I was pleased to see that lesbians ranked as the highest sexual orientation reading my blog! Awesome! So this post is strictly for you.
How do you feel about the lesbian community as it stands right now?
What would you like to see change for this year in the lesbian community?
And feel free to bring up anything lesbian related.
dirt
Do not comment if you are NOT a lesbian. This space is for LESBIANS ONLY.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Todays Poll Question-Sexual Orientation/Identity
Please use this space if you would like to elaborate or discuss todays Poll.
Happy Friday
Happy New Years Eve
Todays Poll Post is Open Comments-please be respectful.
dirt
Happy Friday
Happy New Years Eve
Todays Poll Post is Open Comments-please be respectful.
dirt
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The Male Medical Machine-a series
During the decades from 1870-1910, middle-class women were beginning to organize on behalf of higher education, entrance to the professions, and political rights. Simultaneously, the female nervous disorders of anorexia nervosa, hysteria, and neurasthenia became epidemic; and the Darwinian "nerve specialist" arose to dictate proper feminine behavior outside the asylum as well as in, to differentiate treatments for "nervous" women of various class backgrounds, and to oppose women's efforts to change the conditions of their lives.
At the end of the nineteenth century, hysteria, the classic female malady, became the focal point for the second psychiatric revolution, the emergence of psychoanalysis. It was in dealing with hysterical women, after all, that Freud first developed his theories of the sexual origin of neurosis, and his techniques of dream analysis and free association. Yet the transition to psychiatric modernism occurred, not during the heyday of the famous female hysterics, but rather during the First World War, when the urgent necessity of treating thousands of shell-shocked soldiers-male hysterics-made the theoretical and therapeutic bankruptcy of Darwinian approaches all too clear. In coping with shell shock, psychiatrists were forced to experiment with a variety of new therapies, including psychoanalytic methods that exposed unconscious conflicts and repressions. It was men's illnesses rather than women's that made this transition possible. And although the incidence of classic hysteria in women seemed to decline after the war, the new female malady of schizophrenia soon arose to take its place. In modern literature and art, the schizophrenic woman stands for the alienation and fragmentation of the age. In medical psychiatry, which has treated schizophrenia, and which in England has taken precedence over psychosurgery, and psychotropic drugs.
In each of these three periods, the prevailing attitudes are shaped both by moments of social upheaval that challenged psychiatric thought, and by the careers of those individual physicians who not only dominated their generation's thinking but also transformed the social rose of the psychiatrist in line with the age's cultural ideals. John Conolly in the early Victorian period, Henry Maudsley in the last decades of the nineteenth century, W.H.R. Rivers during World War I, and R.D. Laing in the 1960's are exemplary in this sense. Their lives and ideas establish the psychiatric contest for the discussion of female insanity in each period and for the ways it was experienced, diagnosed, treated, and represented over two centuries of English culture.
It is significant that all these figures are men. Changes in cultural fashion, psychiatric theory, and public policy have not transformed the imbalance of gender and power that has kept madness a female malady. Despite the wide acceptance of psychotherapy, psychiatric modernism has not led to significant changes in the cultural construction of female insanity. The presence of several women among the pioneers of the British Psycho-Analytical Society did not produce a revision of Freudian ideas of female psychology and sexuality; and psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on penis envy as the main determinant of female psychosexual development, has not offered much scope for a revolutionary discourse on women and madness. Most disappointing, even the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960's, which protested against shock treatments, and which promised to analyze women's situation in the family and in society, not only failed in its theoretical effort but may well have been the most sexist of all in its practice. (E. Showalter-Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980)
"And although the incidence of classic hysteria in women seemed to decline after the war, the new female malady of schizophrenia soon arose to take its place".
There has since been a never ending supply of "new female maladies" of which female transition is just another in a long line. Like all the female maladies of the past, the male medical treatment issued, then and now, are nothing more than barbaric band-aid's meant to hide the problem rather than heal it.
dirt
At the end of the nineteenth century, hysteria, the classic female malady, became the focal point for the second psychiatric revolution, the emergence of psychoanalysis. It was in dealing with hysterical women, after all, that Freud first developed his theories of the sexual origin of neurosis, and his techniques of dream analysis and free association. Yet the transition to psychiatric modernism occurred, not during the heyday of the famous female hysterics, but rather during the First World War, when the urgent necessity of treating thousands of shell-shocked soldiers-male hysterics-made the theoretical and therapeutic bankruptcy of Darwinian approaches all too clear. In coping with shell shock, psychiatrists were forced to experiment with a variety of new therapies, including psychoanalytic methods that exposed unconscious conflicts and repressions. It was men's illnesses rather than women's that made this transition possible. And although the incidence of classic hysteria in women seemed to decline after the war, the new female malady of schizophrenia soon arose to take its place. In modern literature and art, the schizophrenic woman stands for the alienation and fragmentation of the age. In medical psychiatry, which has treated schizophrenia, and which in England has taken precedence over psychosurgery, and psychotropic drugs.
