TT: I thought we'd discuss my clit today.

RR: Why bother?

TT: Because it's my turn to suggest a topic for our discussion group, that's why, and I was...

RR: Can we get on with this, please?

TT: ...simply wondering if it was really a clit. You see, I've been reading a lot of that cultural feminism stuff, and I was jerking off this morning when...

RR: Could you please use an even more disgusting term?

TT: ...I started freaking out: What if this little sucker isn't my clit at all? It derailed my entire orgasm. Why, I almost chucked my Magic Wand, then and there.

PP: Well, it's pretty obvious to me. If it looks like a clit, walks like a clit, and it quacks like a clit, it must be a clit. Or a duck; I forget which.

RR: That is total bullshit. A clit is a female organ, it grows only on women. You might as well transplant one of your testicles (sorry Tina, but you asked for this) onto your foot and call it a big toe.

TT: (Sob!)

DD: Now, now, Tina honey. Rita's just trying to make a point, aren't you dear? And anyway, Paula's right: It functions like a clit and it looks like a clit, doesn't it? You jerk it off (sorry, Rita) I mean, you masturbate it (sounds even worse) like a clit, don't you? Then for you, it is a clit. You should be free to call it whatever you want. These definitions are all arbitrary and culturally-bound, anyway. Bodies are just surfaces onto which culture writes the meanings it needs.

RR: Well, then maybe I should call my nose a clit and my eyebrows a pubic bush. And who says identity follows form? Suppose my clit enlarged on testosterone, like it did when I was body building? Does that make it a penis? Are you saying I became... became... (gasp) A MAN? (You watch your ass here, Diana.)

DD: Depends how you look at it, Rita. Instead of looking at what gets into the category of "clits", maybe we ought to start examining the "category of clits" itself. Who benefits when we call one thing a "clit" and exclude something else? And who gets to decide? Who invented the term "clitoris", anyway? Clits and penises were originally understood as different-sized versions of the same organ, both from the same prenatal tissue and both getting erections before ejaculation. So maybe "clit" and "penis" are similar organs on one common body, made distinct and separate to make "male" and "female" more distinct and separate.

PP: Hey, didn't I read on a "Famous Lesbian Feminists" softball trading card that all our terms were invented by DSWM? [Dead Straight White Males - Elucidating Ed.] What if this whole conversation is happening inside a structure made by and for straight white guys? Wow; This is really intense! I gotta go pierce something.

RR: Now wait a fucking minute there, Paula. Are you really going to tell me I don't have a clit?

PP: Tell you what, Rita: Let me go down on you and Tina and I'll give you the definitive answer in... oh, about an hour (...maybe two).

RR: Shut up, Paula. Diana, now you've got her fuzzying-up a very clear line, too. Boys have penises and girls have clits. All you have to do is look at them side-by-side and it's as plain as night-and-day and you know it.

PP: What about the intersexed?

TT: Yeah, Rita. What about the intersexed? Remember last summer there was this intersexed person at Camp Trans at the MWMF [Michigan Womyn's Music Festival - Illuminating Ed.] S/he had both a penis and a vagina. What about him/her?

RR: Oh, you know as well as I do that's just a freak occurrence? If you took the condition to a good doctor, you could get it fixed. We can't very well define our categories by the exceptions.

DD: Whoops! Dead meat there, Rita. First off, who gets to decide what is a "freak occurrence?" Until recently, seems us lesbionics were "freak occurrences," and the good doctors tried their hand at "fixing" us. You want that for your dyke daughter Dana? Second, calling something a "freak occurrence" is just another way of saying "I don't want to deal with this; it fucks with my categories." And it denies the legitimacy of that person's experience. Maybe s/he feels completely correct and fulfilled with his/her genitals exactly as they are. Third, you might say "we can't define our categories by the exceptions," but that's precisely what you do. Your categories might not contain these exceptions, but excluding troublesome identities creates the "outside" which makes your "inside" possible, and keeps it stable. Your idea of "valid" genitals is maintained at the expense of creating other genitals as "invalid."

RR: Diana, I swear you're gonna make me hurl in about 10 seconds here; you know, call up Raaaalph on the white phone; blow groceries. To begin with, I never said we should discard her/him, just that his/her genitals weren't normal or even...

PP: Look who's talking about "normal" here...

RR: You know what I mean, Paula, I just said that...

