Complusory Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality & Lesbian Existence; Restricted Sexuality & Female Resistance

Women's Issues -- Compulsory Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality & Lesbian Existence; Restricted Sexuality & Female Resistance

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Adrienne Rich is a feminist theorist with clearly defined ideas that are communicated with sharp, yet graceful articulation. Her essay, "Compulsory Heterosexuality" gave her well deserved and earned respect from the community of her peers. The essay additionally challenged women, theorists, philosophers, and producers of media and culture to a great task. Her perspective, one that exists outside and arguably, independent of Western patriarchal male ideology, is valuable. Perspectives outside of the mainstream are valuable. They exist. The declaration and acknowledgement of existence is a crucial theme of "Compulsory Heterosexuality." Her piece is about the lesbian experience, but really her piece is about the experience of women within a society where men have the power. This power is systematic; it exists within social, political, and familial institutions, as well as at the workplace. The paper will perform a concise, yet close reading of "Compulsory Heterosexuality," connecting the its themes to other women's issues, and commenting on the effects this piece has on hour thoughts and practices of sexuality in general.

Keywords: lesbian, heterosexuality, women, feminism, capitalism, patriarchy, feminist theory, women's studies, women's issues, sexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality & Lesbian Existence; Restricted Sexuality & Female Resistance

Adrienne Rich composed "Compulsory Heterosexuality" from Massachusetts in 1980. It is a daring and critical piece of writing. Rich tackles and demonstrates multiple themes and points in her work. Her overarching points have to do with the female experience within the patriarchy around the world. She also argues that there are too few examples of the female and lesbian experience throughout history, media, literature, and culture. She provides information that illuminates the systematic and institutional violence again women throughout history and around the world. The paper will summarize Rich's arguments, apply her proposals to sexuality, and connect her ideas with other women's issues.

"Compulsory Heterosexuality" begins with Rich expressing her ideas about the lesbian experience. She discusses how the lesbian experience is denied in language with effects in the social realm:

"Any theory or cultural / political creation that treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less "natural" phenomenon as mere 'sexual preference,' or as the mirror image of either heterosexual or male homosexual relations, is profoundly weakened thereby, whatever its other contributions. Feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration of "lesbianism" as an "alternative life-style," or make token allusion to lesbians." (Rich, 1980)

She states how heterosexuality is the default norm in patriarchal culture: "The bias of compulsory heterosexuality, through which lesbian experience is perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorrent, or simply rendered invisible." (Rich, 1980) Heterosexuality is never regarded as a choice; it is regarded as innate. The lesbian experience is not acknowledged enough in culture; it is in fact intentionally destroyed, as is the history of women in general. When it comes to sexuality and words such as preference, orientation, lifestyle, and choice, it is reference to lesbians and not heterosexual women.

Sexuality within capitalism is compulsory and gives men an astronomical advantage in society. Capitalism engages that which is primal and uncontrollable about humanity, narrows the scope of that experience, and makes it compulsory.

"Yet the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness. To take the step of questioning heterosexuality as a 'preference' or 'choice' for women and to do the intellectual and emotional work that follows will call for a special quality of courage in heterosexually identified feminists but I think the rewards will be great: a freeing-up of thinking, the exploring of new paths, the shattering of another great silence, new clarity in personal relationships." (Rich, 1980)

Challenging social and political convention will be arduous, yet the reward to free women particularly from the ever-present restraints of male prescribed female sexuality in capitalism would be epic. The world would exist in a world of equality and freely expressed sexuality in all forms: "The extension of this assumption is the frequently heard assertion that in a world of genuine equality, where men were nonoppressive and nurturing, everyone would be bisexual." (Rich, 1980)

A portion of the content of "Compulsory Sexuality" is the list of the eight powers men have over women. Rules 1, 2, & 6 speak to the control men have over women's sexuality, bodies, and cultural representations in public spheres and in the private realms. Rich further contends that many of these powers men have over women are played out in the workplace. The workplace, for women, is an institution wherein they can be psychically or physically violated and preyed upon at any time. She urges readers to understand that the magnitude of the use of women in transactions and the number of men involved in such transactions is an international emergency. "Compulsory Sexuality" then is concerned with pervasive institutional violence against women, the freedom and declaration of the female experience, and it is about the livelihood of not only lesbians, but also all women.

Rich claims that lesbianism and feminism are not primarily concerned with sex, but rather, they are expressions of resistance against patriarchy and a declaration of existence:

"Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women. But it is more than these, although we may first begin to perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act of resistance. It has of course included role playing, self-hatred, breakdown, alcoholism, suicide, and intrawoman violence; we romanticize at our peril what it means to love and act against the grain, and under heavy penalties; and lesbian existence has been lived (unlike, say, Jewish or Catholic existence) without access to any knowledge of a tradition, a continuity, a social underpinning. The destruction of records and memorabilia and letters documenting the realities of lesbian existence must be taken very seriously as a means of keeping heterosexuality compulsory for women, since what has been kept from our knowledge is joy, sensuality, courage, and community, as well as guilt, self-betrayal, and pain." (Rich, 1980)