1’

POWERS
OF DESIRE
The Politics of Sexuality -

Edited by Ann Snitow,

Christine Stansell, and
Sharon Thompson

Monthly Review Press

New York
 Compulsory Heterosexuality
and Lesbian Existence
Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich s essay constitutes a powerful challenge to some of

our least examined sexual assumptions Rich turns all the familiar
arguments on their heads: if the first erotic bond is to the mother she
asks, could not the “natural” sexual orientation of both men and
women be toward women
Rich’s radical questioning has been a major intellectual force in the
general feminist reorientation to sexual matters in recent years, and
her conception of a ‘lesbian continuum’ sparked especially intense
debate. Does lesbianism incorporate all support systems and intense
interactions among women, or is it a specfically erotic choice What is
gained and what is lost with the second, narrower definition? Rich’s
assumptions also usefully raise the more general theoretical question:
Is adult sexuality so closely associated with the infant bond that genu
inely satisfying sex relations are likely to bi structured primarily
around nurturance?

I
Biologically men have only one innate on
entation—a sexual one that draws them to
women—while women have two innate on
entations, sexual toward men and reproduc
tive toward their young
I was a woman terribly vulnerable critical,
using femaleness as a sort of standard or
yardstick to measure and discard men
Yes—something like that. I was an Anna
who invited defeat from men without ever
being conscious of it (But I am conscious of
it And bemg conscious of it means I shall
leave it all behind me and become—but
what?) I was stuck fast in an emotion com

177
1 8 Adrwnne R ch
moo to women of our time, that an turn
them bitter, or Lesbian, om solita v Yes,
that Anna during that time was
[Another blank line across the pag’ j2
e bias of conipulsomy hetemosexuality, through which lesbian experi
nce is perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorr nt or
simply rendered invisible, could he illustiated from many oth r texts
than the two just preceding. The assumption made by Rossi, that
women are “innately sexually oriented” toward men, or b I essing,
that the lesbian choice is simply an acting-out of bitterness toward
m n, ass by no means theirs alone; they are widely current ii litera
ture and in the social sciences.
I am concerned here with two other matters as well: first, how and
why women’s choice of women as passionate comrades, life partners,
co-workers’, lovers tribe, has been crushed, invalidated, foived into
hiding and disguise; and second, the virtual or total neglect of lesbian
existence in a wide range of writings, including feminist scho’arship.
Oh iously there is a connection here. I believe that much feminist
theory and criticism is stranded on this shoal.
My organizing impulse is the belief that it is not enough for f”inniist
thought that specifically lesbian texts exist, Any theory oi cultural/
political creation that treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less
‘natural” phenomenon, as mere ‘sexual preference,” or as thc mirror
image of either heterosexual or male homosexual relations is pro
foundly weakenc d thereby, whatever its other contributions. F eminist
thic ory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration of “lesl ianisrn’
“
as an “alternative life-style or make token allusion to lesbians. A
fi’ nirnst critique of compulsory heterosezual orientation for vv,inen is
lo ig overdue In this exploratory paper, I shall try to show why.
I will begin by way of examples, briefly discussing four hooks that
have appeared in the last few yeams, written from different viewpoints
and political orientations, but all presenting themselves, and favorably
reviewed, as feminist. All take as a basic assumption that the social
relations of the sexes are disordered and extremely problematic, if not
disabling, for women; all seek paths toward change. I have learned
nore from some of these hooks than from others; but on this I am clear.
e meh one might have been more accurate, more powerful, more truly a
fMce for change, had the authoi felt impelled to deal with lesbian
eistence as a reality, and as a source of knowledge and power available
to women; or with the institution of heterosexuality itself as a beach
4 In none of theni is the question ever raised,
head of male dominance.
whether in a different context, or other things being equal, women
would choose heterosexual coupling and marriage; heterosexuality is
piesumed as a “sexual preference” of “most women,” either implicitly
Compulsory Heteros’eruahty / 179
or explicitly. In none of these books, which concern themselves with
mothering, sex roles, relationships, and societal prescriptions for
women, is compulsory heterosexuality ever examined as an institution
powerfully affecting all these; or the idea of “preference” or “innate
orientation” even indirectly questioned.
In For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts Advice to Women
by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, the authors’ superb
pamphlets, Witches, Midwives and Nurses’ A History of Women
Healers, and Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of
Sickness, are developed into a provocative and complex study. ‘Iheir
thesis in this hook is that the advice given American women by male
health professionals, particularly in the areas of marital sex, maternity
and child care, has echoed the dictates of the economic marketplace
and the role capitalism has needed women to play in production and/
or reproduction. Women have become the consumer victims of various
cures therapies, and normative judgments in different periods (includ
ing the prescription to middle-class women to embody and preserve
the sacredness of the home—the “scientific” romanticization of the
home itself). None of the “experts’” advice has been either particularly
scientific or women-oriented, it has reflected male needs, male fan
tasies about women, and male interest in controlling women—
particularly in the realms of sexuality and motherhood—fused with the
requirements of industrial capitalism. So much of this hook is so devas
tatingly informative and is written with such lucid feminist wit that I
kept waiting as I read for the basic prescription against lesbianism to be
examined. It never was.
