that the two subjects which have excited controversy on your letters' page are lesbian and gay oppression and liberation and Madonna. seems that it is still sex which gets the punters going!
However, while I have some sympathy with your correspondents on Madonna's feminism, I have absolutely none with either on the question of the family or the biological determination of sexuality.
The subjects are of such fundamental importance to an understanding of the struggle for lesbian and gay liberation as to warrant a fairly comprehensive reply.
The letter proposing a compromise (in the best liberal tradition) between the analyses of sexuality asebiologically or socially constructed seems to have badly misunderstood the meaning of the original Supplement and therefore to have confused a number of different arguments and concepts.
It is obviously true that the social construction of sexuality operates within certain biological parameters - humanity is genetically sexual. However, chat fact is a million miles from the liberal belief, shared on many sections of the left, that the THE MOST alarming aspect is determined by biology.
Clearly the statement that people are born sexual has a rather different meaning to the statement that people are born heterosexual or homosexual. Moreover the former assertion can be scientifically, historically and empirically substantiated which the latter cannot.
Nor is social construction synonomous with 'social conditioning'. It is a complex process in which both objective and subjective factors constantly interact.
Asimilar set of confusions are illustrated in the letter in defence of the family. It fails to separate the institution of the family from the actual individuals which exist within it, and therefore comes to very reactionary conclusions.
The institution of the heterosexual, patriarchal nuclear family is incontrovertibly oppressive.
is an institution which directly and often violently op presses women and children. It recreates and reinforces these inequalities of power and presents them as natural and unchanging.
It is an institution which women's entry into the workforce, underlying the gender segregation of employvilification from these reacment and gender differentials in Patne family is an institution with which lesbians and gay the act of the working class itself'. One point which has stood the test of time.
Keith Flett London N17 THE NEW paper has made a