In each of these three periods, the prevailing attitudes are shaped both by moments of social upheaval that challenged psychiatric thought, and by the careers of those individual physicians who not only dominated their generation's thinking but also transformed the social rose of the psychiatrist in line with the age's cultural ideals. John Conolly in the early Victorian period, Henry Maudsley in the last decades of the nineteenth century, W.H.R. Rivers during World War I, and R.D. Laing in the 1960's are exemplary in this sense. Their lives and ideas establish the psychiatric contest for the discussion of female insanity in each period and for the ways it was experienced, diagnosed, treated, and represented over two centuries of English culture.
It is significant that all these figures are men. Changes in cultural fashion, psychiatric theory, and public policy have not transformed the imbalance of gender and power that has kept madness a female malady. Despite the wide acceptance of psychotherapy, psychiatric modernism has not led to significant changes in the cultural construction of female insanity. The presence of several women among the pioneers of the British Psycho-Analytical Society did not produce a revision of Freudian ideas of female psychology and sexuality; and psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on penis envy as the main determinant of female psychosexual development, has not offered much scope for a revolutionary discourse on women and madness. Most disappointing, even the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960's, which protested against shock treatments, and which promised to analyze women's situation in the family and in society, not only failed in its theoretical effort but may well have been the most sexist of all in its practice. (E. Showalter-Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980)
"And although the incidence of classic hysteria in women seemed to decline after the war, the new female malady of schizophrenia soon arose to take its place".
There has since been a never ending supply of "new female maladies" of which female transition is just another in a long line. Like all the female maladies of the past, the male medical treatment issued, then and now, are nothing more than barbaric band-aid's meant to hide the problem rather than heal it.
dirt
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Topics Tuesday-Masculinity and Women
Some possible questions for todays topic:
1) Can women by the nature of masculinity be masculine? (not the social construct "masculine")
2) Does the construct of masculinity harm women whom it is applied to?
3) Does the construct of masculinity unfeminize and "other" the female body of those whom the masculine label is applied to?
4) Can and does the construct of masculinity being applied to women push some women towards transition?
5) What is masculine/masculinity to you and why?
dirt
1) Can women by the nature of masculinity be masculine? (not the social construct "masculine")
2) Does the construct of masculinity harm women whom it is applied to?
3) Does the construct of masculinity unfeminize and "other" the female body of those whom the masculine label is applied to?
4) Can and does the construct of masculinity being applied to women push some women towards transition?
5) What is masculine/masculinity to you and why?
dirt
Monday, December 27, 2010
Who is Transitioning
I wonder if today's Butch youths are doing like their Butch (and Femme) elders and reverting to how we were forced to live 60 years ago with private meeting places? Or like many lesbians, due to queer/trans co-option of lesbian identities are they just no longer IDing as Butch? Hmmm
dirt
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Female Transition as Patriarchal Protest?
Shoshana Felman wrote that "madness is the impasse confronting those whom cultural conditioning has deprived of the very means of protest or self-affirmation". In every single case of female transition from the first to the most recent trans trender, every female has in her own voice exclaimed that she has/is transitioning to become her true self by self affirming herself as "male". Before she reaches the point of medical transition she "protests" her female self as false and untrue. Transition then for females has become a way to escape "cultural conditioning", an escape supported by a sexist, misogynistic society hell bent on keeping the status quo, the status quo, i.e. males in power. It is far easier for society to understand a non traditional female transitioning to "male", than to comprehend a non traditional female that challenges society's straight jacketed notions of just what a female really is.
Females being "deprived of the very means of protest" use transition AS "protest" against female constraints and by doing so ensure that other females either follow in their newly masculinized footsteps or stay shackled and immobile by remaining women. No matter the number of female transitioners, female transition is an individuals journey with a single mindedness of trudging ONLY an individual path with no forethought or after thought of women left behind! Many transmen regularly pay lip service to feminism while profiting from the kings throne. I still have yet to see a single feminist movement started by transmen or created by transmen within already established feminist groups, not one. The female transitioner's patriarchal protest then becomes the same old kick in the teeth women have endured by men for thousands of years. Women's rights cannot and will not be advanced by abandoning women's constraints and becoming men,. Only when women ban together and challenge patriarchal constraints will women move forward to become HUman.
dirt
Females being "deprived of the very means of protest" use transition AS "protest" against female constraints and by doing so ensure that other females either follow in their newly masculinized footsteps or stay shackled and immobile by remaining women. No matter the number of female transitioners, female transition is an individuals journey with a single mindedness of trudging ONLY an individual path with no forethought or after thought of women left behind! Many trans
dirt
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