This can hardly he for lack of information. Jonathan Katz’s Gay
5 tells us that as early as 1656 the New Haven Colony
American history
prescribed time death penalty for lesbians. Katz provides many sugges
tive and informative documemmts on the “treatment” (or torture) of les
bians by the medical profession in the nineteenth amid twentieth
centuries Recent work by the historian Nancy Sahh documents the
crackdown on intense female friendships amommg college women at the
6 The ironic title For Her Own Good might
turn of the present century.
have referred first and foremost to the economic imperative to hetero
sexuality and marriage and to the sanctions imposed against single
women and widows—both of whom have been and still are viewed as
deviant. Yet, in this often enlightening Marxist-feminist overview of
male prescriptions for female sanity and health, the economics of pre
scriptive heterosexuality go unexaminedf
Of the three psychoanalytically based hooks, one Jean Baker Mil
ler’s Toward a New Psychology of Women, is written as if lesbians
simply do not exist, even as marginal beings. Given Miller’s title I find
this astonishing. However, the favorable reviews time hook has received
in feminist journals, including Signs and Spokeswoman, suggest that
ISO Adrienne Rich
Miller’s hetc wentrie assumptions are widely shared, In The .fennaid
and the Mirn taur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise,
Dorothy I) nnerstem makes an impassioned argument for the sharing
of parentinc between women and men and for an end to what she
perc eives as thc male/female symbiosis of “genclei arrangements,”
which she feels ai e leading the species further and further into vio
lence and self—extinction Apart from other probiems that I ha’,e with
this book (including her silence on the institutional and random terror—
is m ineii have practiced on worn en—and children—throughout his—
.
tory, amply documented by Barr\ Daly, Griffin. Russell and van de
Ven, and Brownmiller,’ and her obsession with ps chologv to the ne
glect of economic and other material realities that help to create psv—
c’hological iealitv(, I find utterly abistorical Dinnerstein’s view of the
relations between women and men as “a collaboration to keep history
mad.” She means by this, to perpetuate social relations that are hostile,
exploitative and destructive to life itself. She sees women and men as
‘
equal partners in the making of “sexual arrangements, seemingly un—
ciware of the repeated struggles of women to resist oppression (our own
and that I others) and to change our condition. She ignores,
pee ificalh the history of women who—as witches, femincs seules,
marriage r sisters, spinsters, autonomous widows, and / or lesbians—
have managed on varying levels not to collaborate. It is this history,
precisely, f om which feminists have so much to learn arid on which
there is overall such hlanketmg silence. Dinnerstein acknowledges at
the end of her book that “female separatism,’ though “not on a large
scale and in the boa run wildly impractical,” has something to teach
us: “Separate. women could in principle set out to learn fi’om scratch—
uncleflected by the opportunities to evade this task that men’s presence
has so for offered—what intact self—creative humanness is.” Phrases
like “intact self-creative humanness” obscure the question of what the
many forms of female separatism have actually been addressing, The
fact is that women in every culture and throughout history have under—
taken the task of independent nonheterosexual, woman-connected
existence, to the extent made possible liv their c’ontext, often in the
belief’ that they were the “only ones” ever to have done so. They have
undertaken it even though few women have been in an economic
position to resist marriage altogether; and even though attacks against
unmarried women have ranged from aspersion and mockery to deliber
ate g nocide, including the burning and torturing of millions of widows
and spinsters during the witch persecutions of the fifteenth, sixteenth.
and seventeenth centuries in Europe, and the practice of’ suttee on
widon s in India.
\ancv (/hodorow does come close to the edge ofan acknowledgment
of lesbian existence, Like Dinnerstein. Chodorow believes that the fact
that women, and women only, are responsible for child care in the
Coin pulsorii Heterosexualitij / 181
sexual division of labor has led to an entire social organization of gender
inequality, and that men as well as women must become primary
carers for children if that inequality is to change. In the process of
examining, from a psychoanalytic perspective, how mothering-by-
women affects the psychological development of girl and boy children,
she offers documentation that inen are “emotionally secondary” in
women’s lives: that “women have a richer, ongoing inner world to fall
back on. . . .
men do not become as emotionally important to women as
women do to rnen.”’ This would carry into the late twentieth century
Smith-Rosenberg’s findings about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
women’s emotional focus on women, “Emotionally important” can of
course refer to anger as well as to love, or to that intense mixture of the
two often found in women’s relationships with women: one aspect of
what I have come to call the “double-life of women (see below).
Chodorow concludes that because women have women as mothers,
“The mother remains a primary internal object [sici to the girl, so that
heterosexual relationships are on the model of a nonexclusive, second
relationship for her, whereas for the boy they recreate an exclusive,
primary relationship.” According to Chodorow, women “have learned
to deny the limitations of masculine lovers for both psychological and
practical reasons,”lz
But the practical reasons (like witch burnings; male control of law,
theology, ‘arid science, or economic nonviability within the sexual divi
sion of labor) are glossed over. Choclorow’s account barely glances at
the constraints and sanctions that, historically, have enforced or en
sured the coupling of women with men and obstructed or penalized
our coupling or allying iii independent groups with other women. She
dismisses lesbian existence with the comment that “lesbian relation
ships do tend to re-create mother-daughter emotions and connections,
but most women are heterosexual” limplied: more mature, having ne—
veloped bevoad the mother-daughter connection), She then adds:
“This heterosexual preference and taboos on homosexuality, in addi
tion to objective economic dependence on men, make the option of
primary sexual bonds with other women unlikely—though more pres a-
lent in recent years. “ The significance of that qualification seems
irresistible—but Chodorow does not explore it further, Is she saying
that lesbian existence has become more visible in recent years (in
certain groups?). that economic and other pressures have changed
(under capitalism. socialism, or both ?, and that c’onsequentl’ more
women are rejecting the heterosexual “choice” She argues that
women s’ant children because their heterosexual relationships lack
richness and intensity, that in having a child a woman seeks to re
create her own intense relationship with her mother, It seems to be
that on the basis of her own findings Chodorow leads us implicitly to
conclude that heterosexuality is not a “preference” for women: that, for
182 Adrienne Rich
one thing, it fragments the erotic from the emotional in a way that
women find rnpoverishing and painful. Yet her book paiticipates in
mandating it Neglecting the covert socializations and the overt forces
that have than ieled women into marriage and heterosexual romance,
pressures ranging from the selling of daughters to postindustrial ceo-
ii mics to the sue flees of literature to the images of the television
screen, she, like Dinnerstein, is stuck with trying to refbri i a man
made institution—-compulsory heterosexuality—as if. despite profound
emotional impulses and complementarities drawing women toward
v omen, there is a nes stical! biological heterosexual inclination, a “pref
erence” or “choice” that draws women toward men.
