Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Experience”

Discuss “compulsory heterosexuality” and “lesbian continuum”
In what ways can literature and culture play important roles in overcoming the tradition of compulsory heterosexuality?


Compulsory heterosexuality, according to Rich in her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Experience,” is a term for the society-based notion that only a man can satisfy a woman. Such concept denies a lesbian woman of her own sexuality and comfort in exploring her body and her partner’s. She claims that compulsory heterosexuality produces such myths as that of the vaginal orgasm that serves to imply that only a man can sexually satisfy a woman (by delivering a vaginal orgasm). Hence this serves to prevent a woman from having a relationship with other woman.
Rich claims that a woman may not have a preference toward heterosexuality (that is to look for a man to satisfy her), but she may find it imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by the society. Everyday, a woman is either consciously or unconsciously promoted with heteronormativity (heterosexuality as normal activity) in the form of concepts and norms perpetuated by the society. These concepts have been accepted because of the historical lack of exposure that lesbians are either stigmatized or non-existent. In fact, Rich objects to the term “lesbianism” (because she sees it as a stigmatized term). Instead, she advocates at least two terms: (1) “lesbian existence” for the historical and contemporary presence of lesbian creation, and (2) “lesbian continuum” to include the entire range of a woman-identified experience (the lesbian existence among women). She feels that new understanding and language must be created to counter the limited and biased terms that society has historically used to describe a woman with a relationship to another woman. She claims that once a woman sees lesbian existence more than mere sexuality (sexual activity), it is likely to happen that relationships between and among women will be embraced and accepted by the society.
Furthermore, Rich writes that lesbians have been deprived of their right of personal and political history. When included in history, they have been simply described as the female versions of male homosexuals, with no distinctiveness. (At certain points in history, homosexual men and lesbians have shared a social existence, and acknowledged a common fight against society.) Rich, however, writes that to treat the lesbian experience as a version of male homosexuality is to discard it: denying the female experience and the realities it brings and falsifying lesbian history.
The role then of literature and culture in overcoming compulsory heterosexuality is to make the society (both men and women) recognize and accept lesbian experience—the lesbian existence and lesbian continuum. The society has to realize that women are suffering from the patriarchy (the male right and dominance to women). Role-playing, self-hatred, breakdown, suicide, and “intrawoman violence”—these are just some of the sufferings women experience from rejecting compulsory heterosexuality. May literature and culture do the change for change always comes bearing gifts.