Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective

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Summary: Unpacking Queer Politics
Review: Some books change the way you see the world and the way you want the future to be. Unpacking Queer Politics is such a book.

For two decades, Queer has dominated Western ideas about lesbian and gay life. It has also affected heterosexual relations because many leading figures Queer politics are heterosexual and bisexual. It has directed women towards an appreciation of any kind of sex, in the name of liberating us from restrictions on our right to choose sexuality. And yet as the new century approached, I began to hear whispers of discontent among women; that this sexual freedom we all wanted had not quite arrived in the way we had dreamed it would. Queer politics had become a kind of commercial playground dominated by gay male and heterosexual money and interests. The only lesbians on the Queer scene seemed to be sadomasochists, masculine worshippers, or butch-femme revivalists. But as Sheila Jeffreys reveals, we really should have seen it coming. As she charts us through the 1970s and into the beginnings of Queer, it's suddenly clear that it couldn't have turned out any other way. But this book may just be powerful enough to change the course of women's sexual future away from Queer and towards a far more exciting shore.

Jeffreys goes where most of us fear to tread. She travels through the backrooms of sex bars, into the studios of gay porn, onto the agendas of sadomasochists, and into the rooms where lesbian women and gay men women are now cutting, beating and branding themselves and each other in the name of Queer liberation. She never departs from her love of women and her commitment to our freedom. Yet she does something quite unexpected in these pages; she reaches out to gay men as well as lesbians by recognising that Queer capitalises on our dual alienation from the heterosexist world. It is this form of sex capitalism that she claims must be challenged and overthrown if we are to move once more towards creating a world in which women can become truly liberated.

It is through the recognition of Queer politics as strongly heterosexist and therefore conservative that Jeffreys is able to offer us insight into why it has become so successful. Her research is thorough and because of this, she is able to create a convincing case for the argument that Queer promotes practices which violate the most basic human rights of women and men. It is a retrograde and homophobic politics, she argues, particularly in its support for the genital mutilation of allegedly 'masculine' women and 'feminine' men in transgender surgery. This, Jeffreys claims, is a gross violation of human rights and should be challenged as such. But as Chapter 6 reveals, some governments are now offering money for allegedly incorrect women and men to be 'corrected' under the knife. Jeffreys asks quite simply, 'why don't we do away with gender altogether?' I asked myself shortly afterwards 'how could I have studied gender and feminism for a decade and never come across that question?'

But this is the beauty of Unpacking Queer Politics; it is simple in the way that you only find in the work of a writer who understands the whole environment in which their subject has developed - in this case, the evolution of Queer from an idea into a dominant politics and practice.

This is a serious and very readable book. Even if you don't agree with the author's politics, this is a history of Queer that should be on the shelves of all those interested in human rights, sexual relations, human behaviour, feminism, sexual subcultures, legal approaches to lesbian or gay and transgender rights, revolutionary politics, pornography, legal concepts of privacy rights, political science, and social change.

The late anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko said (and I paraphrase from memory), 'the greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed'. I believe that Unpacking Queer Politics may just succeed in disarming Queer. It may lift from women's minds the shackles laid down by a sexual liberation movement gone terribly male. And maybe for us twenty somethings, some of the optimism of the last chapter will give us the belief that we can go up against sexual exploitation, and we can win.

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Summary: A shrewdly written and well-presented viewpoint
Review: Unpacking Queer Politics by Sheila Jeffreys (Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne) is a deftly persuasive and informationally charged study of gay and lesbian politics from the 1970's down to the present day. Postulating that the lesbian feminist movement of the 1970's was unfortunately incorporated and overwhelmed by the gay male agenda of "queer politics", Unpacking Queer Politics denounces the "queer politics" tenets of sadomasochism, cutting and piercing, and female-to-male transsexual surgery as forms of self-harm. Author Sheila Jeffreys then centers upon the importance of committing oneself to equality in all relationships regardless of sex; as well as heralds lesbian feminist ideals as necessary for social change for the better. A shrewdly written and well-presented viewpoint, Unpacking Queer Politics is highly recommended reading, both for academia and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in gender politics.