Moreover, it is understood that this “preibrenee’ does not need to
b explained unless through the tortuous theory of th female
Oedipus complex or the necessity for species reproduction. It is les
bian sexuality that (usually, and, incorrectly, “included” ui der male
homosexuality) is seen as requiring explanation. This assumption of
emale heterosexuality seems to me in itself remarkable, it is an enor
nous assumption to have glided so silently into the foundations of our
thought.
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. Such a notion blurs and
sentimentalizes the actualities within which women have experienced
sexuality; it is the old liberal leap across the tasks and struggles of here
and now, the continuing piocess of sexual definition that will generate
ts own possibilities and choices. (It also assumes that women who have
chosen women have done so simply becaus men are oppre ssive and
emotionally unavailable: which still fails to account foi women who
continue to pursue relationships with oppressive and 1 oi’ ersotionally
unsatisfying men.’ I am suggesting that heterosexuality, like mother
hood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution—
even, or especially. bs those individuals who feel they are, in their
personal experience, the precursors of a new social relation between
the sexes.
11
If women are the earliest sources of emotional caring and physical
i urture for both female and male children, it would seem logical, from
a feminist perspective at least. to pose the following questions:
whether the search for love and tenderness in both sexes does not
originally lead toward women: why in fact women u’ould et’er redirect
that search; why species-surxival, the means of impregnation, and
emotional/erotic relationships should ever hae become so rigidly
identified with each other: and why such violent strictures should be
Corn piilsor Ilete vzexiialitij 183
found necessaq, to enfon’e women’s total emotional, erotic by altv and
subservience to nen I doubt that enough feminist scholars anti theo
rists have taken the’ pains to acknowledge the societal forces that
wrench women’s emotional and erotic energies away from themselves
and other women and from woman-identified values. I’hese forces as I
shall tiy to show, range f’m’orn literal physical enslavement to the dis
guising and distorting of possible options.
I do not. myself, assume that mothering—lu —women is a sufficient
cause’ of lesbian existence. But the issue of mothering—bv—womemm has
been much in the air of late, usually accompanied b\ the view that
increased parenting by men would minimize antagonism between the
sexes and equalize the sexual imbalance of power of males os er fe
males. These discussions are carried on without reference to conupul—
sorv heterosexuality as a phenomenon let alone as an ideology I cl ) not
wish to psychologize here, hut rather to identify sources of male
power I believe large numbers of men could, in fact, undertake cluld
care on a large scale without radically altering the balance of male
puwt’r in a male-identified society
In her essay “The Origin of the F’amilv.’ Kathleen Cough lists e’ight
characteristics of male pow’er in archaic and contemporar societies
that I would like to use as a framework: incus ability to deny womc’n
sexuality or to force it upon them: to command or exploit their labor to
control their produce: to control or rob them of their children: to
confine them physically and pres cut their mnos ement; to use tht’nm as
objects in male transactions; to cramp their creativeness; or to withhold
from them large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attain
‘
m’nts ‘ (Cough does not perceive these power-chamacteristics as
specificall enforcing heterosexuality; only as p odueing sexual in
equality. Belou, Cough’s uo’ds appeal in italics the elahoratm’m of
each of her categoric’s, in brac’kets, is my nun,
Characte’ristics of male power include the power of men:
1. to(ICnh/ ue’ornen [our own] sexuality
[by means of clitoridectomy and infibulation: chastit\ belts: pun
ishment, including death. for female adultery: punishment, iii—
eluding death, for lesbian sexuality; psychoanalytic denial of the
clitoris; strictures against niasturbation’ denial of unaternal and
postinenopausal sensuality, unnecessary hysterectonny; pseudo-
lesbian images in media and literature; closing of archives and
destruction of documents relating to lesbian existence]:
2. or to force it [male sexuality] upon them
[by means of m’ape (including marital rape and wife heating;
father-daughter. brother-sister incest: the socialization of women
to feel that male sexual “dris’e” amounts to a right:” idealization of
heterosexual romance in art, literature, media, advertising, and
84 tdru cm H di
so bit i chik mairiage arr inged marriagc rostitut on, the
haicn ychosnalytic loctrii es of frigidity and vaginil orgasm;
porn r p uc depictions of Wi mcii respondmg pleasurab to sex
ral io cut, and humihation (a suhinnniai message Ix rig that
sadisti h tcrosexuality is r iore ‘normal than sensuality )etween
wome
3 to ci me and or (xploit then labor to control their prod u c
[bs rn aus of the nstitutions of marriage s id motlie hood as
unpaid prodmtion, the horizontal segregation of W( m ii in paid
ci pk yment, the decoy of the upwardly mobile t. )ken woman,
isle control of abort on, contraception, and childbirth nborced
eriliiation, pimping, be male mba sticide, which robs mothers of
daughters and contiibutes to generahzed devaluation of women],
I to ontrol or rob them of their children
[by means of fatherright and ‘legal kidnapping’ enforced
ste dization systematized infanticide, seizure of childi en from
lesbia s mothers by the courts, the malpractice of rriale obstetrics;
ise o the mothei as <token torturer” in gi mtai mutilac on or ill
bind ng the daughtcr s feet (or mind) to fit her for marii gil
to coif ici them physically and prwent their movement
[b nieans of rape as teirorismn, keepmg women ofi tin streets,
purdah foothu ding, atrophymg of women s athletic capabilities,
haute coutuie, “fernmine’ dress codcs, the yr i 1
, sexu I harass
inent us the streets, horizontal segregation of women in employ-
mci t, pie scriptions I n ‘full time” mothering, c nforc c d economic
d ‘pende nce of wives]
6 to use them is obje ‘is ii male transactions
< ‘
[us ) women as gifts bride price, pimpmg, ariangcd mar
