“Hers and Hers Too”: Tensions Between Radicalism and Conformity in Dykes to Watch Out For

There’s something truly strange about living in a historical moment in which the conservative anxiety and despair about queers bringing down civilization and its institutions (marriage, most notably) is met by the anxiety and despair so many queers feel about the failure or incapacity of queerness to bring down civilization and its institutions.
 
— Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For ran for 25 years—from the peak of the AIDS crisis in 1983 to the initiation of Proposition 8 in 2008, the author chronicled the lives and loves of her various characters with a distinctive dry wit and assiduous attention to detail. The strip is raunchy, intellectual, and entertaining, traits which quickly solidified its status as a fan favorite among LGBT comics readers. Perhaps most importantly, it is a massive historical archive spanning 25 years of lesbian history, politics, and culture. By intertwining real events with her characters’ fictional storylines, Bechdel documented two Bush presidencies, the Millennial March on Washington, Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and virtually every other notable event of the time period. Bechdel’s dykes are anything but a monolith of The L Word-watching, “U-Haul lesbian” stereotypes. Dr. Rebecca Beirne, a scholar of lesbian media representation at the University of Newscastle, suggests that these distinct personalities and character arcs represent and reify “the multiplicity of lesbian cultural history that rejects the single-thread narratives that cultural histories are keen to promulgate” (168). In doing this, Bechdel simultaneously recorded the ebb and flow of topical lesbian debate: namely, conflicting opinions on monogamy, queer marriage, child rearing, the bastardization of Gay Pride, and resisting corporate monoculture.

 Again and again, Bechdel personified these sociocultural issues in her characters’ lives and relationships with each other; they inspire recurring lovers’ spats, spirited intellectual disputes, and casual coffeeshop raillery. But of all the various topics of discourse within Dykes to Watch Out For—and there are many—no ongoing debate proves as prevalent or divisive as that of queer radicalism against queer assimilationism. Radical leftist characters like Mo and Lois are against—or, if not against, certainly not actively for—engaging in institutions that uphold traditional, heteropatriarchal values such as marriage, religion, and the nuclear family. In contrast, their more moderate friends—namely, the (sometimes) happily married Clarice and Toni—argue that the legalization of queer families is not regressive or immoral, but a step in the direction of true progress. In that Dykes to Watch Out For is an extensive record of lesbian culture just as much as it is a comic strip, Bechdel’s growing, changing characters—and their varied social, political, and moral philosophies—are not merely fictional, but rather a fictionalized microcosm of a very real community and the issues that this community faced. Through the cartoon archive, readers can trace the direction of lesbian social customs and political attitudes, from the lesbian sex wars and grassroots activism of the early 1980s, to the increasing power of homonormativity in the late 2000s.

1. The Horrors of the State-Sanctioned Two-Parent Household

Frequently at the center of the dykes’ ideological debates are Clarice and Toni, a long-term lesbian couple who have a commitment ceremony, raise a child, move to the suburbs, get married, and eventually divorce throughout the course of the strip. In contrast with their friends and fellow main characters—Mo, Sydney, Lois, Ginger, and Sparrow—their lives adhere to very different routines, simply because they are not as radical as they were prior to marriage and parenthood. Their decision to marry and have a child is eventually accepted within the group, although the concept of the state-sanctioned family remains a point of philosophical contention, and the subject of much (mostly) light-hearted ribbing. For example, the title of this section was inspired by a quip from Ginger: “Hey, girls! I hate to tear myself away from your state-sanctioned two-parent household, but I have to get back to my dissertation” (Bechdel, 180). The title of the paper itself was inspired by another such gibe from Mo, regarding her wedding gift: “I can’t decide between the complete Donna Reed Show videocassettes and the t-shirts that say ‘Hers’ and ‘Hers too’” (Ibid., 54). As one might expect, their unofficial betrothal was not met with the outpouring of congratulations typically associated with heterosexual engagement rites. According to the staunch—albeit frequently hypocritical—leftist Mo, “They’re clinging to an obsolete heteropatriarchal construct…marriage is about ownership and dowries and stuff” (Bechdel, 54). In a one-off side character’s wedding speech, she proclaims, “I love you both like sisters. Maybe that’s why I give you so much shit about being yuppie sellouts and why I sincerely hope that in your wedded bliss you don’t abandon the struggle of radical lesbians of color against the imperialist patriarchy” (Ibid., 56). Both of these harsh statements express sentiments that existed—and continue to exist—in lesbian circles, especially as the prevalence of homonormativity and rainbow capitalism continue to tighten their grip on queer communities. For example, Sue-Ellen Case, chair of Critical Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, states that “subcultural kinship practices [such as lesbianism] are contradicted by the institution of the legal bond of marriage, reducing their more expansive sense of kinship to a small, stable, and carefully bounded exclusive pairing” (16). Mo’s immediate reaction to her friends’ impending marriage is emblematic of this ideological objection, which remained popular in a subset of lesbian communities even as a growing list of states legalized civil unions and same-sex marriages. On the other side of the debate, pro-marriage supporters and activists offered equally passionate rebuttals. Another friend of the couple, Jezanna, toasts their marriage by declaring, “I am hard-pressed to think of a more radical act than two courageous women challenging the powers that be by publicly celebrating their lesbian relationship” (Bechdel, 56). As their relationship develops, Clarice and Toni are the recipients of various praises and criticisms, the vast majority of which are tied to their friends’ perspectives on assimilation and conformity.

