This passage from Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues is a good- albeit disturbing- summation of the concepts of Compulsory heterosexuality, sexual autonomy and gender that coexist within Feinberg's own engendered identity. Stone Butch Blues itself is the compelling first novel of Leslie Feinberg. It follows the sexual, social and political travails of lesbian Jess Goldberg in a pre-stonewall era. The novel is a prominent portrait of Butch and Femme-Culture through the eyes of Jess, a Jewish working class girl who in the late 1960's comes of age and runs away from home as teenager.
[...] Finally, this passage in Stone Butch Blues seeks to create a better understanding of intersectionality, or the examination of socially and culturally constructed categories and how they oppress certain portions of society. Of course, intersectionality, in this case, deals with how the issues of how our societal constructed ideas of gender impact certain individuals (namely, the protagonist, Jess). Intersectionality is in direct relation to how out society views gender and sexual autonomy: sexual binaries need to be enforced in order to uphold the dominant source of sexual viewpoint- that of the white, heterosexual, Christian male. When sexual autonomy falls outside of this the norms are imposed [...]
[...] Compulsory heterosexuality, sexual autonomy and gender in Leslie Feinberg's ‘Stone Butch Blues' “They cuffed my hands so tight behind my back I almost cried out. Then the cop unzipped his pants real slow, with a smirk on his face, and ordered me down on my knees. First I thought to myself, I can't! Then I said outloud to myself and to you and to him, won't!” I never told you this before, but something changed inside of me in that moment. [...]
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