First up is Monique Wittig. In addition to being a novelist, Ms. Wittig's is also known for shocking the Modern Language Association convention in 1978 with her radical lesbian proclamation: "Lesbians are not women," which she explores in the essay, "One Is Not Born a Woman." There is some Hegelian somersaulting going on there, but, really, I don't care.
Next up: Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Together, these two gals authoressed The Madwoman in the Attic. G & G suggest 19th century authoresses wrote at great peril to their psychic selves because of "the patriarchal authority of art," but, really, I don't care.
Finally, Helene Cixous. I like her the most because she's pretty, and she doesn't presume white privilege the way the other authoresses and theoretician-ettes do. Being Jewish, French, and Algerian, she explored things in terms of "multiple alterity [the state of being other or different; otherness]constituted by the logic of nationality." She'd probably be annoyed that I called her French and Algerian, but this is the cocktail party version, not a dissertation.
I'm not a feminist. I took some class way back in college where I learned that white suffragettes threw the cares and concerns of women of color under the bus in pursuit of voting rights. That was enough for me to see being a feminist would have me end up old, fat and alone (hey, waitaminute...).
I'm much more interested in this take on privilege, white women, Black women and slavery on Jezebel by the awesome Michaela Angela Davis. Or this book, Out of the House of Bondage, by Thavolia Glymph, in which she discusses how "plantation mistresses—typically portrayed by historians as removed and not part of the slaveocracy—who, were, in fact, the major culprits of these violent acts and executed their power against enslaved women." Or Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins, which one day I hope to read.
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