Feminist dialogues and sex/dissidents: Three Guineas and the Homosexual Liberation Front

Abstract

The 19th century is the century of emancipatory social movements, in which feminism appears for the first time as a movement of international character, with a specific identity, showing its first points of an agenda that highlighted the oppressive situation of women. Decades later, the emergence of the first homosexual demands would make the debate and disputes more complex. In this article we reflect on the reverberations that coexist transhistorically and shape the (dis)articulations between feminisms and sex-dissident movements. We will take the case of Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas as an inescapable contribution to the subsequent history of the LGBTIQ+ movement. In a critical reading of the history of feminisms, we will ask: is it possible - and in what terms - to read the feminist genealogy of women's history as a history of movements and claims that laid the foundations, paved the way, and favoured a collective experience that would serve as a historical accumulation for the expansion of the margins of the demands of gender-dissident sex? In methodological terms, considering Tres guineas as a cultural and political critique of the masculinist order, we will inquire into the possible echoes that first-wave feminism could have for other later socio/sexual movements, particularly the Frente de Liberación Homosexual de Argentina (Homosexual Liberation Front of Argentina). We will conclude by pointing out that the notion of outsiders represents a powerful and possible narrative nexus for understanding the shared places of enunciation and dispute against patriarchy.