#sue-ellen case

[tea-cryptid]

"Unlike petititions for civil rights, queer revels constitute a kind of activism that attacks the dominant notion of the natural. The queer is the taboo-breaker, the monstrous, the uncanny. Like the Phantom of the Opera, the queer dwells underground, below the operatic overtones of the dominant; frightening to look at, desiring, as it plays its own organ, producing its own music."

Sue-Ellen Case (1991) Tracking the Vampire

[theorynotebook]

As Nestle, founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, wrote: "We lesbians of the 1950s made a mistake in the 1970s: we allowed ourselves to be trivialized and reinterpreted by feminists who did not share our culture." Nestle also notes the class prejudice in the rejection of butch-femme roles: "I wonder why there is such a consuming interest in the butch-fem lives of upper-class women, usually more literary figures, while real-life, working butch-femme women are seen as imitative and culturally backward . . . the reality of passing women, usually a working-class lesbian's method of survival, has provoked very little academic lesbian-feminist interest. Grassroots lesbian history archives are changing this" (23).

Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” 1988.

[theorynotebook]

This "compulsory" adaptation of lesbian feminist identification must be understood as a defensive posture, created by the homophobia that operated in the early movement, particularly within the so-called Consciousness-Raising groups.

Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” 1988.

[theorynotebook]

If the butches are savages in [Lesbian/Woman], the femmes are lost heterosexuals who damage birthright lesbians by forcing them to play the butch roles. Martin and Lyon assert that most femmes are divorced heterosexual women who only know how to relate to men and thus force their butches to play the man's role, which is conflated with that of a butch (75). Finally, the authors unveil the salvationary role of feminism in this process and its power to sever the newly-constructed identity of the lesbian feminist from its traditional lesbian roots: "The minority of lesbians who still cling to the traditional male-female or husband-wife patterns in their partnerships are more than likely old-timers, gay bar habituées or working class women" (79-80). This sentence successfully compounds ageism with a (homo)phobia of lesbian bar culture and a rejection of working-class identification. The middle-class upward mobility of the lesbian feminist identification shifts the sense of community from that of working-class, often women of color lesbians in bar culture to that of white upper-middle-class heterosexual women who predominated in the early women's movement. Martin and Lyon continue: "The old order changeth however." Here they even adopt verb endings from the King James Bible, concluding that "as the women's liberation movement gains strength against this patter of heterosexual marriages, the number of lesbians involved in butch-femme roles diminishes" (80).

Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” 1988.

[theorynotebook]

Here is the story, related by Martin and Lyon, of one poor victim who came to the [Daughters of Bilitis] for help. Note how similar the narrative style is to the redemptive, corrective language of missionary projects: "Toni joined Daughters of Bilitis ... at our insistence, and as a result of the groups's example, its unspoken pressure, she toned down her dress. She was still very butch, but she wore women's slacks and blouses... One of DOB's goals was to teach the lesbian a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society... We knew too many lesbians whose activities were restricted because they wouldn't wear skirts. But Toni did not agree. 'You'll never get me in a dress,' she growled, banging her fist on the table." The description of Toni's behavior, her animal growling noise, portrays her as uncivilized, recalling earlier colonial missionary projects. Tony is portrayed as similar to the inappropriately dressed savage whom the missionary clothes and saves. The authors continue: "But she became fast friends with a gay man, and over the months he helped her to feel comfortable with herself as a woman" (77). Here, in a lesbian narrative, the missionary position is finally given over to a man (even if gay) who helps the butch to feel like a woman. The contemporary lesbian-identified reader can only marvel at the conflation of gender identification in the terms of dominant, heterosexual culture with the adopted gender role-playing of the lesbian subculture.

Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” 1988.

[theorynotebook]

De Lauretis names her subject (one capable of change and of changing conditions) the feminist subject, "one who is simultanesouly inside and outside the ideology of gender, and conscious of being so, conscious of that pull, that division, that doubled vision" (10). [She] ascribes a sense of self-determination at the micropolitical level to the feminist subject. This feminist subject, unlike the female subject, can be outside of ideology, can find self-determination, can change. The theorization of this feminist subject is of the utmost importance for activist/theorists. Near the conclusion of her argument (true to the newer rules of composition) de Lauretis begins to develop her thesis: that the previous work on the female subject assumes, but leaves unwritten, a heterosexual context for the subject and this is the cause of her continuing entrapment. Because she is still perceived in terms of men and not within the context of other women, the subject in heterosexuality cannot become capable of ideological change. De Lauretis's conclusion is my starting place.

Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” 1988.

[tuuguide]

Çalışmalarında öznel kullanım tercih eden, kişisel deneyimlerini açığa çıkaran, hatta araştırmaları ile ilgili bilinçaltı sürçmelerine dikkat çeken feminist yazarları takdir ediyorum. Bir feminist olarak ben de öznel dili, ataerkil kültürün yüzyıllardır belli deneyimleri görünmez kılmak ve yazılı eserler üzerinde güç elde etmek için kullandığı kişiüstü bilmiş ve nesnel görünen dilden kurtuluş olarak görüyorum. Feministlerin yeni, alternatif bir dil bulmalarını umuyorum.

Sue-Ellen Case

[queeriesforqueerios]

Book: Feminism and theatre / Sue-Ellen Case

        In the book Feminism and theatre, Sue-Ellen Case wades through the annals of history to highlight to re-establish the connection between the role of the female in the theater and theatre itself. Beginning with the Greeks, Case works from Before Common Era texts forward, delineating different types of feminism and how they play into the plays occurring on stage. Case provides background on how race and class affect the theatre being produced, and gives examples of those who are silenced or ignored by the popular culture because of their gender, class, or race. 

As mentioned, Case starts with Greco-Roman culture, explaining the relationship of women to the stage as it was then. As Case tells it, women had a place on the stage up until a point when laws were created to keep them in a more “domestic” role—in the house, raising the children, etc. From there, Case moves forward in history, discussing Shakespeare’s theatre and how the portrayal of women was skewed because it was an overtly-feminine role created so that a man could more easily portray a “woman”. The facet of this that is fascinating to study is characters like Viola—the male, portraying a female, who is dressed as a man. This staged oxymoron creates a predicament for the audience and also an interesting commentary on the portrayal of gender onstage. From Shakespeare, Case turns to the Salons of France, a safe place where women could take the stage, and—in fact—were controlling what was on it. The private Salons, spaces created and controlled by women, were considered avant-garde and bourgeois, but they allowed those who were unable to perform anywhere else a place where they could s’exprimer. 

Case’s historical walk-through adds a political lens as it moves into the 20th century. With the birth of feminism and the subsequent births of all of its different off-shoots, there are a lot of different areas to cover. Case devotes an entire chapter each to Radical Feminism and Materialist feminism, as well as spending an entire chapter on Women of Color and the effects that feminism has on them and for them. Case’s last chapter, “Towards a New Poetics” tackles the ‘male gaze’ in film and uses French theorists like Helene Cixous to explain how, to some extent, it is the responsibility of women to change the present, and the future, by taking a vested interest in the portrayal of women in all types of media, and correcting the ‘male gaze’ to something either more female, or more humanist in all respects.