According to Farwell, the lesbian subject has the capacity from her particular
vantage point to dismantle the heterophallologocentric binaries upon which
traditional Western romance narratives are built: those divisions, boundaries, and
differences—and especially sexual difference, "the primary distinction on which
all others depend" (de Lauretis, Alice 119). From her investigation of the
structural inscription of gender hierarchy and heterosexuality in conventional
romance narratives, de Lauretis concludes that narrative norms identify binary
gender oppositions as "positionalities of desire" (Alice 143). Discovering that
Freud's standard heterophallocentric paradigm of desire—which aligns the
masculine with active desire and the feminine with passivity—is reflected in
conventional literary structures, de Lauretis observes that the active positionality
of desire is traditionally occupied by the male figure in the Western narrative,
leaving the female passive and sexually undesiring, lacking agency and
subjectivity (Alice 119). These positionalities are, according to de Lauretis, in
effect, gendered spaces that are occupied by the characters. However,