usc f wonen a cntertamers to fac’m itae mak kals for
1 segregated situation will be literally excised
example wift hostess cocktail waitiess required to Less for
‘ major public issue of our time, when a multihillion-dollar industry has
male sexual titillation call girls bunnies geisha kisar ng pros
titutes secreta ies]
7 to cc map their creativeness
[wmtcl prsec itions as campaigns against r udwives and female
heale ‘s md as pogrom against independent “unassirnilated”
women deft mition of male pursuits as more valuable th<mn female
within a sy culture so that cultural values become embodunent of
male subjectivity, restmiction of female self-fulfillment to marriage
and i iothe rhood sexual exploitation of women by male artists
ace. tachers, the social and ecorionue disruption of women’s
creative aspuations,° erasure of female tradition] ° and
8, to withhold from them large areas of the society s knowledge and
cultural attainments
[by means of noneducatiori of females (60 percent of ft e world’s
illiterates are women), the ‘Great Silence regarding women and
Compulsory lie eroseruality 185
particulaily lesbian existence in history and cultuie six- cli
stcmeotyping that deflects women from science technology, and
‘
other ‘masculine pursuits male social piofessional bonding ii at
excludes women, cliscruninatmon against wo ssen in the profes
smons]
These are some of the methods by which male powc is manift st ‘d
and maintained, Looking at the schema, what surely impresses itself is
the fact that we are confronting not a simple mnaimitenance of inequality
and property possession, but a pervasive clustcm of fbrces ranging from
physical brutahty to control of consciousness, that suggests that an
enormous potential counterforce is having to hi mestrained.
Some of the forms by which male power manifests itself arc more
easily recognizable as enforcing heterosexuality on women than am
others. Yet each one I have listed adds to the duster of forces within
which wonsen have been convinced that marriage amid sexual orienta
tion toward men are inevitable, even if unsatisfying or oppressive corn
ponents of their lives The chastity belt, child marriage, erasure of
lesbian existence (except as exotic and perverse) in art, literature, film
idealization of heterosexual romance amid mnairiage—these are sonic
fairly obvious forms of compulsion, the first two exemplifying physical
force, the second two control of consciousness Wlule clitoridectomy
22 Kathleen
has been assailed by feminists as a form of woman-torture,
Barry first pointed out that it is not simply a way of’ turning the young
girl into a “marriageable” woman through hr ital surgery, it intends
that women in the intunate pmoximity of polygynous marriage will not
form sexual relationships with each other, that—from a male, genital
-
fetishist perspective female erotic connections, even in a sex
The function of pornography as an influence on consciousness is a
the power to disseminate increasingly sadistic, women-degrading vi
sual images. But even so-called soft-core pomnograph) and advertising
depict women as objects of sexual appetite devoid of emotional comm
text, without individual meaning or personality, essentially as a sexual
commodity to be consumed by males. (So-called lesbian pornogmaphy,
created for the male voyeuristic eye, is equally devoid of emotional
context or individual persomiality.) The most pernicious message re
layed by pornography is that women are natural sexual prey to men
and love it. that sexuality and violence are congruent. and that for
women sex is essentially masochistic, humiliation pleasurable, physical
abuse erotic. But along with this message comes another, not always
recognized: that enforced submission and the use of cruelty, if played
out in heterosexual pairing, is sexually “normal,’ while sensuality be
tween women, including erotic mutuality and respect, is “queer,’
 86 Adrienne Rich
‘sick,” and either pornographic in itself or not very exciting compared
24 Pornography does not sim
with the sexuality of whips and bondage
ply create a climate in which sex and violence are interchangeable; it
widens the range of behavior considered acceptable from rn n in het
erosexual mtercourse—behavior that reiteratively strips women of
heir autonomy. dignity. and sexual potential. including the potential
of loving and being loved by women in mutuality and integrity.
In her brilliant study Sexual Harassment of Working Women. A Case
of Sex Discrimination. Catharme A. MacKinnon delineates the inter
section of c’ompulsor heterosexuality and economic’s. Under capital
ism. women are horizontally segregated b’ gender and occupy a
structurally inferior position in the workplace; this is hardh news. but
MacKinnon raises the question why, even if capitalism “requires some
collection of individuals to occupy low-status, low-paving positions
such persons must be biologically female,” and goes on to point out
that “the fact that male employers often do not hire qualified women,
even when they could pay them less than men suggests that more than
the profit motive is implicated” emphasis addecl).2 She cites a wealth
of material documenting the fact that women are not only sei egated in
low—paving service jobs as secretaries, domestics, nurses, typists, tele
phone operators. child-care workers, waitresses) hut that “sexualiza
tion of the woman is part of the job. Central and intrinsic to the
economic realities of women’s lives is the requirement that women will
‘market sexual attractiveness to men, who tend to hold the conomic
“
power and position to enforce their predilections And MicKinnon
exhaustively documents that “sexual harassment perpetuates the inter
locked structure by which women have been kept sexually in thrall to
men at the bottom of the labor market. Two forces of American society
onverge, men’s control over women’s sexuality and capital s control
“
over employees’ work lives, Thus, women in the workplace are at the
mercy of sex-as-po\ver in a vicious circle. Economically disadvantaged,
women—whether waitresses or professors—endure sexual harassment
to keep their jobs and learn to behave in a complaisamith and ingratiat
ingl heterosexual manner because they discover this is th&r true
qualification for employment, whatever the job description. And. Mae
Kinnon notes, the woman who too decisively resists sexual overtures in
the workplace is accused of being “dried-up” and sexless, or lesbian.
