One Is Not Born a Woman

• “A materialist feminist approach to women’s oppression destroys the idea that women are a “natural group”:” ⤴️
• “by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a “natural group.”” ⤴️
• “A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one and shows that we have been ideologically rebuilt into a “natural group.”” ⤴️
• “our bodies as well as our minds are the product of this manipulation. We have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us.” ⤴️
• “What a materialist analysis does by reasoning, a lesbian society accomplishes practically: not only is there no natural group “women” (we lesbians are living proof of it), but as individuals as well we question “woman,”” ⤴️
• “it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.”” ⤴️
• “The belief in mother right and in a “prehistory” when women create civilization (because of a biological predisposition) while the coarse and brutal men hunted (because of a biological predisposition) is symmetrical with the biologizing interpretation of history produced up to now by the class of men.” ⤴️
• “Matriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the sex of the oppressor that changes.” ⤴️
• “it holds onto the idea that the capacity to give birth (biology) is what defines a woman.” ⤴️