what I've understood from my reading of Speculum of the other woman thus far: only men have access to identification, to recognizing sameness in the other and the laws that organize this sameness, to an "acting" that recognizes untruthfulness and truthfulness (the law again). but there is a sort of asymmetric, lesser form of acting that women are often accused of: performance.
"it is true that in their highest moments -- when they are most like the male sex, naturally -- women aspire to that sublimity. they rarely, however, rise above the level of exchanged sensations, of communal daydreams; at best they express opinions on events in the city, or merely pass on the opinions that are making the rounds. therefore women are incapable of realizing whether some idea -- Idea -- in fact corresponds to themselves, or whether it is only a more or less passable imitation of men's ideas."
when it was funny to call certain men "performative males," some of them would bemoan that they couldn't read in public anymore without these accusations. but this lasted the duration of a Tiktok trend. women, meanwhile, could never breathe without there being suspicions of superficiality and the desire for attention. example: suddenly everyone is an ascetic, minimalist anti-consumerist when it's a woman with questionable spending practices. stanley cups, labubus, women be shopping. anti-consumerism often extends to men, too, of course, but not to the same degree. men into fashion are commended and admired for the effort invested into their appearance, or even for expressing themselves through this serious artform, but on the other hand …
womanhood is a double bind of shame. don't buy makeup; hate yourself for being ugly -- or, hate yourself for being too poor to be economically useful. buy makeup; hate yourself for only pretending to not be ugly. hate yourself for being a woman (what we call a "natural" face), or hate yourself for pretending to be a man (an actor of the platonic, truthful Ideal). the problem with choice feminism is that it assumes any choice could transcend the ultimate patriarchal function of women: maintaining the market value of the phallus through half the population's lack of it.
"for she can be only known and recognized under disguises that denature her, she borrows forms that are never her own and that she must yet mimic if she is to enter even a little way into knowledge. and when she does this, she will no doubt be stigmatized, after the fact, for owing her power of seduction to deceptive appearances."
there is this same double bind between heterosexuality and lesbianism. I have always accepted my attraction to men as a compromise. I could be a "political lesbian" if I had the willpower, but I'm too susceptible to the comfort of conformity. Sensory Convent's article One woman's liberation from humanity had brought to my realization that this is yet another imposition of women's shame. "male-centered" straight women must hate themselves if they want the approval of men; lesbians must hate themselves if they want to be men. desire is converted to shame as long as desire is made the proof of lack.
Sensory Convent's words: a woman who desires men is a traitor, a slut, a whore; she’s enslaved to men, as if it were against her will, as if she has no interior, no internal desire, and is only a dumb, brainwashed object of men’s desires.