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The L Word and the F Word Author(s): Claudia Card Reviewed work(s): Source: Hypatia, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring, 2006), pp. 223-229 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3811003 . Accessed: 18/03/2013 23:44
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MUSINGS

The L wordand the F word

CLAUDIA CARD has become the L word In the jargonof today'smainstreammassmedia,'liberal' and 'feminist' has become the F word.This co-optingof L and F tradeson public the designationsof earlier,and blunter,L and F words. squeamishness regarding 'Liberal' and 'feminist'are being shooed towardclosets formerlyinhabited by 'lesbian'and 'fuck'--wordsthat liberals(in the case of'fuck') and feminists (in the case of 'lesbian')workedso enthusiasticallyto bringout of the closet in the this move to second half of the twentiethcentury.What an interestingreversal, An aspect of the revenge:closeting them closet the outers!Revenge, perhaps? 'Liberal' and 'feminist'often sit uneasily in proximityto one another. together? Yet in the currentreactionarypolitical climate, uneasiness regarding'liberal' should be problematicfor feminists. Readersof this journalneed no proddingto resistthe closeting of'feminist.' About 'liberal,'the case is less clear. 'Liberal' receives a load of flackfrom the political left as well as from the right. Feministphilosophershave contributed outcomeof the creation substantialflackfromthe left. Closets are a foreseeable of a derogatory, scornful auraarounda concept, investing it with an emotive load that can easily embarrassany who might find the concept applicableto themselves.Some concepts deserve that aura.'Rapist'is one of them. 'Liberal' is not. Yet 'liberal'in today'spolitical climate is fast becoming a wordthat, like 'lesbian'in my high school of the 1950s,can be used to embarrass, dismiss,put down without discussion. Do not be fooled by the fact that liberalfeminismsreceive more pressthan any other feminismsin the United States. This fact does not show that liberalismhas madefeminismrespectable. It has helpedmakefeminismvisible to those who have come to speak of "theL word" F "the which and, now, word," suggest a certain embarrassment and squeamishnessregardingwhat they have seen. Foryears,I have been uneasy,if not ambivalent, a widespread negaregarding tive attitude-scornful, condescending,caricaturing-within feminismtoward liberalism,especially within the radical feminisms that have been central to my emergenceand developmentas a feminist philosopher.When I embraced radicalesbianfeminism in the 1970s with an enthusiasmunparalleledin my
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career,I found that 'liberal'in the mouths of feminists can drip with as much scorn as when it emergesfrom the mouths of right-wingpoliticians. is what I come from-my atheist parents (whose liberalismdefied 'Liberal' theirfamilies'conservatism and the conservatism of most of the village in which I was raised),my favoriteteachers,the texts that drewme to philosophyin the firstplace and nurturedmy developmentthrough graduateschool. Those are my roots as a thinker and rebel. Inevitable,perhaps,that I shouldrebel against liberalismitself. Also that I should do so on the basis of much that I learned from liberalsand liberalism.But it is not inevitable that I should acquiesce in the closeting of those roots. I like to think I have transformed the liberalismof my parentsand teachers. I that have left it behind. Or even that I wouldhave been able to make Unlikely whatevercontributionsI have been able to offer feminist thought without it. At this point in my life, and I think at this point in American culture,it seems more important to disown the scorn, condescension, and caricaturethan to worryabout differentiatingourselvesfrom anything liberal. I do not think I have actuallyfelt scornfulof liberalism.But I have not previously voiced publiclymy discomfortwith that attitude. PerhapsI have become moresensitiveas a resultof findingthat, as a so-calledSecond Wave feministof the 1970s,I am includedin the targetof often not verysubtlescorn,condescension, and caricatureby self-identifiedThird Wave feminists who seem under the illusion that they were the first among feminists to take seriouslyracism or the intersections of racism and sexism, and respond creatively.No doubt there is a certain poetic justice for Second Wave feminists in this turning of From the tables. Does it not mirrorSecond Wave attitudestowardliberalism? whom did Third Wave feminists learn such attitudes?Did we of the Second Wave not model them? My aim is not to advocateliberalismbut to resistthe dishonoringand closeting of 'liberal'as "the L word"and begin to pay homage to what has been valuablein my roots. As I owe liberalisman enormousdebt, so does feminism. Liberalism has not been an obstacleor something to be curedof, like a disease, has greatlyhelped, and continues to or a wrongturn to be repented.Liberalism of class, gender,and ethnic origins the boundaries make accessible across help, wereamong the educationand mediathat areusedtodayto put it down.Liberals the radicalsof the nineteenth century,battling chattel slavery,anti-Semitism, the traffic in women, persecutionof same-sexpartners,and vivisection. New Deal liberalsrespondedcreativelyto poverty issues in the century following. We stand on the shouldersof those persistentlydaring,defiant,and innovative thinkers and activists. One way to acknowledgeour debt is to counter the caricatures.Not all liberalslive in their heads to the neglect of their bodies, or oblivious of their historicalsituatedness.(In The Subjection John StuartMill, for of Women[1869]