This raises a specific difference between the experiences of lesbians
and homosexual men. A lesbian, closeted on her job because of
heterosexist prejudice. is not simply forced into denying the truth of
her outside relationships or private life: her job depends on her pre
tending to be not merely heterosexual but a heterosexual woman, in
terms of dressing and playing the feminine, deferential role required of
“real” women.
MacKinnon raises radical questions as to the qualitative differences
Corn pulsoni Heterosexuality 187
between sexual harassment, rape, and ordinary hterosexual inter
course. (“As one accused rapist put it, he hadn’t used ‘any more forc
than is usual for males during the preliminaries.’ “) She criticizes Susan
Brownmiller2 for separating rape from the mainstream of daily Mc and
for her unexamined premise that “rape is violence, intercourse is sexu
ality,” removing rape from the sexual sphere altogether Most crucially
she argues that “taking rape from the realm of ‘the sexual, placing it in
the realm of ‘the violent.’ allows one to be against it without raising any
questions about the extent to which the institution of heterosexuality
has defined force as a normal part of ‘the preliminaries.’ “24 Never is it
asked whether. under conditions of male supremacy, the notion of
‘consent’ has any meaning.
The fact is that the workplace. among other social institutions, is a
-
place where women have learned to accept male violation of our ps
chic and physical boundaries as the price of survis al; where women
have been educated—no less than by romantic literature or by pornog
raphy—’—to perceive ourseh es as sexual prey. A woman sec’king to es
cape such casual violations along with economic disadvantage may well
turn to marriage as a form of hoped—for protection. while bringing into
marriage neither social nor economic power. thus entering that institu
tion also from a disadvantaged position. MacKinnon finally asks’
What if inequality is built into the social conceptions of male and
female sexuality, of masculinity and femininity, of sexiness and
heterosexual attractiveness? Incidents of sexual harassment sug
gest that male sexual desire itself may he aroused1 by female vul
nerability Men feel they can take advantage so they want to,
so they do. Examination of sexual harassment, precisely because
the episodes appear commonplace, forces one to confront the fact
that sexual intercourse nornially occurs between euonomic (as well
as physical) unequals , . .
the apparent legal requirement that
violations of womens sexuality appear out of the ordinary before
they will he punished helps prevent women from defining the
ordinary conditions of their own consent.
Given the nature and extent of heterosexual pressures. the daily
“
“eroticization of ‘omens sul)ordination as NiacKinnon phrases it.
question the more or less psychoanalytic perspective (suggested b’
such writers as Karen homey, H. R. l-layes. \Volfgang Lederer. and
most recently. Dorothy Dinnerstein) that the male need to control
women sexually results from some primal male “fear of women” and of
wommien’s sexual insatiability. It seems more probable that men really
fear. not that they will have women’s sexual appetites forced on them,
or that women want to smother and devour them. but that women
could be indifferent to them altogether. that men could be allowed
sexual and emotional—therefore economic—access to women only on
women’s terms, otherwise being left on the periphery of the matrix,
138 Adrienne Rich
The means of assuring male sexual access to women have recently
32
received a searching ins estigation by Kathleen Barry She d cuments
extensive snd appalling evidence for the existence, on a very large
scale, of international female slavery the institution once known as
“white slaveiv hut that in fact has involved, and at this very moment
involves, w men of every race and class. In the theoretic 1 analysis
derived from her research, Barry makes the connection between all
e iforced conditions under which women live subject to irien prostitu
tion marital ripe, father-daughter and brother-sister inc st, wife-
beating, pornography bride-price, the selling of daughteis purdah,
and gemtal mutilation. She sees the rape paradigm—where he victim
)1 sexual assault is held responsible for her own victimization as lead
ing to the rationalization and acceptance of other forms of enslavement,
where the woman is presumed to have “chosen’ her fate, to embrace it
passively, or to have courted it perversely through rash oi unchaste
behavior. On the contraiy, Barry maintains “female sexual slavery is
present in ALL situations where women or girls cannot c ‘ange the
conditions of their existence; where regardless of how they got into
those conditions, e.g., social pressure, economic hardship, nmisplacecl
trust or thc longing for affection, the cannot get out and where they
a ‘c subject to sexuil violence and exploitation.” She provides a spec
t urn of cone rcte examples, not only as to the existence of a widespread
international traffic in women, but also as to how this e perates—
whethei ii the form of a ‘Minnesota pipeline” funneling blonde, blue
, emotion may be largely a Western concept; but a moi’e universal ideol
eyed midwestern runaways to Times Squam e or the purchasing of
young women out of rural poveity in Latin America or Southe’ast Asia,
or the providing of maisons d’abattage fdr migrant work ‘i’s in the
eighteenth an ondissement of Paris Instead of “blaming the victim” or
trying to liagnose her presumed pathology, Briny turns lien floodlight
on the pathology f’ sex coloniiation itself, the ideology of “cultural
sadism” represented by the vast industry of’ pornography and by the
overall identification of women primarily as “sexual beings whose re
sponsibility is the sexual service of mcii
Barry delineates what she names a “sexual domination perspective”
through whose lens, purporting objectivity, sexual abuse and terrorism
of women by men has been rendered almost invisible by treating it as
natural and inevitable. From its point of view, women are expendable
as long as the sexual arid emotional needs of the male can be satisfied.
