Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory

Abstract

Heidi Hartmann once said of marriage of Marxism and feminism that it been like marriage of husband and wife depicted in English common law: marxism and feminism are one, and that is marxism.' Lesbian theory and feminism, I want to suggest, are at risk of falling into a similar unhappy marriage in which the one is feminism. Although lesbian feminist theorizing has significantly contributed to feminist thought, it has also generally treated lesbianism as a kind of applied issue. Feminist theories developed outside of context of lesbianism are brought to bear on lesbianism in order to illuminate nature of lesbian oppression and women's relation to women within lesbianism. So, for example, early radical lesbians played off feminist claim that all male-female relationships are dominance relationships. They argued either that lesbian is paradigm case of patriarchal resister because she refuses to be heterosexual or that she fits on a continuum of types of patriarchal resisters.2 In taking this line, lesbian theorists made a space for lesbianism by focusing on what they took to be inherently feminist and antipatriarchal nature of lesbian existence. Contemporary lesbian theorists are less inclined to read lesbianism as feminist resistance to male dominance.3 Instead,