10/11/16
"Are Lesbians Women?" Jacob Hale

In “Are Lesbians Women?” Jacob Hale points out the flaws in Monique Wittig’s provocative claim that lesbians are not women. Hale states that Wittig’s conclusion receives negative reactions due to the fact that she ignores the varying characteristics and “qualifiers” that correlate to the category ‘woman’ and the definitions of gender and sexuality. Hale states that he believes Wittig’s view is helpful in bringing attention to elements that illustrate the category ‘woman’ in current times. In the article Hale sets out to reconstruct the qualifiers that make someone a woman, and then compares these qualifiers to the aspects of lesbianism as a general concept and the variety within it. Hale then lays out the conditions in which one can identify a subject as a woman in the form of 13 claims or ‘premises’; Hale finally answers the initial question – are lesbians women?- by stating that he thinks some are and some are just not and that in many cases it is just hard to tell.

In terms of my specific position in this case I agree with his overall conclusion that it is a very difficult to determine whether or not lesbians fulfill the requirements and characteristics that in modern times are deemed as criteria for members of the group woman. Some people may disagree with this claim in a socially psychological aspect that people make snap judgments based on stereotypes and stereotypes of the common or ideal woman definitely do exist, so in a sense it is easy to determine if one is a woman or not. I believe this particular objection ultimately does not work because of people’s individuality and variety of preferences or unique personal characteristics. For example, I believe that premise (2) – there must be a presence of breasts- comes with the implication that if you do not have a generically feminine figure then you are not a woman. I disagree with this because, and I believe this is a common feminist view, that women have a variety of body types thus this claim is very limiting and cannot hold true in all situations. For example, women who are athletic have a different build which may resemble that of a masculine body type, but they still possess female reproductive organs, so does this make them less of a woman? No. Some women prefer much smaller breasts due to comfort reasons and personal preference and this also certainly does not make them less of a woman. One may refute this opposition to premise (2) in order to refute Hale’s conclusion by saying that yes, there are a variety of women body types, but as a general consensus in modern day society women are viewed as a part of the category “woman” if one can visibly tell they have breasts, thus enforcing respective stereotypes. By identifying points for controversy and argument in relation to this claim further supports my position that I agree overall with Hale’s conclusion.  Due to the idea that only some of the thirteen claims are relatively valid then indeed, it seems plausible that some lesbians are women and some are not, thus deeming it very ambiguous and difficult to answer the question, as Hale suggests, in a definite way.