Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

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"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," written in 1980, is an essay published in Adrienne Rich's 1986 book Blood, Bread, and Poetry. In it, Rich argues that heterosexuality is a violent political institution making way for the "male right of physical, economical, and emotional access" to women. In the essay, women are urged to direct their energies toward other women rather than men, and lesbianism is portrayed as an extension of feminism. Rich challenges notions of women's dependence on men as social and economic supports, as well as for adult sexuality and psychological completion. Rich calls for a greater understanding of lesbian experience and believes that once these boundaries are widened, women will be able to experience the "erotic" in female terms.

Rich brings attention to the fact that women may not have a preference toward heterosexuality, but may find it imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by society. She holds that women receive messages every day that promote heterosexual normativity in the form of myths and norms perpetuated by society. Rich argues that these myths have found a place in history because of the lack of exposure that lesbians have experienced, becoming categorized as diseased or non-existent. Rich creates woman-identified language to replace the stigmatized and clinical term "lesbianism": "lesbian experience" for the historical and contemporary presence of lesbian creation and "lesbian continuum" to include the entire range of a woman-identified experience. New understanding and language must be created to counter the limited and clinical terms that society has historically used to describe those it views "deviant". Rich claims that once women experience visibility of lesbian existence apart from their sexuality, it is more likely that more forms of "primary intensity" between and among women will be embraced.

Rich names part of the lesbian experience as being an act of resistance, a rejection of the patriarchy and male right to women. She does not, however, deny the existence of "role-playing, self-hatred, breakdown, suicide, and 'intrawoman violence'", all of which have been caused by the realities of rejecting compulsory heterosexuality. Rich writes that lesbians have been denied a continuity of their personal and political history, and when included in history, have been the female versions of male homosexuality, which totally rejects any sense of distinctiveness. In moments of history, homosexual men and lesbians have shared a social existence and acknowledge a common fight against society. But Rich writes that discarding the lesbian experience as a form of male homosexuality is to deny the female experience and the realities it brings; it falsifies lesbian history.

Rich holds that compulsory heterosexuality denies women of their own sexuality and comfortability in exploring their bodies and those of others. She claims that compulsory heterosexuality imposes myths like that of the vaginal orgasm, which Anne Koedt also writes about in her essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". In it Koedt writes. "[f]rigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms...I think this explains a great many things: first of all, the fact that the so-called frigidity rate among women is phenomenally high. Rather than tracing female frigidity to the false assumptions about female anatomy, our "experts" have declared frigidity a psychological problem of women". If women want to be sexually satisfied, so implies the myth, then only a man will be able to deliver the vaginal orgasm, and therefore, satisfy. This myth is one of many that society imposes to subversively prevent women from having relationships with other women.

[edit] References

• Kafer, Alison. "Compulsory Bodies: Reflections on Heterosexuality and Able-Bodiedness". Journal of Women's History. Bloomington: Autumn 2003. Vol. 15, Iss. 3; Pg 77.
• Koedt, Anne. "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". Feminist Theory Reader. Eds: McCann and Seung-Kyung. Routledge: New York 2003.
• Rich, Adrienne. "Compulsory heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" Blood, Bread, and Poetry. Norton Paperback: New York 1994.

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (Online Viewing) http://www.terry.uga.edu/~dawndba/4500compulsoryhet.htm