Throughout the strip, Bechdel represents these ongoing changes both visually and textually. As Clarice and Toni become increasingly upward-mobile, they buy a Volvo, leave their cramped apartment for a spacious new house, and change their refrigerator decor from political action posters to a marriage certificate. Next to the lively, occasionally hectic communal space depicted in Ginger, Lois, and Sparrow’s apartment, their living situation appears somewhat barren in comparison—there is a notable surplus of white space in the panels. Friends and family come over to visit, but not as spontaneously as in their unmarried friends’ households; there is less background noise, as evidenced by fewer music notes, sound effects, and broadcast bubbles. Additionally, Clarice is forced to alter her appearance as she moves up the corporate ladder. Upon graduating law school and securing a job with frequent court appearances, her daily outfits change from casual shirts and jeans to formal blouses, blazers, and skirts. Horrified, Mo asks, “So, is that how clerks for judges hafta dress?” (Ibid., 79). Clarice initially appears just as crestfallen about her acquiescence, but her spirits are lifted by Toni, who admiringly claims, “I just love a butch in a skirt” (Ibid.). By illustrating the lives of those who adhere to both ends of the ideological spectrum, Bechdel does not endeavor to subliminally bolster either stance. Instead, these questions of radicality and normativity are allowed to stew in their complexity, providing what gender studies scholar Angela Willey defines as “a sense that monogamy is a feminist issue and an ideal that should not be taken for granted, but without offering easy or prescriptive answers or suggesting that its strictures are mere social impositions” (237). 

Later in the strip, Toni becomes involved with an organization called Freedom to Marry—a decision which is unenthusiastically accepted by her more radical friends. As their partnership grows increasingly claustrophobic, even Clarice cannot match her wife’s zeal for marriage equality. When Toni attempts to convince Ginger to volunteer with her, Clarice interjects that “not everyone wants to fight for the dubious right of having their domestic affairs legitimized by the patriarchy” (Bechdel, 201). Ginger is similarly nonplussed, and replies that marriage “isn’t real high” on her agenda. In this conversation and many others like it, the issue, as expressed by feminist theologian Mary E. Hunt, lies in curbing “the seeming advance on the marriage front from undoing decades of struggle to create a more inclusive and welcoming society not only for those who marry but also for everyone else” (84). Committed to the cause despite her wife and friends’ ambivalence, Toni retorts that “it’s a much more radical act for two women to challenge the state by getting married than to sit around muttering about the patriarchy” (Bechdel, 201). This kind of long-standing philosophical disagreement is not unique to Clarice and Toni as a couple, nor are such disputes seen as inherent harbingers of a doomed relationship. In Bechdel’s representation of queer partnerships—both short-lived and enduring—ideological disparity between lovers is just another facet of what comics studies scholar Susan Kirtley calls her “unique rendering of domesticity…[which portrays] intimate narratives of home and family in correlation with wider issues of national politics [and shows how] the policies of state play out within individual households” (41). Couples are not necessarily expected to come to an agreement, only to respect each other’s ideological integrity.

