his view, was not only exactly coextensive with the axis of gender, but expressive of its most heightened essence: "Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice." By analogy, male homosexuality could be, and often was, seen as the practice for which male supremacy was the theory.(3) A particular reading of modern gender history was, of course, implicit in and in turn propelled by this gender-separatist framework. In accord with, for instance, Adrienne Rich's understanding of many aspects of women's bonds as constituting a "lesbian continuum" ("Compulsory Heterosexuality" 79) this history, found in its purest form in the work of Lilian Faderman, de-emphasized the definitional discontinuities and perturbations between more and less sexualized, more and less prohibited, and more and less gender-identity-bound, forms of female same-sex bonding. Insofar as lesbian object-choice was viewed as epitomizing a specificity of female experience and resistance, insofar as a symmetrically opposite understanding of gay male object-choice also obtained, and insofar also as feminism necessarily posited male and female experiences and interests as different and opposed, the implication was that an understanding of male homo/heterosexual definition could offer little or no affordance or interest for any lesbian theoretical project. Indeed, the powerful impetus of a gender-polarized feminist ethical schema made it possible for a profoundly anti-homophobic reading of lesbian desire (as a quintessence of the female) to fuel a correspondingly homophobic reading of gay male desire (as a quintessence of the male).

The lesbian interpretive framework most readily available until recently to critics and theorists was the separatist-feminist one that emerged from the 1970s. According to that framework, there were essentially no valid grounds of commonality between gay male and lesbian experience and identity; to the contrary, women-loving women and men-loving men must be at precisely opposite ends of the gender spectrum. The assumptions at work here were indeed radical ones: most importantly, the stunningly efficacious re-visioning, in female terms, of same-sex desire as being at the very definitional center of each gender, rather than as occupying a cross-gender or liminal position between them. Thus, women who loved women were seen as more female, men who loved men as quite possibly more male, than those whose desire crossed boundaries of gender; the self-identification of the virilized woman gave way, at least for many, to that of the "woman-identified woman." The axis of sexuality, in t!

The gravity of gender division and gender oppression does have, however, the consequence that it can never be taken for granted how much women's same-sex relations will have analytically or experientially in common with men's; so the sense of talking about "gay/lesbian" critique at all is itself always, and with good reason, contested. Nevertheless, it does seem that the interpretive frameworks within which lesbian writers, readers, and interlocutors are likely to process male-centered reflections on homo/heterosexual issues, and vice versa, are currently in a phase of destabilizing flux and promise.

Since the late 70s, however, there has emerged a variety of challenges to this understanding of how lesbian and gay male desires and identities might be mapped against each other. Each challenge has led many to a refreshed sense that lesbians and gay men may share important though contested aspects of one another's histories, cultures, identities, politics, and destinies. These challenges have emerged from the "sex wars" within feminism over pornography and s/m,

Some topics in this essay:
Gender Trouble--a, Gayle Rubin, XY Beyond, Lilian Faderman, Garbo Dietrich, XX XY, Gender Sex, Adrienne Rich's, Compulsory Heterosexuality, chromosomal sex, Thinking Sex, male female, gay male, class race, sex gender, vice versa, specificity particular, analytic axes, sex/gender system, determinations class race, embodied specificity, embodied specificity particular, diacritical frontier genders,