l'ecriture feminine

Back in the old days, when we were stupid, we sat in college class after college class listening to professors as they tried to explain the tenets of French feminism. Basically, all I took from it was that these French philosophers thought/think that women and men are intrinsically different and that women, when freed from or indeed in order to be freed from patriarchal oppression, would learn to write in specific womanly ways. What these ways were was and is the source of continual argument and, though I believe that there are fundamental differences between men and women, I don't know how one can say for certain which differences between people are based on sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, religion, education, etc. (The Shill and I heard Michael Bertrand from TSU say "I don't know how to separate a discussion of gender from one of race and class." I'm going to write about that, soon. I just haven't yet. But I think it's a wise admission to make.) But anyway, listen to Helene Cixous, from her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa":

I shall speak about women's writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies -- for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Women must put herself into the text -- as into the world and into history -- by her own movement.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether this kind of writing, here in cyberspace, linked to other writers, commented on and come back to, is l'ecriture feminine realized. I don't know, since I barely know what l'ecriture feminine means. But I think I get what Cixous is up to in this paragraph, what she hopes for from women's writing, that it will value our experiences and make space for others to join us. And she also is not waiting around for permission or validation from hierarchies already in place. You can see why blogging brings Cixous to my mind. Anyway, this post is actually about abortion, I think. I've only rarely posted on abortion, though I think it's obvious that I'm rabidly pro-choice. Today, I was reading Bitch. Ph.D. which led me here to Nyarlathotep's post about her abortion. That made me think again about l'ecriture feminine, about what it's like when women write themselves into history, and what it means that the best, most thoughtful writing about women's experiences isn't being done at colleges and universities, at least not sanctioned by those colleges and universities, but hidden (in the sense that it's anonymous and that it hasn't occurred to most of the "right" people to look here) in plain sight on the internet. All our bravest writing... When we were in college, when I was less rabidly pro-choice (still, pro-choice, but less inclined to have to stab you in the eye if you disagreed with me), I used to say that I could live with any legal status of abortion if that legal status were decided by women, if we all got together, heard each other out, and took a vote. I even imagined something like this: But with less smirking, since we'd be well-aware of the gravity of our decision, and more actual women present. I should stop being bitter about this picture, but I'm just not able. Anyway, I think I'm trying to juggle too many things that are very closely linked in my mind, and so this post is wandering and making me bitter. For those of you who made it this far but can't figure out what the hell I'm trying to get at, here are the main points: 1. The traditional intellectual structures still can't figure out (or be bothered with trying to figure out) how to incorporate the wise and insightful female thinkers in their midsts, and so 1a. these wise and insightful female thinkers take their training from these traditional structures and head out here on the web to do their own things, which 1b. are brilliant and more meaningful than traditionally recognized forms of scholarship, even though this writing 1c. has a solid theoretical base in French feminism and l'ecriture feminine and 1d. should be in the classroom and in the discourse. 2. It still, years later, grosses me out that a bunch of men stood around smirking while they signed a law that will never directly affect them and 2a. I can't even articulate it because it makes me 2b. so angry I start to feel violent and it makes me 2c. feel very alienated from my country and so, 2d. I should just leave it alone.