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example, shows real appreciationof the social construction of female desires.) Liberalismis no more a set of specific doctrines or beliefs than is feminism. Both are families of theorizing around core values, approachesto thinking about ethics, society, politics, and human nature. Many generalizationsabout "whatliberalsbelieve"(orpresuppose) areas silly as manygeneralizations about "whatfeminists believe." Another way to acknowledge our debt is to honor liberal philosophical who lackedthe context now availableto us for coming out as sex predecessors radicalsand yet who found covert or indirect ways to lay the groundwork for philosophersof later generationsto do so. Ronald Dworkinwrote, in another context: If living well meansrespondingin the rightwayto the rightchallenge, then a life goes worse when the right challenge cannot be faced. (Quoted in Darwall 1995, 260)1 The right challenge cannot be faced in the right way from within in a closet. Yet some have identified significant challenges nevertheless and confronted them imaginatively,energetically,and with passion. Consider the late British philosopher of law, H. L. A. Hart (1907-1992). Nicola Lacey'smarvelousbiography A Lifeof H. L. A. Hart:TheNightmare and the Noble Dream (2004) is full of revelationsthat put his work into a political context he neverquitemadeexplicit.TheConcept of Law(Hart 1961)wasa basic text in John Rawls's course on social and political philosophyand in Williams Frankena's ethics seminarthe semesterI startedgraduateschool in 1962.Hart's essayson punishmentwere influentialand inspirationalfor my undergraduate honors thesis and my Ph.D. dissertation.His feisty little book Law,Liberty, and Morality(1963) arguedagainstLordDevlin on the topic of homosexuality.His (1955),in the samevolume essay(now classic)"AreThere Any NaturalRights?" of The Philosophical Reviewas Rawls's"TwoConcepts of Rules,"is the source of Rawls's"dutyof fairplay." These writingsstrucka chord with me when, like most undergraduates at a great liberal university,I was eager to protestsocial interferencewith consensual sexual behavioramong adults. Quoting from Hart'sdiaries and letters, Lacey reveals that Hart regarded himself from an early age as a "repressed homosexual"(his language).To my knowledge,nobody in the philosophical worldknew this about him, unless it was a close personal friend. Nor did many know that his grandparents were Jewish immigrantsto England.He was neither a religiousman nor a political activist (although, after being rejectedas physicallyunfit for militaryservice, he workedas an intelligence officer for MI5 duringWorldWar II). Aware of his generalsexual orientation,Hart neverthelessdevelopedwhat seemed to him, when it was new, a good sexual relationshipwith JeniferWilliams-the only woman, he wrote to her, with whom he had trulyenjoyedsex.

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Marriedin 1941,they stayedmarriedand togetherhad fourchildren. But Hart lost interestin maritalsex afterthe firstchild and did not cease to ruminateon his sexual orientation. This theme is one to which Lacey returnsthroughout the book, tracingthe influenceof Hart'srepression on his passionateadvocacy of reformsin the law regardingconsensual sexual behavioramong adults. of the social contribution Learningthese things gave me a new appreciation of Hart'sphilosophy.It also gave me a heavy heart to think of this philosopher, who left such a wonderfulphilosophical legacy,as unhappy-which it appears he was.Moreselfishly,it wouldhave been so validatingto me as an undergraduate, closeted at the time in many of the ways he was, to know that H. L. A. Hart, whose workI read in my philosophycoursesand so admired,was driven by passionswith such parallelsto my own! But he had no more philosophical context than I had then-late 50s, early 60s-in which to make those facts evident publiclywithout exposing himself to being diagnosed as mentally ill. His philosophical workhelped create a context for membersof my generation to do effectivelywhat membersof his could not. How many HerbertHarts have there been among our philosophicalpredecessors?How many whom we may never know about, who to all appearances led enviable lives-highly successfuland influential,majorcontributors,profoundlyadmired-but who in reality were personallyin turmoilor constantly had to guard against an exposure that could have brought their careers crashingdown? A year younger than Hart, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) never came out publiclyas lesbian,although it was generalknowledgethat she lived with a femalecompanionfor manyyears,to the end of her life.2When she was young, she lost a teaching job over her associationwith a female student. But she then went on to write, as a chapterin The SecondSex (1949;trans. 1953),what is to my knowledgethe firstphilosophical defense of lesbian life, approachingthat topic from the point of view of lesbiansthemselves,not from the point of view of nonlesbian observers.In that same work, she subjectedthe institution of marriageto heavy criticism,and in her own life, resistedever marrying. As energeticyoungphilosophers,neitherHart nor Beauvoirwas able to face sexualityin quite the rightway.They lacked quite the rightchallenge regarding the kind of community that could make it possible to combat social disfigurement (never mind being able to keep a job in one's chosen field of endeavor). And so they lacked the means to communicate effectively more directly and more personally on the subject of sexuality. Yet both contributedgreatly to creatingspaces in which such philosophicalcommunitiesarose later. duringmy adultlifetime. Speakingof directness,times changeddramatically Had you said "the L word"in my corner of the universe in the 50s or 60s, no one would have had the foggiest notion what you meant. A few months ago I watched, in the space of one week, the entire first season of the Showtime

