Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective
ISBN: 978-0-745-62837-0
December 2002
Polity
184 pages
ISBN: 978-0-745-62837-0
December 2002
Polity
184 pages
The new politics repudiated lesbian feminist ideas and celebrated ‘manhood’ as a goal for gay men. Practices which construct this ‘manhood’, such as sadomasochism, cutting and piercing, female-to-male transsexual surgery, and which are promoted in queer politics, need to be understood as forms of self-harm which result from the oppression of lesbians and gay men. The political agenda of queer politics is damaging to the interests of lesbians, women in general, and to marginalized and vulnerable constituencies of gay men.
The book concludes by arguing that precisely the commitment to equality in relationships and sex that has been so important to lesbian feminists, and so excoriated in much of queer theory, should form the basis of a social transformation. In this way lesbians should be seen as the vanguard of social change.
Jeffreys argues that when queer politics developed in the 1990s the interests of lesbians were submerged beneath a gay male agenda called queer politics.
Suggests that practices which construct this agenda, such as sadomasochism, cutting and piercing or female-to-male transsexual surgery need to be understood as forms of self-harm which result from the oppression of lesbians and gay men.
Concludes that only the egalitarian principles of lesbian feminism can form the basis of a necessary social transformation.