I o replace this perspe c’tive of domination with a universal standard of
basic frnedom for women from gender specific violence, from con
straints on movement, and from male right of sexual and emotional
‘recess is the political purpose of her book. Like’ Mary Daly in Gyni
Ecology, Ban y rejects structurahst and other cultum al-relativist
iationalizations for sexual torture arid anti-woman violence. In her
opening chapter, she asks of her readers that they refuse all handy
Compulsory Iletero.sexuality / 189
escapes into ignorance and denial, “The only way we can come out of
hiding, break through our paralyzing defenses, is to know it all—the
full extent of sexual violence and domination of women. , , .
In know
ing, in facing directly, we can learn to chart our course out of this
oppression, by envisioning and creating a world which will preclude
female sexual slaverv,”
“Until we name the practice, give conceptual definition and form to
it, illustrate its life over time and in space, those who are its most
obvious victims will also not be able to name it or define their experi
36
ence.”
But women are all, in different ways and to different degrees, its
victims’ and part of the problem with naming and conceptualizing
female sexual slavery is, as Barry clearly sees, compulsory heterosex
uality. Compulsory heterosexuality simplifies the task of the procurer
and pimp in worldwide prostitution rings and “eros centers,” while, in
the privacy of the home, it leads the daughter to “accept” incest/rape
by her father, the mother to deny that it is happening, the battered
wife to stay on with an abusive husband. “Befriending or love” is a
major tactic of the procurer whose job it is to turn the runaway or the
confused young girl over to the pimp for seasoning. The ideology of
heterosexual romance, beamed at her from childhood out of fairy tales,
television, films, advertising, popular songs, wedding pageantry, is a
tool ready to the procurer’s hand and one he does not hesitate to use,
as Barry amply documents. Early female indoctrination in “love” as an
ogy concerns the primacy and uncontrollability of the male sexual
drive, This is one of many insights offered by Barry’s work;
As sexual power is learned by adolescent boys through the social
experience of their sex drive, so do girls learn that the locus of
sexual power is male. Given the importance placed on the male
sex drive in the socialization of girls as well as boys, early adoles
cence is probably the first significant phase of male identification
in a girl’s life and development.,.. As a young girl becomes
aware of her own increasing sexual feelings , , ,
she turns away
from her heretofore primary relationships with girlfriends. As
they become secondary to her, recede in importance in her life,
her own identity also assumes a secondary role and she grows into
male identification.
We still need to ask why some women never even temporarily,
“turn away from heretofore primary relationships” with other females,
And why does male-identification—the casting of one’s social, political,
and intellectual allegiances with men—exist among lifelong sexual les
bians? Barry’s hypothesis throws us among new questions, but it
clarifies the diversity of forms in which compulsory heterosexuality
presents itself, In the mystique of the overpowering, all-conquering

190 / AdrieHue Rich
male sex drive the penis-with-a-life-of-its-own, is rooted t ic law of
male sex-right to women, which justifies prostitution as a universal
cultural a sumtion on the one hand, while defending sexual slavery
within the family on the basis of “family privacy and cultural
uniqueness on the other The adolescent male sex drive, which, as
ooth young women and men are taught. once triggered c nnnt take
responsibility fbr itself or take no for an answer. becomes. acording to
Barry, the norm and rationale for adult male sexual behavior: a condi
tion of arrested sexual deuelopment Women learn to accept as natural
the inevitabilit} of this “drive’ because we receive it as dogma. Hence
marital rape. hence the Japanese wife resignedly packing her hus
band’s suitcase for his weekend in the kisaeng brothels of Taiwan,
hence the psychological as well as economic imbalance of )ower be
tween husband and wife, male employer and female worker, father and
daughter male professor and female student.
Ihe effect of male-identification means
internalizing the values of the colonizer and activeb parti ‘ipating
in carrying out the colonization of one’s self and ones sex
Male identification is the act whereby women place men above
women. including themselves, in credibility, status. and impor
tance in most situations. regardless of the comparative quality the
women may bring to the situation Interaction with women is
seen as a lesser form of relating on every ievel.’
What deserves further exploration is the double-think many women
engage in and from which no woman is permanently and utterly free:
however wornau-to woman relationships female support networks, a
female arid feminist value system, are relied on and cherished, indoc
trination w mJe credibility and status can still c’reate synapses in
thought. denials of feeling, wishful thinking, a profound sexual and
intellectual confusion. I quote here from a letter I receis ed the clay I
was writing this passage: “I have had very bad relationships with
men—I am now in the midst of a s’err’ painful separation. I am trying to
find my strength through women—without my friends. I could not
survive,” How many times a day do women speak words like these, or
thmk them or write them, and how often does the synapse reassert
itself?
Barry summarizes her findings’
Considering the arrested sexual development that is understood
to be normal in the male population. and considering the numbers
of men who are pimps, procurers. members of slavery gangs,
corrupt officials participating in this traffic’, mvners. operators.
employees of brothels and lodging and entertainment facilities,
pornography purveyors, associated with prostitution, wife
beaters, child molesters. incest perpetrators, johns (tricks) and
rapists. one cannot but be momentarily stunned by the enormous
Conini1.sori IIeteVSexll(llitiJ 191
.
male population engaging in female sexual slaverr The huge
number of men engaged in these practices should he cause for’
declaration of an international eniergenc.r a ciisis in sexual vio
lence. But what should be cause for alar n is instead accpted as
normal sexual intercourse. ‘
Susan Caviri, in her rich and provocative, if highly speculative. cm
sertation, suggests that patriarchy becomes possible when the original
female band, which includes children but elects adolescent males.
becomes invaded and outnumbered b males: that not patriarchal mar
riage, but the rape of the mother liv the sore becomes the first act of
male domination. The entering wedge. or les erage, that allows this to
happen is not just a simple change in sex ratios it is also the mother-
child bond. manipulated by adolescent males in order to remain within
the matrix past the age of exclusion. Maternal affection is used to
establish male right of sexual access, which, however must ever after
he held by force (or through control of consciousness) since the oiiginal
-
deep adult bonding is that of woman for woman. I find this hypothesis
extremely suggestive, since one form of false consciousness that serves
compulsory heterosexuality is the maintenance of a mother—son rela
tionship between women and men, including the demand that women
provide maternal solace. nonjudgmental nurturing, and compassion ior
their harassers. rapists. and batterers (as well as for men who passix ek
vampirize them:. How many strong and assertive women accept malt’
posturing from no one but their sons?