2. Like the Mormons?

    Mo and Sydney, another abiding couple, have a similar dynamic with regards to monogamy versus polyamory—namely, Sydney wants to expand their relationship to include multiple partners, and Mo does not. The contrast between these characters’ opposing sexual proclivities does not hinder their relationship; ultimately, it is what fans the flames of their romance. A “hilariously puritanical feminist moralist,” Mo’s attraction to Sydney exists not in spite of the conflict between their traditional and radical views, but rather because of them (Willey, 239). Upon first meeting each other, ideological tension quickly translates to sexual tension, and the two women begin a romantic relationship. Early in their partnership, Mo vents these feelings to Lois: “I can’t explain it! She’s so irritating…yet so sexy! I can’t stop thinking about her” (Bechdel, 181).

Despite holding strictly radical beliefs in the theoretical sphere, Mo is a serial monogamist and an extremely jealous lover. Therefore, she does not appreciate Sydney’s suggestion that they have “open, nonpossessive relationships with multiple partners” (Bechdel, 234). Sydney, a notoriously pompous academic, resists her partner’s refusal by hitting her where it hurts: her politics. “If you really cared about capitalism,” she pontificates, “you’d try polyamory. Monogamy is just a device to consolidate wealth by creating legal heirs” (Ibid., 235). Despite having no plans to create a legal heir, monogamous or otherwise, the radical nature of Sydney’s logic infuriates Mo, who embodies “a struggle between impassioned resistance to ‘assimilation’ and complicity on the one hand and ‘normal’ desires around both work and love on the other” (Willey, 242). Despite her all-consuming need to be the most enlightened person in the room, she just cannot get behind the idea of non-monogamy—as evidenced by the vigorous motion lines and curlicues of confusion that enhance her protests and defensive body language. Mo’s friendship with the sexually uninhibited Lois operates under a similar logic. She cannot understand her friend’s penchant for one-night stands, and occasionally takes issue with them, but she mostly just finds her exploits amusing. During one of Lois’ litany of flings, she asks, “How can you exchange intimate bodily fluids with someone and call it casual?!” (Ibid., 47). Lois is occasionally irritated by Mo’s preaching, but ultimately finds her self-righteous celibacy just as interesting, if philosophically incomprehensible. Still, with the exception of a few dramatic—but quickly resolved—disputes, they remain two of the closest friends in their community.

    That said, long-term compatibility—platonic or romantic—is not always possible when the parties involved hold such starkly different social and political views. This is especially true when the aforementioned parties are unwilling or unable to be honest with each other and communicate their feelings. Toward the end of their marriage, Clarice and Toni discuss pursuing polyamory in the hopes of reducing the tension in their relationship. Before coming to any conclusions, however, Toni has an affair with a mutual friend. Both partners had indulged in affairs before, but in the past, they had immediately confessed their infidelity to each other. This time, Toni attempted to keep her liaison a secret. Ultimately, the damage this event has on their relationship, already weak from years of compounded stress, is irreconcilable. Not long after, they get divorced. Queer feminist theorist Angela Willey commends Bechdel for her portrayal of the “various versions of nonmonogamy and polyamory [that] play a part in this lesbian culture…[but] are not the opposite of monogamy or the antidote to feminist critiques of it” (240). Clarice and Toni are a clear example of the latter. There were many issues rooted within their monogamous relationship, but the exploring polyamory did not provide the solution to those problems. Instead, in conjunction with a lack of communication, it muddled the boundaries of their partnership, creating new conflicts.

3. The Child in Whose Name They’re Collectively Terrorized

    Controversial literary critic and queer theorist Lee Edelman, author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, once wrote:

Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop. (Edelman, 29)

According to this philosophical stance, child rearing—once an almost exclusively heterosexual practice—is inherently unradical and unqueer in that it reifies the traditional family structure. Consequently, parenthood adheres to and accepts the violence of the status quo, and drains energy that could otherwise be spent destroying systems of oppression as they currently stand. Mo does not express her feelings as vehemently as Edelman, but her sentiments stem from the same ideological concern: conventional society’s uncritical “allegiance…[to] a reality based on the Ponzi scheme of reproductive futurism” (Ibid., 4). Conversely, Clarice argues that “Lesbians having babies is gonna change the world! The P.T.A. will never be the same…Think of it as infiltration…We’ll slip inside and change things right under their noses” (Bechdel, 79). Mo’s rebuttal is cynical and succinct: “If they don’t change you first” (Ibid.). From her perspective, Clarice and Toni’s decision to have a child is the natural next step of their assimilation into heteronormative society—a logical and much more permanent continuation of their already controversial wedding ceremony.  

