Customer Reviews

Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Values

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Sarah Hoagland's "Lesbian Ethics.." is a startling revelation about the nature of social structures and the nature of opression. She critiques the status quo systems of heterosexuality, provides the reader with a lens to view our world, and offers a refreshing glimpse at a possible future.

Hoagland explains that the current systems of domination and opression are fed by heterosexuality, the refusal to acknowledge other form of sexuality. By rebelling within designated avenues of rebellion, and reforming within the expected lines of reform, those who wish to change the system unwittingly breathe life into it.

Hoagland concludes that in order to defeat the system, we must separate from it, and in this revelation, she includes a brilliant metaphor about a king and his kingdom. She argues that a king cannot be a king with no subjects. In this way, separation from the system collapses it.

Though from a praxis standpoint, her conclusion is vague and formless, her arguments stand as guidelines for the next revolution: the sexually opressed versus the heterosexual opressors.

I enjoyed this book, and it has become a window by which I can view the world.

Hoagland is a brilliant and incisive writer. She has a gift for presenting incredibly nuanced and complex ideas crystal clear.

I borrowed a copy from a friend and marked, and noted, and dog-eared, and highlighted it so much, I needed to buy her a new copy. The content is very rich, and there is much that is worthy of note within its pages.

Most importantly, Hoagland presents with clarity, refreshing hope, and conviction the idea that it is indeed possible to have authentic, free, loving, and equal relationships between human beings, relationships that are simply not based on domination and submission. Her goal is "moral revolution", "a conceptual framework, a new paradigm, in which oppression is not automatic - where rape, pogroms, slavery, lynchings, and colonialism are not even _conceivable_."

For anyone who shares Hoagland's hunger for such a paradigm, this book is truly indispensable. It is an excellent book for study in a community or collective with common goals, as it outlines concepts and tools that are essential to building authentic and egalitarian communities. This includes completely uprooting values about domination/subordination that are so central to mainstream (male-centered) anglo-european ethics from our thinking, our language, our behavior, our relationships, and our work, and replacing these values with a fundamental honoring of people's moral agency (our choices, our freedoms).

Again, Hoagland is concerned with fundamental culture change. She is a big-picture thinker who is encouraging those of us engaged in struggles against oppression to not just win battles but to win the war, to not accept the terms we are handed but to create and breathe meaning into new terms, to not remain riveted on "the masters", but to turn to and attend to each other, thereby creating whole new meanings, and whole new worlds.