But shatever its origins, when we look hard arid clearly at the extent
and elaboration of measures designed to keep wo nen within a male
sexual purlieu, it becomes an inescapable question whether the issue’
‘
we have to address as fenunists is not simple “gender inecuality, nor
the domination of culture b’ males nor mere ‘taboos against homosex
uality,” but the enforcement of heterosexualit fer ss omen as a means
of assuring male right of physical. economical. and emotional access.
One of mam means of enforcement is. of’ course, the rendering invis
ible of the lesbian possibility, an engulfed continent that rises fragmen
tedlv to view from time to time only to become submerged again.
Feminist research and theory that contributes to lesbian in’s rsibilih or
marginality is actually working against the liberation and empower
44
ment of woman as a group.
The assumption that “most women are innately heterosexual’ stands
as a theoretical and political stumbling block for man women. It re
mains a tenable assumption, partly because lesbian existence has bt’eii
written out of history or catalogued under disease partly because it has
been treated as exceptional rather than intrinsic, partlr because to
acknowledge that for women heterosexuality may not be a “preference”
at all but something that has had to he imposed, managed. organized.
propaganclized. and maintained br force is au immense step to take if

192 .fd,’i’n nc Rich
)l ‘onsid ‘i c urseif fix ely nd ‘innateir heterosexual, Y t the fail-
ire to examin h terosexual ty ab an institution is lik fiuhng to admit
that the coiiomic system called capitalism or the caste sstem of rae
isiii is nisintained h a variety of threes. includmg lioth ph\ sical vio
lence ai ci ii c )nscious il ss. To txke the step of questioning
het rosexualits as a ‘pi eferenc e’ or choice for Women— and to (10 the
intellectual and emotional work that fo1lows— -will call for a special
ualitv of ourage n heterosexuallv identified feminists but I think the
r wards will he great, a lice ng—up of thinking the explori ig of new
paths. the shattenng of another great silence, new claritr in personal
relatioi i ships
111
I have chos n to use the terms lesbian existence and lesbian con
tinuum hecause the ss ord lesbianism has a elimeal and hrniting ring.
Lesbian exi.st( nec suggests both the fact of the historical presence of
lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that xistence. I
i ic an the icr ii lesbian ontinuum to include a range—thi ugh each
—
woman’s life’ and throughout history of w’oman—identibed experience;
not simpis the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital
sexual experc nec with another woman. If’ we expand it to embrace
nany u oi e forms of prim sry intensity between and among women,
including the sharing of a i ich mud life, the bonding against male
tr rannv. the giving and receiving of practical and political support; if
we can a so hear i it such associations as maci loge resistance and the
haggard behas i u identified by Mary Daly çobsolete meanings:
‘intractable, willful,” “wanton,” and “unchaste” “a woman reluc
tant to yield to wooing) ‘—we begin to grasp brcadths 01 female his
ory and psychology that have Ia ii out of reach as a consequence
hmited, mostir clinical, definitions of “leshianisni.
Lesbian existence comprises 1)0th the breaking of a taboo and the
or indirect attack
i ejection of a compulsory way of life, It is also a direct
to women. But it is moie than these, although
m male -ight of access
first begun to perceive it as a form of nov-saving to patriarchy,
we mar
an act of resistance. It has of course included role playing, self—hatred,
hrcakdov mm, alcoholism suicide and mntrawomami violence: we roman
icize at mm’ peril what it means to love and act against the’ grain, and
under heas v penalties; and lesbian existence has been lis ed (unlike,
,
1 ithout access to any knowledge of a
sas Jewish or Catholic existence
radition, a continuity, a social underpinning, The destruction of rec
ords and inc morahilia and lettems documenting the realities of lesbian
existence must be taken very seriously as a means of keeping hetero
sexuality compulsory for women, since what has been kept from our
(mo?ilsori/ [fete cv sexualitq / 193
knowledge is joy. sensuality, courage, and community as well as guilt,
self-betrayal, and pain.
Lesbians have historically been deprived of a political existence
through inclusion as female versions of male homosexoalits To
equate lesbian existence with male homosexuality because each is sti
matized is to deny and erase female reality once aciun To separate
those women stigmatized as homosexual 01 “gar-” from the complex
contmuumn of female resistance to enslavement and attach them to a
male pattern, is to falsify our history, Part of the history of lesbian
existence is, obviouslr-, to be found where lesbians, lacking a coherent
female community, have shared a kind of social life and common cause
with homosexual men. But this has to be’ seen against the differences.
