Two quotations for the day:

"Queer has become so inclusive that it doesn’t allow the space for lesbians to exist."

"Some women can't say the word lesbian... even when their mouth is full of one."

The first quotation is by Susan Hawthorne--activist, publisher, poet, aerialist. Her blog is a revelation. If you don't know her, you should. And her book of poems The Butterfly Effect can catch you up on six semesters of women's history... and her book of poems titled Bird, about living with epilepsy, is... well... you just have to read it. Not to mention Earth's Breath, about what it's like, before, during and after a cyclone.  You can read my review of her poetry in the Lambda Literary. (Susan, if you're listening, get a Wikipedia page!)

And the second is by Kate Clinton. And everyone should watch her vlogs.

ANYWAY... I'm on Day Four of the 5-Day blog-off with Deb Randall of Venus Theatre, and it's about Day Seven of rain here in Maine... So I picked a subject that always gets me riled.  False inclusives--which is to say, leaky umbrella terms.

I am old enough to remember when "men" and "man" were used to mean "men and women." Which is like telling people, "Well, now, when I say 'dog' you know what I really mean is 'dog and cat.'"  No self-respecting cat would fall for that for a nano-second. They would know that it was a political ploy intended to privilege the interests of dogs, erase the traditional animosity between the two species, and, basically, make the cats suck it up.

Sadly, women, and especially lesbians are not cats. We have and continue to fall for it. Imagine a gay man being told, "Okay, so from now on, the term 'lesbian' is going to be the term used to refer to both gay males and lesbians."  No self-respecting gay man would fall for that for a nano-second.  They would know that it's a political ploy to privilege the interest of lesbians, erase the ... well, you get the picture.

My generation of feminists fought very hard not be called "men" or "man." The New York Times, if I'm remembering rightly, was one of the last hold-outs.  It took them until 1986 to stop using Mrs. or Miss, and go with Ms. Because in speaking of any woman, anywhere, in any context, it is always supremely important to understand her heterosexual marital status.... because.....???

Anyway... trying to stay focused here.  Our suffrage sisters could tell us all about false inclusives. How Thomas Jefferson (enslaver and impregnator of an enslaved captive) added the words "all men are created equal" to the Declaration of Independence, and how women were assured that this meant us, also... oh, except for when it didn't... like, for instance, when it came to being able to vote.

What I'm trying to say is that words matter. Toni Cade Bambara, whose work the entire world should know, and whose book The Salt Eaters should supplant Moby Dick... ANYWAY... Toni used to say how she took "acts of language" seriously. We all should. Seriously.

Men are not women. Gays are not lesbians. And... okay, "queer." What about "queer?"  Well... I am not queer. I am not odd or unusual.  To cite another awesome African American goddess, Florynce Kennedy, "I never stopped to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me." Yeah. What she said. Now, Florynce did not identify as lesbian... so she's not talking about that. But she is talking about how supremely natural it is to be wild, social-justice-loving, inventive, outside-the-box, feral, decolonized, and liberated. Women's natural state. (Color Me Flo, her autobiography, is a great read.)

"Queer" might work for someone who experienced their same-sex attraction as a burden, or an affliction, or a disability... something they were born with and have to learn to live with. "Queer" might fit for someone who views it as a quirky, deviant lifestyle.

My lesbianism feels like a homecoming to me. It feels like a beachhead from which women, all women, can effectively fight for our truths, our lives, and for the planet. In a world where women are still forced to offer up our sexuality and our emotional resources to men, where we are still killed, incarcerated, or faced with the slow-motion violence of poverty for choosing to put women first in our lives, there is nothing queer, odd, strange, unusual, funny, peculiar, curious, bizarre, weird, uncanny, freakish, eerie, unnatural; unconventional, unorthodox, unexpected, unfamiliar, abnormal, anomalous, atypical, untypical, out of the ordinary, incongruous, irregular; puzzling, perplexing, baffling, or unaccountable about choosing women. There is something tremendously courageous, with a deep core of integrity about it. Considering how everyone's first object of attachment is a female, it can hardly be deviant to be attracted to women. It's more like making a beeline back home.

I recently had lunch with three young gay men in their twenties. The issue came up about why they didn't use the word "lesbian." All three made faces. It was a spontaneous reaction. They had a VISCERAL response to a word that referred only to women. I had the unmistakable impression the faces indicated their distaste for women's bodies, that they were all associating the word with women's genitals... which, indeed, one of them told me he was. Ah... the infamous "ick" factor.

Okay... but is that any reason why lesbians should abandon the word... just because gay men feel more comfortable with a word that privileges them and protects them from actually confronting the fact that lesbians are in different bodies? 

Look, let's be honest: The reticence about using the word "lesbian" is always and ever at heart rooted in misogyny. No, really. You are not going to convince me otherwise.

Judith Halberstam in a recent article in Bitch Magazine says, that to her,"lesbian" has associations "which are always sort of dowdy and unsexy."

WTF??? The Bitch author helps us out by explaining how "lesbian" has connotations like "lumberjacks," (that's "loggers," Bitch) granola-eaters, porn stars, cat owners and goddess worshippers.

WT-double-F??? Make up your mind.

So now Trish Bendix of AfterEllen.com chimes in with how "lesbian" has "almost become a dirty word" because of its association with feminism.  Jeez. The squeamish faces of the young gay men are starting to look not so bad. At least their aversion was to anatomy, not human rights... although, yes, of course, duh, there is a direct connection between their wrinkled noses and my 77 cents to the male dollar.

