Status Updates From Unpacking Queer Politics: A...

"The title of Judith Halberstam’s book Female Masculinity suggests that the adoption of butchness is a form of social climbing. It is helpful to imagine substituting for Halberstam’s title ones which show other oppressed groups seeking to emulate the behaviour and manners of the groups that oppress them -‘Working-Class Middle Classness’, for instance, or ‘Aboriginal Whiteness’." this is so lazy and tedious lol

"I call this the destruction of lesbians, because lesbians are physically destroyed in this surgery, and their lesbianism is removed along with female body parts." every time i pick up this book i remember why i stopped reading it.

alright i have to finish this book before the end of this year. forbidding myself from starting anything else until i finish this.

"Rotello makes the important point that gay men’s ideas about sexual freedom are not specifically gay, but are ‘shared to some extent by all men in our culture’. One is a belief that sex ought to be without consequence and responsibility. Another is a sense of entitlement about sex, the notion that males, are at the mercy of biological forces beyond their control that impel us to seek as many partners as possible."

some of this could be better argued and is just inconsistent. bit of a double standard to talk about how "hundreds of women recreated themselves as lesbians because of feminism" and then rail against transsexualism because "its suspect that it becomes more popular with more publicity". and im not following what her position on sexual orientation is: innate or chosen? (seems whichever suits the argument)

"Transgression is a pleasure of the powerful, who can imagine themselves deliciously naughty. It depends upon the maintenance of conventional morality. There would be nothing to outrage, and the delicious naughtiness would vanish, if serious social change took place. The transgressors and the moralists depend mutually upon each other, locked in a binary relationship which defeats rather than enables change."

half baked thoughts because i am half asleep but this book real heavy on the "any woman can be a lesbian, lesbianism is a choice and a model for free womanhood" ... i get the concept i understand heterosexuality is imposed on women etc the whole spiel but also i wish every damn time they had chosen literally any other way to express it than using the term lesbian it just feels appropriative? dismissive? idk