Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

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28 cyborgs. Pauline Hanson, a controversial Australian right-wing politician, was
reported to have said that in a few decades time Australia would be led by a
“lesbian cyborg”. This is reported by Babette Francis in The Joint Standing
Committee on Treaties, Melbourne, 10 July 1997. Canberra: Commonwealth of
Australia, Hansard. TR1005, p. 61.
29 damned women. The translation usually given for Baudelaire’s two poems entitled
Les Femmes Damnées is ”Lesbians”. See Marthiel and Jackson Mathews (Eds.).
1989. Charles Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil. Poems CXV and CXVI. Monique
Wittig alludes to Baudelaire also in Across the Acheron where she uses the terms
“condemned souls” (p. 8) and “damned souls” (p. 36). Wittig rarely fails to use
words to good purpose.
30 corrupts the family. In 2004 just before the Australian federal election a Family
First campaign worker answered “’yes’ to a question about whether Family First
supported lesbians being burned to death.” Sydney Morning Herald. 5 October
2004. For a fictional response to this see Susan Hawthorne. 2004b. “A Family
Fable”, Hecate, pp. 127-8; and Rain and Thunder. Issue 25, p. 33.
31 tortured. There is very little research on the torture of lesbians. The best personal
account I have located is Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes and Lynda Burke. 2001.
“Talking With/In Pain: Reflections on bodies under torture.” pp. 653-668. See
also my article “Research and Silence” (2004a).
32 out of existence. Evelyn Torton Beck writes “According to Jewish Law, this book is
written by people who do not exist. I assure you, it’s all very logical: we’re not
proscribed because we don’t exist. If we existed, believe me, they’d be against
us.” Evelyn Torton Beck. (Ed.). 1982. Nice Jewish Girls, p. xiii. Queen Victoria also
apparently did not believe in the existence of lesbians; and the Chinese
authorities after the Communist revolution declared that there were no lesbians
and no flies in China. Strangely, in spite of this, lesbians have been persecuted by
the state and the church. Nazis found lesbians, as did the witch burners of the
“Renaissance” period.
33 Lesbian Linear B. In a series of hand-made porcelain books, Suzanne Bellamy
plays with the possibilities of a lesbian library which she entitles The Little
Lesbian Book Series. Among the titles of this series is Lesbian Linear B. Other titles
include City of Lesbians, New Lesbian Foreign Policy, The Lesbian Fractal and Pruning
the Lesbian Rose. Only one copy of each title is fired.
34 Linear A. Dorothy Porter uses the metaphor of Linear A, an undeciphered script
to date, to describe the unknown emotional forces of discovering one’s sexuality
at twenty-two. Dorothy Porter. 1996. “Linear A.” Crete, p 6.
35 loss of memory. For a theoretical discussion of this see Susan Hawthorne. 2003.
“The Depoliticising of Lesbian Culture.” Hecate. Also see VS. 1999. Facing the
Mirror, pp. 147-8. Giti Thadani. 1996. Sakhiyani, pp. 1-8.
36 suicide. An interesting analysis of suicide is provided in Giti Thadani. 1996.
Sakhiyani, pp. 101-104.