The Possibility of Life Between Us

March 30, 2021 6:27 PM

Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying. Adrienne Rich (1977).
posted by storybored (12 comments total)

Still relevant.
posted by inexorably_forward at 10:07 PM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

very nice, thank you
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:29 PM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

! ! ! How have I reached my mid thirties without hearing of her? This is so good!
Thank you for this, storybored. Would you recommend any other Adrienne Rich works in particular?
I am reduced to skimming her Wikipedia page and I see she is one of only three people to pointedly decline a (US) National Medal of the Arts, along with Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, which puts her in good company and impresses me, and also is about the gayest thing I've seen all day.
posted by panhopticon at 10:46 PM on March 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

! ! ! How have I reached my mid thirties without hearing of her?

s.o.m.e.h.o.w she is not as famous as Norman Mailer I see

For prose, her collection Of Woman Born is well worth reading, though you can see the 1970s were a long time ago sometimes. I'd like to learn about later prose.

She's also an Ever Given scale poet, if poetry's your bag at all. I'll not argue against "Diving into the Wreck", but I'm also a fan of the more recent poem another fan quoted into Wikipedia: "What Kind of Times Are These"

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

Which bears on what you noted.

Also, I love this photo of Rich smiling with Audre Lorde and a person I don't know but I broadly approve of people naming themselves after socialist mayors of North Dakota towns.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:40 AM on March 31, 2021 [8 favorites]

Adrienne Rich may be less well-known as a poet because she was credited as having encouraged/made possible the book The Transsexual Empire and so is one of the O.G. TERFs. That is the only association I have had with her name since my teens, well before I came out as trans, more than a decade ago.

I am trying - and failing - to figure out how to word the thing I'm trying to think through here, about trans and proto-trans people seeking out voices like Rich's as a kind of emotional self-harm, about today as apparently Trans Day of Visibility, about the ways that terf talking points gain traction across the globe and are used to deny healthcare to vulnerable people and especially to young vulnerable people.

(I did not RTFA and do not plan to, but this comment may be valuable context for people who are unaware of the reception recommending her in trans/queer spaces might get.)
posted by All Might Be Well at 2:43 AM on March 31, 2021 [29 favorites]

I did not RTFA and do not plan to

Not knowing that she was a TERF (meaning someone who literally does not believe in my identity), I did start reading the article.

As a gay woman, I was very uneasy with her essay, more so as I went along. It seemed like she was ignoring romantic relationships between women, and I had a vague sense that she would have real issues with gender diversity.

I stopped several paragraphs in. I'm glad I did. There are far better figures to look to for inspiration on feminism.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:56 AM on March 31, 2021 [3 favorites]

When I was a young lesbian, I loved Adrienne Rich's poetry, and I am still fond of some of it, under a kind of "grandmother clause" that lets me still love a few things/people that I would not give my attention these days. My partner and I have been together almost 28 years, and he transitions FtoM 25-ish years ago, which was part of a process of figuring out how many of the lesbian writers and philosophers we had loved were wrong about things.

Flight Hardware, do not touch is right—we can now look to feminists who embrace gender diversity for inspiration.
posted by Orlop at 7:00 AM on March 31, 2021 [3 favorites]

Thank you All Might Be Well, that explains a lot. That must be why her name isn't floating around in my circles. We've no time for TERFs.
posted by panhopticon at 8:31 AM on March 31, 2021

I really enjoyed the essay, especially the parts about being honest with your friends as an important part of the friendship, and this line is phenomenal:

In speaking of lies, we come inevitably to the subject of truth. There is nothing simple or easy about this idea. There is no "the truth", "a truth" - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. The pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet.

This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important. Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler - for the liar - than it really is, or ought to be.

But I did wonder, because she talks about feminism as a class struggle with women as the oppressed class, and because the essay is about something "essential" to the female experience that she claims all "women" have experienced, where she would stand on trans issues.

It's disappointing but not totally surprising that she is, or was, a TERF... and yeah to share this on Transgender Day of Visibility, of all days... it's not a good look.
posted by subdee at 8:56 AM on March 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm not talking about you storybored, BTW. It was a good essay and I'm glad I read it. I just mean that I personally am not gonna post this to social media today where trans people will see it.
posted by subdee at 8:58 AM on March 31, 2021

Thanks, All Might Be Well, for adding that context especially today.

Thank you for that extra note subdee, much appreciated. I didn't know about her TERF-ness, so this is a learning moment for me.
posted by storybored at 9:16 AM on March 31, 2021 [8 favorites]

Well damn. I should learn that every feminist of a certain age should be checked for TERFiness (and sure anti-feminists should be checked but your hopes aren't high).

Her anti-trans association dates from the 1970s and I don't see that she got better by the time of her death in 1992. But I myself was transphobic as fuck in 1992 so I think I'll stay out. Jennifer Boylan.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:12 AM on April 1, 2021 [2 favorites]