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television soap opera The L Word(Chailem 2004)-more than ten hours of pleasure.'L'here is not meant to stand for 'liberal,' althoughsome might saythe vision of lesbianlife the showofferscould be so described.As with TheSopranos (anotherof my favoritebut disturbingTV shows, the violence and immorality of whose leading characterinvites its own ambivalentresponse),I was utterly sucked in, from episode one. Mesmerizedby the surfaceattractivenessof this fantasy,I stayedup late watchingepisodeafterepisodeand then was irrevocably hooked into following the second season on TV. The L Wordaired long after childrenshouldbe in bed. And so I routinelystayedup too late on those nights. Of course,the show was not on a networkchannel or any of the cable channels I alreadyhad. So I now pay too much for additionalcable service. I have to be suspiciousof my fascinationwith this show.Is TheL Word good? Or just seductive?Despite its obviously good-willed attempts at representing the showconstructslesbiansin waysthat mimicother mediaconstrucdiversity, tions of the ideal American woman:ultra-thin (except one African American character), yuppies,incrediblybeautiful,and obsessedwith sex and/ormarriage and/orhaving children.Nobody looks like a dyke (despiteJenny'shaircut),not even Shane (anymore).(Imaginea parallelshow,The T Word,in which all the transgendercharactersalwayslooked just like ordinarywomen and men, with no ambiguousstages in their transitioning).One wondershow many viewers of The L Word,like most of the actors in real life, are not lesbian. (Not that a mixed audience is bad). Not exactly a lesbian version of The Jeffersons (to which some cynicallycompareit), TheL Wordis no comedy (despitemoments). It is an extreme contrast to the all but forgottengem Twoin Twenty(Fulleret al. 1988), producedin the 1980s in the Boston area,3a lesbian soap in which everyonelooks like a dyke.Createdon a shoestringbudget,Twoin Twentywas hilariousand politically incisivelycritical, rejecting,in its title, the attitude of RadclyffeHall's The Wellof Loneliness(1928) while alluding to the mythical ten percent figure optimistically culled from Kinsey'sresearch.The L Word, in contrast, is theatrical, offers majoracting talent, glamour,lavish sets and and sexy high drama.Expensive,polished, professional,its focus is wardrobes, not political criticism. The L Wordis unquestionablyan improvementover 1950s portrayalsof lesbiansas weird,immoral,sick, or ridiculous,and certainlyover pornographic treatmentsof lesbiansex as a substituteforor preludeto heterosex.Heterosexually producedlesbian pornographyis explicitly rejected in episodes of The L Word's second season. But a price is paid for assimilatinglesbian life to the American dreamof a high-end house in the suburbs, yuppyparties,and attemptsto producefamilies with children. To the extent that real lesbian life approachesthat ideal, no doubt mainstreamheterosexuals'estimation of us rises. We no longer appear We might even be more extrovertedand no moreneuroticthan our disfigured.

