I've spent the day re-reading the literature from the debates in the late-1970s over revolutionary feminism & lesbian separatism. Three things strike me...
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1. The women contributing, often through letters to WIRES and Spare Rib really were incredibly articulate and thoughtful (whatever side of the debate they were on). It seems an entirely different thing than our social media style of politics.
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2. But... it's striking that many of the fundamental issues have analogues in the current debates over the effectiveness of identity politics, and the dangers of requiring ideological purity.
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3. The separatist position was highly reductive in the way that it saw penetration as essentially violent & as underpinning the edifice of male domination. There is, of course, something to the argument, but... I think it'd be a lot harder to make 30 years on.
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The whole thing makes for fascinating reading - I've not looked at it for 20 years - and makes me think more of the people involved.
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