Chinese Lesbian Feminist’s Interview with Sheila Jeffreys

On behalf of WDI CN to publish this interview. 仅代表WDI CN转发此采访。

This interview is made by WDI CN with Sheila jeffreys. Below questions are discussed with Sheila:

1. In your autobiography Trigger Warning, as well as in many of your speeches, you described the heyday of political lesbianism in the 1970s, where women could go to women-only conferences, groups, cafes, and women’s centers, and lesbians could spend all their non-work life in lesbian or at least women’s company. Half a century later, in the name of trans rights, women are losing the single-sex spaces we’ve built for ourselves including online. We can’t even agree on the definition of a woman, as whoever identifies as a woman today can be seen as a woman. Political lesbian pioneers like you wouldn’t have imagined this situation back in your days. What do you think is causing this downfall of feminism?

2. In the 1970s, feminists commonly accepted that choosing to become a lesbian was a revolutionary act. It was easy then for many feminists to accept that their proclivities were constructed and subject to change. You said that this is not a particularly feminist insight. Social scientists developed the knowledge that human behavior, instead of being ordained by biology, was socially constructed. Today, in this very conservative time, the idea that sexuality is socially constructed dropped out of favor. Biological determinism reigns in terms of sexual orientation. In your opinion, why has that fundamental understanding of social constructionism been overturned?

3. Both in China and the West, many feminists claim that feminism has nothing to do with sexual orientation. They think being sexually or romantically attracted to men should not affect their worthiness as feminists, and that political lesbianism is repressive in that it constrains women’s genuine sexual desires. Why do you think becoming lesbians is a political choice that liberates women?

4. When talking about the social construction of sexuality, you always emphasize that whatever’s socially constructed can be changed, and that allows the possibility of revolution. You’ve shared your experience that back in the early 80s, you and other lesbian feminists conducted workshops at conferences on how to change sexual fantasies. You believe that sexual fantasies can certainly be changed or abandoned altogether. However, for many women, it’s easier said than done, particularly when it’s about getting rid of men from women’s sexual fantasies. This partly explains why straight women are trying to downplay their sexuality, and lesbians find their heterosexual sisters untrustworthy. Would you mind telling us in detail how those workshops help women eliminate their undermining sexual fantasies? And if those methods may help a straight woman abandon her heterosexuality and embark on the journey of becoming a lesbian?

5. In your book Anticlimax, you define ‘heterosexual desire’ as the eroticized inequality of power, and ‘homosexual desire’ as eroticized sameness of power whether expressed within lesbian, gay or heterosexual relationships. You articulate that heterosexual desire can exist also in same sex relationships, because women and men do not escape the heterosexual construction of their desire simply by loving their own sex.

In your later book Lesbian Heresy, you mention there are lesbians who eschew sexual practice altogether on the grounds that dominance and submission are too ingrained in how we feel about sex to be altered. You suggest the deliberate construction of ‘homosexual desire’ as a different tactic to this deconstructive lesbianism, i.e., being as lesbians, but without sex...

Details you can find from Youtube channel “Phoenix聊女权”: https://youtu.be/xoY0rOr79bA