Despentes on femmes, femininity, sisterhood and disobedience

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"In the heterosexual community, aptitude for seduction is a woman's ultimate quality: it is best rewarded, best acknowledged. Any other feature, like expressing yourself, being funny, having ambition, aggression, strength, spirit must be underplayed, so it doesn't get in the way of your seduction. I still have a strong distrust of femininity because it's always primarily defining you in terms of what use others can make of you. Will they be excited, reassured, healed, understood, taken care of? It always distances you from your sincere emotions. [...]

To be feminine is a fake power. It is the same as drugs: a very immediate, very intense, very funny experience. But any power that is easily given and obtained should be watched over carefully. It might be a gross hallucination. [...] I respect some people's decisions to spread their wings inside the romantic or sexual seduction field, but I'd claim other fields for women as well, which wouldn't evolve around 'Did I seduce you good enough?' and 'How hard would you jerk off watching me move?' It's the compulsory nature of the game that makes me feel claustrophobic, not the game itself. [...]

Sisterhood is obviously not a feminine tradition. To build sisterhood, you need to get out of your kitchen, out of your family, out of your love story, you have to be allowed to get outdoors. That's why sisterhood is more a tradition for whores, alcoholics and outcasts. Good girls have husbands, good girls have children, good girls don't need a gang. [...]

Disobedience belongs to losers. So it's difficult to build sisterhood, or any solidarity, in the 2000s ... the pride we had in the 80s in being 'punks', that is to say, losers, marginalised, underground, outsiders, is no longer an option. Sisterhood, like brotherhood, had to be built on a hatred of the dominant power, and a common willingness to fight. And I don't see much hatred of the dominant power, nowadays, only frustration about not belonging to the leading teams. That will come back. But we have to wait a couple of years. And then we can talk about sisterhood, again."

Virginie Despentes in Del Lagrace Volcano & Ulrika Dahl (2008), Femmes of Power, London, Serpent's Tail: 169-171.

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