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heterosexualneighbors (although surelyno less). But what ever happened to If Twoin Twentywas ultrapoliticallycorrect,TheL Word lesbianfeminism? does not even allude to feminism as the F word. Is liberalismresponsiblefor The L Word's erasureof lesbian feminism?The show sends a messagelike that of conservativeAndrew Sullivan'sbook, Virtually Normal (1995): lesbians are, shucks, just like everybodyelse. Except that they'renot (else why bother to stay up that late to watch). They'rewannabes who enjoya certain measureof materialand professional success,or at least selfdetermination,and have to live throughcertain strugglesto get and maintain it that not everyonehas. The very title The L Word,no doubtmeant humorously, conveys ambivalence,coyness, titillation in enjoying the forbidden. The L Word's vision of lesbian success is assimilationist.Liberalvisions that once lit a fireunderme (and my parentsand teachers)were rebellious,defiant, definitelynot assimilationist.L Wordlesbiansinternalizemoreor less the same norms as their heterosexualyuppy neighborsand rebel in the same tired old excluded.The show appearsto ways-against being tied down or arbitrarily caricatureliberalisminadvertentlyas a kind of me too-ism. Even so, a station'swillingness to air TheL Wordis arguably liberalin one of the best senses. It'sgenerous.It makes availableexpensive technology of mass communicationfor an engaging and sustainedsource of pleasurethat reaches morelesbiansthan any of us with moreradicalvisions is likelyto reach.Thanks to recordingtechnology and DVDs, that audience is not limited to those who can affordcable. Those entertained include many, like me, who do not share the particulardreamsembodied in the show. Showtime's airing of The L Word sets an importantprecedent in its willingness to lend substantialresourcesto lesbian entertainmentthat serves no particularly patriarchalpurposes.In The L Wordlesbiansand lesbian relationshipsare interestingand attractivein their own right,for their own sakes. Femalesare no longer stage hands for a play in which the real actorsare male.4Nor are the depictedrelationshipsand dramas focused on absent males, as in the old daytime soap operas.Femalesand their absorptionin each otherhave taken center stage in a captivatingshow with a huge and diverseaudience.A precedentpregnantwith possibilities.

NOTES

students of the philosophy of Wisconsin Thanksto University eatinggroup graduate with forsharing of theirfuture in theinterests nameless, (whoshallremain jobsearches) to an earlier me theirreactions fromwhichthe finaldraftprofited. draft, to thispassage ata joint 1. Thanks to Mark Chekola forcalling (2005) myattention andGayPhilosophy andthe American session of the SocietyforLesbian Philosophical in the Profession at the Pacific Committee on the Statusof LGBT Association persons of the APA,San Francisco, 2005. Divisionmeetings

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2. I deliberatelyuse "lesbian" here as an adjective,ratherthan as a noun. 3. I have not been ableto verifymyostensiblememorythat Twoin Twenty originally aired on TV in the Boston area.Wishful thinking? I assume, in any case, that station WCLT,mentioned in the commercials,is a joke. The show'sfictional commercialsare half the fun. 4. Forthe metaphorof women in patriarchyas stage hands for a play in which all the real actors are men, see Frye(1983, 152-73).

REFERENCES

Beauvoir,Simone de. 1953. The secondsex. Trans. H. M. Parshley.New York:Knopf. Originally,Le deuxiemesexe, 2 vols. Paris:Gallimard. Chailem, Ilene. 2004. The L word,season one, 4 discs. Dir. Tony Goldwyn. Showtime Entertainment. Chekola, Mark.2005. Livesand loves that darednot speaktheir names:Well-beingand LBGT persons.Unpublished. Dworkin,Ronald. 1995.Foundationsof liberalequality.In Equalfreedom.Ed. Stephen Darwall.Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press. N. Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politicsof reality:Essaysin feministtheory.Trumansburg, Y.:Crossing Press. Fuller,Ely,Rachel McCollum, MyrnaGreenfield,LaurelChiten. 1988. Two in twenty, 3 VHS tapes. Somerville, Mass. Commercial producers:Debra Granik, Rachel McCollum, Amy Wetter, Kiki Zelde, Julie Landholt. (Distributed by Wolfe Video). London:Jonathan Cape. Hall, Radclyffe.1928. The well of loneliness. Hart. H. L. A. 1955. Are there any natural rights?The Philosophical Review64, no. 1: 175-91. 1961.The conceptof law. Oxford:Clarendon Press. 1963. Law, liberty,and morality. Stanford,Calif.:StanfordUniversity Press. and thenobledream.Oxford: Lacey,Nicola. 2004. A lifeof H. L. A. Hart:The nightmare Oxford University Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1869.The subjection of women.New York:D. Appleton and Co. Review64, no.1: 3-32. Rawls,John. 1955.Two concepts of rules. The Philosophical normal.New York:Knopf. Sullivan, Andrew. 1995.Virtually

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