Hi Rachel,

I agree with your point about the weakness of Quilligan’s argument; I especially liked the way you described incest as a temporary halt to the problem vs. actually giving women true agency. I wonder in what ways this plays out through the other 2 ways out of the system that Quilligan outlines on p. 13: celibacy and lesbian desire. While lesbianism might give women more sexual agency, Quilligan seems to agree with Butler that same-sex desire is interconnected to and springs from incest (p. 16). Also, as we’ve read before, explicit lesbian desire was not really recorded; it does not really give women an active voice in the kinship model or agency in the long run, regardless of what brief sexual liberation it might provide in the moment. The only way that seems to really work, then, is celibacy, which ironically (or fittingly) is the ultimate act of passivity.