Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”

Posted: Mon, May 5, 2025

Compulsory heterosexuality: Heterosexuality is actively imposed and enforced.

Contrasts both with thinking of heterosexuality as “born this way” and with heterosexuality as a “preference” or “choice.”
What are some ways in which society tries to steer people away from homosexuality toward heterosexuality?
Compare notes with Rich, pp. 638–39. What surprises you?

Rich’s Skeptical Argument

The issue: if so much effort and so many carrots and stick are needed to make our society heterosexual, this seems to imply that heterosexuality is not natural (which is why homosexuality needs to be so carefully guarded against).

This turns the table: to Rich, the interesting question is not why queer people are queer but why straight people are straight.
And the answer is precisely the social pressures against homosexuality: your survival depends on it, and this helps to keep the social relations between the sexes in place.

Rich notes that there is an important difference between lesbian and gay male homosexuality here: the compulsory heterosexuality of women is a crucial mechanism of women’s oppression in a way that the compulsory heterosexuality of men is not.

Lesbian homosexuality is particularly threatening to patriarchy in a way that gay male homosexuality is not (e.g., pederasty can be socially acknowledged and even tolerated).
Lesbians are economically, socially, and politically disadvantaged relative to gay men, which makes heterosexuality even more compulsory for lesbians.
Lesbian homosexuality is more focused on the erotic and social relations than the sexual and body parts. [how true is this?]

For Rich, “when we look hard and clearly at the extent and elaboration of measures designed to keep women within a male sexual purlieu it becomes an inescapable question whether the issue we have to address as feminists is, not simple ‘gender inequality,’ nor the domination of culture by males, nor mere ‘taboos against homosexuality,’ but the enforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male right of physical, economical, and emotional access.”

Compulsory heterosexuality (in particular, lesbian erasure and conversion) is a mechanism of patriarchy; misogyny and homophobia are not two separate issues.

Heterosexuality as a political institution: Rich argues that heterosexuality should therefore be studied as a political institution rather than a biological inclination or an individual choice.

Political institutions: the Presidency, the party system, etc.
Some analogous examples: study of work vs. study of capitalism; study of race vs. study of racism

The Idea of a Lesbian Continuum

“I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range—through each woman’s life and throughout history—of woman-identified experience, not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman.” (p. 648)

Covers “many more forms of primary intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support,” etc.
Not an issue of sexual identity: one can be on the lesbian continuum without identifying as a lesbian.
Not an issue of sexual orientation: one can be on the lesbian continuum without being sexually/romantically/etc. attracted to women.
What matters is identification with women.

The idea of a lesbian continuum is supposed to do important theoretical and political work for Rich:

It helps to make sense of lesbians on lesbians’ own terms, rather than as understood by patriarchy: e.g., lesbians are lesbians for loving women (woman-identification) rather than hating men.
It helps to build solidarity among women: lesbian/feminist is one.

Some lingering issues:

It’s highly risky to run together political love and sexual/romantic love.
Lesbians can be abusive, violent, exploitative, manipulative, etc. too.
Are we all lesbians?? Do we really want to say that?