Guest Post by Genevieve Gluck

A right on observation:

"Men don't perform femininity,
they self-objectify. Femininity isn't a performance, it's oppression forced on women.

Women do not "perform" our oppression. Only men have the luxury of reframing their modes of controlling us as an art or self-expression.

When men tell us femininity is a performance, they are revealing two things:
1) their own ignorance of what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated world;
2) they are entertained by our violent subjugation.

Femininity is more than makeup. It's more than beauty standards. Femininity is the expectation that certain behaviors and roles for women done to us by force are natural and inevitable.

Femininity is forced birth, forced child care, it's FGM and punishment for showing anger or speaking up. It's murdering lesbians. It's the women whose health detoriates because of the cleaning products they use as underpaid "maids".

Femininity is criminalizing rape victims, it's anorexia, it's reduced pay, it's the fear of walking alone at night. It's the sex industry, it's sexual harassment, saying she was asking for it. Femininity naturalizes sex oppression and rationalizes punishing women who speak up.

Reducing femininity to makeup or dresses is what men do, because it isn't forced on them. It's an insult to all women but especially the most exploited. Reducing femininity to performance is a neoliberal, male-centered view which ignores how femininity is used to control women.

Men never "perform femininity" by scrubbing a toilet or demanding a pay reduction.  They demand to be "treated like a woman" then complain about exclusion with no awareness that being "treated like a woman" means more than exclusion, it means living in fear of male violence.

Men who demand to be treated like women see femininity and women ourselves as nothing more than sex positions they can adopt. Submissive, full make-up, validated in their delusion by a photoshoot in Playboy, claiming lesbians oppress them by refusing to have sex with men.

It's no surprise that men are claiming entitlement to female identity at the very time that women worldwide are waking up to our power, claiming our voice, and taking men to task for violence against us. They are desperately trying to get our attention and derail us.

It also comes as no surprise that men are claiming to be women at the same time that porn is fully saturating the internet, as is Instagram, and sexual objectification has become the common currency of our social media culture.

In the age of influencers and followers, men are enforcing their entitlement to influence the very definition of women's reality, and especially to keep us from acknowledging the farce we've been fed all our lives: that gender is not natural, that men created and uphold it, that they benefit from naturalizing our inferior status via free labor and constant access to our bodies.

The rise innate gender ideology - the mainstreaming of associating freedom with porn, prostitution, cosmetics - is the male backlash to women's global uprising against our subjugation; it is a violent attempt to redirect women back to men's vision of how we women should be: that a woman is not a body, and therefore not a person, not human; that a woman is a feeling a man has, a woman is a fantasy of high heels, makeup and submission.

But we will not submit." - Genevieve Gluck

My response:

Fantastic when I hear the Truth in relation to us Females and the battle so many of us are engaged in and have been for many years. ESPECIALLY us Lesbians.

I just talked to a Lesbian last night who talked to me after a show. She lived in a bigger city and I asked her was there ANY Lesbian community there? Potlucks, gatherings, meetings for Lesbians? She rattled off bars and some mixed event for lesbians and gays held at or put on by or at a church.

I told her I dont do bars and asked her are there SPECIFICALLY LESBIAN events where I can tap in to meet other Lesbians like potlucks, groups, other gatherings?

She said " there used to be but nothing so Separatist anymore." THAT truly saddened me. I told her in this here town  and area there are only drag shows which I have NO interest in, our local Pride  and NOTHING whatsoever by and for LESBIANS!!

I let her know womyn BOUGHT the Michfest Land and that I intend to go to one of the Festivals they will be putting on next year. Its the FIRST TIME in a very long time I have had a REAL conversation with an ACTUAL LESBIAN LIVE about the state of community, or seeking it. Without being told "we are all inclusive" which means gay men, trans, bi and males in general run the show. - M.A.