blake’s Reviews > Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger between Feminist and Queer > Status Update

Put more simply, it is entirely possible for the abnegated self of Bersani's suicidal bottom to pick up, dust off, and return to the everyday as a coherent masculine self. The lesbian, and especially butches and femmes, by contrast, must negotiate the multiple selves that are differently interpolated in social contexts.

“Political lesbianism is not sexuality in the identitarian or even practice-based sense. This does not mean, however, that it is simply an affiliative choice. Neither does it mean that political lesbians were not fucking or that fucking was not a part of their politics. But fucking may not mean sex; they were fucking off and fucking shit up.”

“What is disappearing, then, is not only lesbian space but a sustained critique of and engagement with the histories of anticapitalism and antipatriarchy that informed earlier political movements under the moniker of lesbian”

“Over and over again, especially in the last fifty years, the concern and conundrum around lesbian identity and lesbian politics is marked by a state of disruption.”