PP: NO, I don't. When I shaved my head, pierced my labia and strapped on "Mighty Mike" to celebrate my 2-month anniversary with my lover Fredd last night, was that "normal?"

RR: But calling a behavior "abnormal" isn't the same thing as calling something physical "abnormal." Nature made bodies to be a certain way. Now you're taking my argument out of context.

DD: On the contrary. I think she's calling into question the whole idea of a system which makes some things "normal" and gives them social legitimacy at the expense of others.

RR: But nature created genitals to perform specific biological functions. Now, how can someone with both male and female genitals possibly mate and reproduce if they're...

PP: Are you saying "Mighty Mike" isn't... (choke) NATURAL? Why, I'll have you know he's made from 100% recycled compressed soy by-products, shipped directly to Eve's Vibrations. (And it just so happens I'm packing today, so you watch your ass, Rita, or I'm going to "reproduce" your butt right here and then you can tell me about "mating.")

TT: Hey, wait a minute! I'm sure this is all very interesting for you girls (only a little yoke, Rita), but I still don't know if I have a clit like a real woman. Look here, doesn't this look like a clit to you, Paula? How 'bout you, Diana? At least stop sticking your finger down your throat long enough to look, Rita! (By the way, if you really are packing Paula, could I see you for a minute or so after we're...)

DD: There aren't any "real" women or "unreal" women to be, Tina. Tina! Stop drooling over Paula's crotch and listen. And Paula, please stop staring at Tina's clit and jacking off "Massive Mack," or whoever, okay? Look, both of you have crossed from being seen as a man to being seen as a woman (or vice versa), right? So you grok gender as a display, a cultural performance, a "doing" not a "being"?

TT: But I'm talking about being a female here not about being seen as a woman (sniffle).

DD: That's still the same process, only one step removed. See, heterosexuality needed simple, opposing, binary genders: man and woman. To justify 2 social genders, it stood them on 2 simplistic, opposing, binary "natural" sexes. Viola! Male and Female. To make it all hang together, sex was conceived as permeating everyone's very existence, an essential part of what we were, not just a description of certain kinds of genitals. Biology, informed by the same agenda, legitimized this structure by naming and conceiving of genitalia as binary, opposing, and completely distinct as possible. Other conceptions of sex were discarded; and other genital formations which might challenge the neat little boxes were discarded as "abnormal."

PP: Diana, this heavy-duty deconstruction rap always loses me on the curves. Are you saying my body is a concept, like beauty or justice? I can't see that. You can tell me "chair" is just a social concept, but there's still something to catch my lezzie butt when I sit down

. DD: Not exactly. Your body undoubtedly exists, but the ways in which we see it are culturally created. And your body undoubtedly has parts used for sexual pleasure. But it took Heterosexual Man (and I do mean Man) to appropriate your cunt and ovaries and hormones and whatever else he threw in and write them onto your entire being as the Female Sex. His sexual politics required it: If there were 10 sexes, heterosexuality would collapse like a stuck balloon. Being "heterosexual" would just mean gettin' down with the other 9 sexes of which you weren't a member.

RR: Diana, this is some major-league, double barrelled, USDA grade horseshit you're shovelling out here...

TT: Oh Gawd! Then what about my... my vagina? It's made from parts of my penis, too. Does that mean it's still a penis, or a vagina, or in-between, or something else entirely? (I'm going to be sick here.)

RR: Of course it's still a penis. You just moved it around a little by paying some crazed patriarchal surgeon to... DD: But until the 1800's the vagina was understood as an inverted penis, and even drawn that way in anatomy texts. In fact, the vagina wasn't even named as a separate organ until 19th century sexual politics required it. RR: So maybe they were just dumber than we are, Diana. (zipppp) Look here! A real vagina leads to a uterus and ovaries and things. Now if I punch a whole in my butt over here and line it with skin, does that make it a vagina-on-my-butt, or just another weird-ass puncture wound?

PP: Hey, wait a minute now! My mom just had a radical hysterectomy. Are you telling me my Mom's vagina is now a "weird-ass puncture wound?"

RR: Don't you yell at me, Paula, I'm just trying to make a point here and you're blowing my entire...

TT: ...but if I'm not a REAL woman, then what about my...

PP: ...my mom is going to fuck you UP, Rita, just you wait...

DD: ...and as Foucault definitively proved, juridical structures invariably produce and then conceal the very materialities they presume to describe, through a process of...