Part III of ‘When in Doubt’ autoethnographic companion to the walk ‘A Speculative Muddle’ (Richmond-Upon-Thames).
I return with something.
I have now committed to the most obvious route, perhaps the most well-known. Remember, I have been asking about, guiding I/we/you towards divergence, FLINTA, neuroqueer – how we know, how we ‘be’. If the question is knowing and being, there is an implication that our lives are somehow obscured, not known or understood. I am also implying there is a connection between FLINTA and neurodivergence, that there are overlapping paths. When I show overlapping paths, you might look in every direction, looking for the overlaps – how you may be going two places simultaneously. I ask, look down, listen, feel on your skin. It is the path. It has always been the path I have been drawing your attention towards.
I was writing an exploratory piece, an essay in the literal sense of “attempt”: a turning the picture—the presumption of female heterosexuality—around to view it from different angles, a hazarding of unasked questions … In framing a “lesbian continuum” I was trying—somewhat clumsily—to address the disconnect between heterosexually-identified and lesbian feminists. There are moments of insight … that can seem to draw confirmation from every direction, iron filings pulled to a magnet. … Such moments can be electrifying—and dangerous.
Adrienne Rich, Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”, 20041Rich, A. (2004) ‘Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”’, Journal of women’s history, 16(1), pp. 9–10.
If you ask why everyone is trying to force us to go in the same direction, then there is an implication there is a problem – how can you ask the indigenous to stop? If I ask you to look down and find your way, there is an implication I have asked too much. I am excited by the conundrum.
I keep feeling electrified and in danger, questioning my judgement and actions: did I fail on my end? Is there something fundamentally wrong with me? I always answer yes – but that means agreeing that I failed because I cannot follow others’ logic and accommodate their needs. Do Folx feel trapped, institutionally trapped, to accommodate more than what is possible?
I think-with ‘we are all in it together’. We
I keep returning to the Jewish, American, Lesbian. The poet. Adrienne Rich. Like a mother, but not a mother in a maternal protective way, in a genealogical way – generative and making the space of I/us/you. Asking the same questions.
White feminists have educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years. How come you haven’t also educated yourselves about Black woman and the differences between us … when it is the key to survival as a movement?
Adrienne Rich paraphrased in Lorde, ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’, 1979.2Lorde, Audre. ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. In Sister Outsider, 103. 1979. Reprint, London: Penguin Random House UK, 2019.
I read this in school – by school, I mean sometime in the early 90s in California, an English teacher hands us Audre Lorde, Mestiza consciousness, and Jewish lesbians saying … have at it. You will have to figure out how to survive and move at some point – start here. What did I learn?
Even in doubt, we are still all in it together.
In a conversation between Audre and Adrienne (are they my friends now too?), some guidance:
Adrienne: Learned what from your mother?
Audre: The important value of nonverbal communication, beneath language. My life depended on it. At the same time, living in the world, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the way she was using language. My mother had a strange way with words: if one didn’t serve her or wasn’t strong enough, she’d just make up another word, and then that would enter our family language forever, and woe betide any of us who forgot it.
Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, 19803Lorde, A. and Rich, A. (2019) ‘An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich’, in A. Lorde (ed.) Sister Outsider. Woman Poet of the East, London: Penguin Random House UK, pp. 73.
I go find different ways to communicate – both verbal and not. I know I have to dig on my own, but I also know I am creating something for others to educate themselves. Am I trying to give I/we/you tools to educate me/us/them? Am I convincing I/we/you, to do it by my/our/themselves?
But why am I/we/you not learning anything new? I know there is a disconnect, given the research, from Rich and Lorde, from Woolf and Solnit, from conversations with ‘straight’ divorcee mothers and partnered anarchist lesbians, but the problem persists. To paraphrase Rich, I ask why they keep calling us lesbians. From this, I am reminded there is deep political motivation to answer that, share experiences, but given the path (why do I keep finding myself cornered against a wall?), it is also necessary to keep what is vulnerable, what is unclear and uncertain – unstable ground – protected.
It is frustrating. It is shameful. We act with the prescribed pride, wondering why this is all so profoundly felt – why it continues to be felt. It goes unseen because it continues to be under the skin.
Precisely at that point the self-critical function needs to come into play, where, as contributors to the issue on my essay have pointed out, history, context, supporting sources, need to be scrutinised.
Adrienne Rich, Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”4Rich, A. (2004) ‘Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”’, Journal of women’s history, 16(1), pp. 10
What am I sensing?
When in Doubt Series
Footnotes
- 1Rich, A. (2004) ‘Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”’, Journal of women’s history, 16(1), pp. 9–10.
- 2Lorde, Audre. ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. In Sister Outsider, 103. 1979. Reprint, London: Penguin Random House UK, 2019.
- 3Lorde, A. and Rich, A. (2019) ‘An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich’, in A. Lorde (ed.) Sister Outsider. Woman Poet of the East, London: Penguin Random House UK, pp. 73.
- 4Rich, A. (2004) ‘Reflections on “Compulsory Heterosexuality”’, Journal of women’s history, 16(1), pp. 10