Queer writer and mother Maggie Nelson endured similar criticisms during her own pregnancy. In response to Edelman, she wrote:

But why bother fucking this Child when we could be fucking the specific forces that mobilize and crouch behind its image? Reproductive futurism needs no more disciples. But basking in the punk allure of “no future” won't suffice…while the gratuitously wealthy and greedy shred our economy and our climate and our planet…Fuck them, I say. (Nelson, 76)

Like Nelson, Clarice and Toni’s solution to the negative aspects of family life is in action, not in prevention. Their philosophy of raising a child does not include the conventionalities that Mo alludes to when she bemoans, “Clarice the unswerving! The original radical lesbian feminist terrorist! What hope is there for poor wimps like me if even you have knuckled under?!” (Bechdel, 4). They do not intend to “knuckle under” the various societal expectations that encourage gender role socialization or private schooling; they simply want to be parents. Instead of interpreting parenthood as incongruous with the social responsibilities of lesbianism, they view it as an opportunity to spread their beliefs to a child who will flourish in a culture of peace, acceptance, and equality. The radicality of raising a child in a lesbian environment, who will continue to be influenced by this upbringing long after they have grown up, outweighs their concerns regarding homonormativity.

Nine months later, Clarice and Toni’s personal child terrorist is born: an energetic little boy named Rafael, or Raffi, who—despite any initial misgivings—is universally beloved by his mothers’ friends. As it turns out, it is much easier to say “Fuck the Child” in response to a theoretical concept than to an actual living, breathing infant. Despite this concession, references to Clarice and Toni “selling out,” both joking and serious, pervade the strip with increasing frequency. A few weeks after Rafael is born, Mo visits the new parents, jesting, “I thought I’d drop in and relieve the boredom and isolation of your limited little nuclear family circle” (Ibid., 116). In another strip, a playfully sarcastic Lois asks, “How’s family life? Claustrophobic and suffocating?” (Ibid., 121). These comments are not reserved just for Clarice and Toni. When Harriet artificially impregnates herself, her ex-lover Mo is apoplectic, exclaiming, “Say it’s not true! Tell me you’re not gonna become one of those ‘We’re just like everyone else’ clones” (Ibid., 219). The ideological differences between various characters, however, do not make them any less of “a family of choice, that is, not blood or married relatives but people who deem themselves family by bonds of love, shared commitment, and nurture” (Hunt, 92). All of the dykes, regardless of politics, take turns babysitting each other’s children, playing with them, and supervising them in public spaces. Although Mo, Lois, and others refuse to “[romanticize] motherhood in the heterosexual ideal…[they do acknowledge] lesbians who consciously seek out an experience of parenthood” and offer their support, if not their complete approval (Brennen & Lafky, 43). Ironically, Mo’s principles momentarily disappear after the birth of her cherished niece, and Lois becomes a parental figure to her partner Jasmine’s daughter, Janis. Throughout the arc of both characters’ intentionally oscillating politics, Bechdel uses “the unique qualities of the comic art medium to express the notion that the ‘personal is political’ through the rich, layered narrative made up of numerous diegetic strands” (Kirtley, 53). The anthological format of comics naturally showcases this sentiment, revealing that the “personal” and corresponding “political” are constantly in flux, changing alongside characters’ shifting social and romantic situations.

4. Gay Shame Parade

    The month of June has been known as LGBT Pride Month since the 1970s—and in 1999, President Bill Clinton officially recognized the occasion for the first time in United States history. Typically observed through parades and other celebratory communal events, Pride is an opportunity for LGBT people to affirm their identities and honor the queer elders who came before them. Naturally, in 2004, Mo decides to go to Gay Shame “to protest how Pride has gotten so corporate” instead (Bechdel, 311). With an “I’ll be proud when Bush is gone” sign in tow, Mo says goodbye to Sparrow and walks away from the Pride festivities, which Bechdel has snarkily covered in the logos of various megacorporations. One booth reads “Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce,” an unsubtle jab that focuses the reader’s attention to the capitalist reality of modern Pride parades. Although Mo’s criticisms of Pride are valid, this plotline is yet another example of her stringent principles rejecting any form of optimism or enjoyment. Unsurprisingly, many of her friends perceive this sanctimonious commitment to radicalism as irritating.

