Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

o.k., so y'all know very well that I think some writing and talking about the meaning of film is like dancing about painting (or talking about the use of art, for that matter, instead of MAKING art).  So this is what was going through my mind when I watched the feminist video art.

It is really, REALLY easy to dismiss these pieces as shitty, crazy art things.  However, as the women who introduced us noted, these vids came from a place where women were really trying to make a name for themselves as women (yes, women BORN women) in a patriarchal world.  Yes, uh, it was largely white middle class women doing the shaking.  But go with me here. 

"You would never understand, you young queers don't respect your elders," a sixty-year-old Lesbian told me.  This was after I did a performance piece and made a dig at Judy Grahn (not Judy Grahn herself, who led an incredible life, but the LESBIAN RULES which require Another Mother Tongue to be read by every young Lesbian).  She admitted she was overly sensitive to Grahn, "a saint for the Lesbian movement," and while the younger queers appreciated the jokes and ways I made fun of older lesbians and institutions like Michigan Wymyn's Music Festival, she was miffed.   "Someone exposed their PENIS in the SHOWER!" she said. (this is not really accurate, but go with me).  "Do YOU have any idea what it means to imagine a world free from men touching you, shoving you, to have wymyn's space to breathe?"  She lived on lesbian communes and horse farms in the 70's, yes, as a lesbian separatist, she said, "we were so radical, so eager, but so alone." 

And YOU, she said, YOU grew up post-Stonewall!  Where Gloria Steinem was readily available!  Where you didn't have to fight...just to be equal.  These young women, they think they can stop being gay!  Women don't want to identify as Lesbian anymore.  Suppression!

(yes, there are so many isziues here, as well as with her ideas about bisexual women, trans people, and people of color)

And yes, I know these video art pieces are not LESBIAN SEPARATIST PIECES.  And I truly believe in evolving theoretical discourse.

However, I think there are important moments when we can look back at what our elders can teach us and use it to create art for our own evolving needs. And I think dismissing everything that came before our own evolved theory as 'old-fashioned' without taking into account WHY it's 'old-fashioned.' So when I saw these videos, I saw people in my larger circle, just flapping their wymyn wings and starting to fly.  It was a very welcoming experience.