Sexuality and the Question of Whether or Why or to What Extent It Is Male or Female

[queerbychoice]

A gift from Joxn, Dreamer of Interesting Dreams. Sort of interesting. I don't quite like the ending, though:

The sexuality of the patriarch is less "male" than it is deadly, just as that of the subjected women is not so much "female" as suppressed, devivified -- though, sustaining less damage from its own work of suppression, it also contains the more beautiful possibilities for the future.

There's truth in this, but it also leaves out a lot. Males often "suppress" and "devivify" their own sexuality because of the pressure to eliminate anything about it that might be defined as "feminine." Females are generally under slightly less pressure to "devivify" themselves (e.g., they can get away with wearing most traditionally "male" clothes with no problem, but males can't do the reverse). Klaus Theweleit seems to be trying to acknowledge that males hurt themselves indirectly by hurting female and thus loading themselves down with a guilty conscience (or the necessity of never fully contemplating the implications of their own actions for fear of developing a guilty conscience) but I don't think he quite acknowledges that males also oppress themselves more directly, not simply by oppressing females but also by oppressing the "feminine" parts of themselves.