    When they are not deliberating their careers or love lives, the dykes are almost always “discuss[ing] the pressing cultural or political issues of their day…[with] multiple perspectives and arguments that prompt the readers’ engagement with and discussion of many issues” (Beirne, 168). No organization, institution, theoretical concept, or political event is free from their analysis, as trivial as it might initially seem. In one strip, Mo goes as far as breaking up with Harriet for indulging in “the rampant junk production and mindless consumerism” of buying a VCR machine (Bechdel, 87). Most of their debates, however, are politically or culturally significant—albeit occasionally excessive in length and frequency. One such topic of discussion, which appears in multiple strips, is the monopolization of the bookselling market. Over time, the local lesbian bookstore, Madwimmin Books, is overwhelmed by the expansion of superstores such as Bunns & Noodle, Bounders Books & Muzak, and medusa.com (Bechdel’s parody of Barnes & Noble, Borders Books & Music, and amazon.com, respectively). While all of the dykes are loyal to Madwimmin until its closing in 2002—leaving Mo, Lois, Jezanna, and their co-worker Thea all unemployed—the temptation of larger selections and discount prices proves difficult to resist. When Clarice admits to treating herself to a Bunns & Noodle cappuccino, Mo protests, “That place is owned by a gigantic corporation! Books are just a commodity to them, like small appliances, or…or health insurance! They don’t care about literature, or ideas, or community” (Ibid., 121). Later on, Clarice and Toni will have to face the ordeal of Raffi’s best friend getting a new Harry Potter book before he does, courtesy of medusa.com’s overnight shipping service—a result of their devotion to Madwimmin. Ultimately, even Mo must give in to the truth. After Madwimmin closes, she and Lois find new jobs at their former arch-nemesis, corporate megastore Bounders Books. This is an uncommon and somewhat depressing example of acquiescence from Mo, who would usually be the first to resist, regardless of common sense. These tensions between radicalism and conformity are not just interpersonal, though, but intrapersonal; even Mo is not immune to the dimming idealism and sobering realizations that come with experience and age.

5. Fictional Dykes, Actual World

    Besides providing a steady stream of ideological disputes, Bechdel draws “newspaper headlines and television news sound bites in the background of these frames [which] never allow…the luxury of imaging sexual subjectivity or desire outside of the political and economic contexts in which they are embodied and enacted” (Willey, 247). Even when the dykes take a rare break from intellectual discussion, the outside world and its many horrors are still present; their character development and various personal plotlines are never separate from these forces. One of the only storylines to contradict this is coincidentally entitled “Real World,” which Bechdel published in the weeks following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In this strip, Toni finally decides that enough is enough, and unplugs the TV that Clarice had been watching intently. There is no dialogue or narration for the entirety of the strip, “creat[ing] a particularly powerful rendering of individuals navigating the borders of public and private…as they traverse the precarious, unsettled post-9/11 landscape” (Kirtley, 49). In Bechdel’s regular installments, it is unusual for there to be even one panel without a single line of text. Contrasted with the dykes’ usually endless chatter, the total silence in this strip is a shattering reflection of the enormity of the historical moment. In the absence of words, all of their differences seem to melt away, and the reader is left with a portrait of a community that is, above all else, fiercely loving, resilient, and genuine.

    Alison Bechdel has stated that she first started drawing Dykes To Watch Out For as a "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel" (Garner). In achieving this goal, she concurrently recorded a tome of information on the lesbian countercultural movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries—including the many contradictions, disparities, and factions therein. Throughout over two decades of publication, Bechdel anthologized the intricacies of lesbian life from all aspects of the lesbian community, lending her characters a sense of veracity and charisma that was inspired by real people, places, and debates. In representing lesbians for who they were—in her own words, “Free thinkers! Vegetarians! Pacifists! At the forefront of every social justice movement…[and] essentially…well… more highly evolved!” (Bechdel, XV)—she gave these issues of radicalism and conformity an unmistakably human face.