As happens on occasions, a few small moments have merged in my life to give me cause to ponder. The first was a conversation I had with IQ several weeks ago; the second was a comment from my eSpanish friend Compost; the third was a short article in a psychoanalysis journal. IQ and I were discussing everything and anything about gender and sexual identity; Compost said "Lots of lesbians I know don't like penetration"; and the journal article was reinvestigating Freud's judgements on vaginal versus clitoral orgasms. The author of the article seemed to conclude that there was little use in trying to distinguish between the two, in part because of the physiology of the act of penetration, and the metonymic relationship between the two female genital areas in question. It occurred to me that throughout the article, the assumption had been made that the orgasms for discussion were a response to stimualtion by an other, and that the other was male. Two obvious gaps present themselves to me: lesbian penetration, and self-penetration.
Why is it that penetration (regardless of what it is with or of) is equated with certain modes of femininity? If one does not subscribe to the most common modes of femininity, those modes most commonly accepted, what happens when one is penetrated? Can penetration and butchness not work together? Does butch always have to imply penetrator, top, active? It is, the story goes, about submission: the gay male top is less of a fag than the bottom. In the case of self-penetration, though, there is no other to submit to: one submits to oneself...and if one is a butch, then might one be submitting to a gendered model that seems to fit within the normative power dynamics prescribed by the psychonalysis deployed by the above-mentioned author?
Perhaps butch penetrative lesbian masturbation can collapse the model...Hero slain?
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