Look, here's the thing: Lesbians have no more control over the times and places where "gay" will include us than earlier generations of women could control when and where "men" and "man" would include us. Allowing ourselves to be given an identity whose primary referent is male may seem to offer some degree of protection and privilege, but it's a chimera. Our safest and strongest strategy is to remain visible to ourselves, and, sisters, "gay" is not going to do that. Now we see  us, now we don't.

Oh... and that "label" thing that was so trendy in the 1990's ("I don't like labels...") I am talking about an identity, here. You know. IDENTITY... as in a tribe, a heritage, a legacy, a history, a culture. A LESBIAN one. If you are confusing that with a label, then you are doing EXACTLY what our enemies would like us to do... (See my "In the Beginning" blog.)

So, now let's all say "lesbian." Slowly. Thinking of Sappho. Thinking of women's bodies. Thinking of all those times and places and ways that our gay brothers don't get our issues or, worse, actually undermine them. Let's say it again and, this time, look in a mirror. Think about feminism, which is defined as the advocacy of our rights to be considered equal to men. A goal many consider too unambitious...but nonetheless a starting place. LES-BI-AN.

It's what we are and who we are. Get over it.

This morning I was reading a fascinating article about the effects of pornography addiction on the brain. Gotta warn you, the guy swings into some pretty right-wingnut, anti-feminist conclusions toward the end... illustrating some serious synaptic damage in his own brain when it comes to connecting up with women's history...

BUT... let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dude's been a neuro-surgeon for fourteen years.

Well... actually, before I get to the brain chemistry discussion, maybe it's important to talk about whether or not we should do coalition with anti-pornography or anti-prostitution activists who are in it for reasons of religious fundamentalism. That's a good question. I remember in 1986, when Reagon commissioned the Meese Report on pornography, this issue was really "up" for feminists.

During the Vietnam War we had some pretty strange bedfellows... so to speak. There were the Jehovah's Witnesses. They were conscientious objectors because they took literally the injunction to "love thy neighbor." Most of us anti-war activists embraced a wide range of liberation politics, including Women's Liberation. Obviously, this was not on the Jehovah Witness agenda. But they were part of the anti-war movement. They resisted the draft. Sometimes they got off, and sometimes they went to prison.

For me, anyone who is in the fight against child sexual abuse and who is telling the truth and researching pornography addiction is useful as an ally. It's important for me to be very specific in the "Venn diagram" of our overlapping and non-overlapping agendas. Usually these folks are virulently homophobic and anti-feminist.

Okay... that said, can we get back to the brain?

A lot of research has been done on addiction. It does affect the brain, and the brain changes occur whether or not the addiction is to a foreign substances like alcohol or cocaine, or to food or gambling.

Three things occur:
1) Cortical hypofrontality
2) Downgrading of the mesolimbic dopaminergic systems
3) Production of oxytocin and vasopressin associated with use of pornography

 Let's take them one at a time:

Cortical hypofrontality:
The frontal lobes of an addict shrink, or atrophy as a result of addiction. This damage can mimic the results of frontal lobe damage from head trauma. What are these results? According to Dr. Hilton:  "First, these patients are impulsive, in that they thoughtlessly engage in activities with little regard to the consequences. Second, they are compulsive; they become fixated or focused on certain objects or behaviors, and have to have them, no matter what. Third, they become emotionally labile, and have sudden and unpredictable mood swings. Fourth, they exhibit impaired judgment."

In other words, not good.

Downgrading of the mesolimbic dopaminergic systems:
Dopamine is a drug, related to adrenalin, that is produced in the brain. It's the drug that makes us move. It's a motivator. It's a crucial neurotransmitter in the reward/pleasure system of the brain. What happens in the brain of an addict is that this system becomes overused. The dopamine cells begin to atrophy. The dopamine receptors on the pleasure cells downgrade also. Craving sets in. The addict has to "up the dosage" of the addictive substance in order to achieve the same pleasure or "high." This is why the pornography addict gravitates toward more and more shockingly violent and bizarre imagery, including child pornography. And, of course 85% of men arrested for child porngraphy have histories of sexually abusing children.

Production of oxytocin and vasopressin associated with use of pornography:
Okay, now this is weird. The addict "falls in love" with the images of pornography. Remember, we are a species of ape whose evolutionary circuitry never took into account the possibility of visual sexual cues completely divorced from the presence of a potential partner. The erotic arousal from viewing the pornographic images triggers the "bonding" brain chemicals of oxytocin and vasopressin. The addict's relationship to the pornography is, biochemically, that of a person to a lover. Which is why so many partners of addicts experience the addiction as a form of sexual and emotional infidelity. Because that is exactly what it is.

At this point, our right-wingnut neurosurgeon veers into apocalyptic prophesy of global annihilation due to falling birthrates from "porn impotence" (which is a real thing) which he attributes to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. In fact, falling birthrates in the West are a direct result of public accessibility of birth control, and specifically the empowerment of women in terms of controlling pregnancy. He's not that specific, but I suspect that his panic may have something to do with racial concerns... you know, fewer of "us" and more of "them."

But... back to the science...  It does not matter to the brain that the drugs are exogenous or endogenous... an outside job or an inside job. The effect, in terms of neurophysiology and addiction, is the same. By far, my concerns and focus are on the women and children who are used in pornography... but it is important to incorporate all the harms... and, sadly, the percentage of women addicted to pornography continues to rise with the increasing ease of access from the Internet.

And so ends Day Two of my 5-Day Blog-off with Deb Randall! Please let me know how I'm doing!