Marilyn Frye

I enjoyed the essay on oppression, which set the stage for what I was hoping to be an excellent collection of feminist essays. I found the subsequent essays to be dreadfully academic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just not my idea of pleasure reading. But whatever, I skimmed through the parts I found to be less interesting and the essays were okay.

Then I got to the essay "Lesbian Feminism and the Gay Rights Movement" which is basically a giant rant about how gay men are the torchbearers of the patriarchy. Her points are as follows:

- Gay men love other men, other men have penises, therefore gay men are all about penis worship, and therefore are upholding the patriarchy. (She mentions naught about heterosexual women. Are they upholding the patriarchy as well if they have relationships with men?) She only briefly mentions how gender-bending gay men can be, and how this may serve to break down the male/female gender binary. But mostly she states that effeminacy just serves to ridicule women. I don't even think I need to explain how problematic this idea is, that loving men hurts women, period.

- Some gay men are married to women (and may have children), which means they not only can love other men, but can still grab onto their male privilege to subjugate women in the institution of marriage. What about gay men who came of age in an area (or era) where it wasn't safe to be out and proud about homosexuality? What about gay men who wanted to have children, but weren't able to adopt due to draconian laws forbidding gays from adopting children? What about men who, still to this day, remain closeted due to (not unwarranted) fear about coming out?

- Gay men hate women. Wait, what? Marilyn Frye seriously has this as one of her bullet points. For a feminist who rails against the "feminists hate men" stereotype, she seems quite eager and willing to uphold a "gay men hate women" stereotype. I can't even fathom this as being remotely true.

After reading this essay I really lost respect for the author, and only just skimmed briefly through the last essay (a confusing one about how lesbians and women aren't part of phallocratic societies, therefore they don't exist).

I really wouldn't recommend this book to anybody, unless they had to read it for a women's studies course. In that case I'd ask them to read it with a very skeptical and questioning mind.… (més)