted by the out side world, turning feminist analyses against women.

[girltrouble]

i understand what you're saying, mornington, but that is not what i'm getting at, but it illustrates what i am trying to say, if you follow me. but i am coming from this place of specifically gendered power. as i said, gender is different, distinct from sex. remember i am talking about different ways of operating even with people of the same gender: i.e. dykes. among dykes male/female isn't a real dynamic. a woman who is a butch is not male, but very much female, but the kind of power she uses is butch. the flip side of which is femme. so we are NOT talking about male/female but rather BUTCH/FEMME. it may seem a quibble, but the reason this is so important, is that even when we are talking about an all female population, the tendancy is to discount femme power in favor of butch power. and this is what i am getting at: feminism, much like the patriarchy is in the habit of erasing/discounting/erasing femme avenues of power.

does that make sense?

if you say sex neutral, i'd agree with you, but to posit that all forms of power are gender neutral is to erase the femme in the equation by virtue of how we usually frame/view power. femme power isn't considered "powerful" when practiced by men. it's simply not thought of as power. its that same over arching thing that gives women no alternative avenue of resistance/power under patriarchy. there is only one way of exerting power, and to use my terminology it is butch. there is no space for the femme. that is why this line of thought is emerging from the femme dyke community. it is one of specifically femme power where a new, younger population of femme dykes are asserting their power and strength.

[mornington]

i think we're getting at the same point; femme power, when practiced by a man, is considered "powerful", but when it's practiced by a woman, it becomes weakness. I don't think it should be; power in itself is gender-neutral - it's the way we look at it that imbues it with gender (and then relegates femme power to weakness). We need to rid ourselves of the idea of splitting power into male/female roles.