women’s lack of economic and cultui’al privilege relative to men, qual
itative differences in female and male’ relationships. f’or exairuple. the
prevalence of anonymous sex and the justification of pederasty among
male homosexuals, the pronounced ageism in male homosexual stan
dards of sexual attractiveness, and so forth. In defining and describing
lesbian existence I would hope to move toward a dissociation (if lesbian
from male homosexual ‘.alues arid allegiances. I perceive the lesbian
experience as being, like motherhood, a profoundly female experience,
with particular oppressions, meanings, and potentialities we cannot
comprehend as long as we simplr’ bracket it with other sexually’ stig
matized existences, Just as the term parenting serves to conceal the
particular and significant reality of’ being a parent who is actually a
mother, the term gat serves the purpose of blurring the S cry outlines
we need to discern, which are of crucial value for feminism and for the
freedom of women as a group,
As the term lesbian has been held to limiting, clinical associations in
its patriarchal definition, female fi’ienclship and comradeship have
been set apart from the erotic, thus limiting the erotic itself, But as we
of deepen and broaden the range of what we define as lesbian existcne’e,
as we delineate a lesbian continuum, we begin to discover the erotic in
female terms: as that which is unconfined to any single part of the body
or solely’ to the body’ itself, as an energy not only diffuse but, as Audre
Lorde has described it, omnipresent in “the sharing of joy, whether
physical, emotional, psychic.” and in the sharing of work: as the’ em
powering jor’ which “makes us less w’illing to accept powerlessness, or
those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as
resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial “r In
another context, writing of women arid work. 1 quoted the autobio
graphical passage in wliich the poet H, D, described how her friend
Bryher supported her in persisting with the visionary experience that
was to shape her mature work:
I knew that this experience, this writing-on-the-wall bef’ore me,
could not be shared with anyone except the girl who stood so
194 Adnenrie Rich
bravely there beside me. This girl had said without hesitation,
“Go on.’ It was she really who had the detachment and integrity of
the Pyth ness of Delphi. But it was I battered and dissociated
who was seeing the pictures, and who was reading the wi iting or
granted the inner vision. Or perhaps, in some sense, we were
“seeing” ii together. for without her, admittedly, I could not have
gone on
If we consider the possibility that all ‘a omen —from the infant suck—
hug her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic
sensations ‘a hile suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her
mother’s milk-smell in her own, to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s
. or collective survival and resistance, or the work of the writer, the
Chloe and Oh ia, who share a laborators to the woman d ing at
ninet touched and handled b women—exist OH a lesbian con
tinuum. we can see ourse1 es as moving in and out of this continuum,
sshethei we identif ourselves as lesbian or tint. It allows us to connect
aspects of woman-identification as di erse as the impudent. nitimate
girl-friendships of eight- or nine-veai -olds and the banding togethe r of
those women of the twelfth anu fifteenth eentuiics known as Begunius
who ‘shared houses, rented to one another bequeathed houses to
thur room- Tiat s . in cheap subdivided houses in the arti ans area
of town who “practiced Christian virtue on their own dressing and
‘ always, without a theory, has constantly reemerged in every culture
lii ing simply md not associating with men, who earned their livings
as spinners bakers, nurses w ran schools for young gu is, and who
managed—until the Chuich foiced them to disperse—to hs e indepen
(lent both of marriage and of conx entual restrictions It allows us to
connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the
women s school around Sappho of the sc enth centum ( with the
sec ret Sm orities and economic networks reported among African
‘a omen. and with the Chinese marriage i esistance sisterhoods—
communities of ‘a omen who refused marriage, or is ho if mu ned often
refused t consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands—
the only wom r in China who were not footbound and ho, Agnes
Srnedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized
successful women’s strikes in the silk rmlls It allows us to connect and
compare disparate individual instances of mariiage resistance for ex
ample the type of autonomy claimed by I mily Dickinson, a
nineteenth century ‘a bite woman genius, with the sti ategies as ailable
to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dick
inson never married, had tenuous’ intellectual friendships with men,
lii ed self—cons ented in her genteel father’s house. and rote a lifetime
of passionate letters to her sister—in—law Sue Gilbert and a smaller
group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. llurston married
twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her was fi om Florida to
harlem to Columbia Urns ersits to Haiti and finalls back to Florida.
mmcd in and out of white patronage and pos erts. professional success
Corn pulsonj IIetcroscxualiti ! 195
and failure her survival relationships were all with women, beginning
with her mother Both of these women in their vastly different circum
stances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and
selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical.” Both were drawn
to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the
ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.
If we think of heterosexuality as the “natural” emotional and sensual
incimation for women, lives such as these are seen as deviant, as
pathological, or as emotionall and sensuall’ deprived. Or. in more
recent and permissive jargon, the’ are banalized as “lifa-stvles.” And
the work of’ such women—whether merel’ the daily work of individual
activist, the ref’ormer. the anthropologist, or the artist—the work of’
self-creation——is undervalued, or seen as the bitter fruit of “penis
envy,” or the sublimation of repressed eroticism, or the meaningless
rant of a “mnanhater.” But when we turn the lens of vision and consider
the degree to which, arid the methods whereby, heterosexual “prefbr
ence” has actually been imposed on women, not only can we under
stand differently the meaning of individual lives and work, but we can
begin to recognize a central fact of women s history: that women have
always resisted male tyranny. A feminism of action, often, though not
and in every period. We can then begin to study women’s struggle
against powerlessness. w’omens radical rebellion, not just in male-
defined “concrete revolutionary situations’ btit in all the situations
male ideologies have not perceived as revolutionary: for example, the
i’efusal of some women to produce children, aided at great risk b other
women; the refusal to produce a higher standard of living and leisure
for men (Leghorn and Parker show how both are part of sm’omens
unacknowledged. unpaid, and ununionized economic contribution):
that female antiphallic sexuality which, as Andrea l)workin notes. has
been “legendary,” which, defined as “frigidity” and “puritanism,” has
actually been a form of subversion of male power—an ineffectual
rebellion, but , . .
rebellion nonetheless,”ui We can no longer have
patience with Dinnerstein’s view that women have simply collaborated
with men in the “sexual arrangements” of history; we begin to observe
behavior, both in history and in individual biography, that has hitherto
been invisible or misnamed: behavior that often constitutes, given the
limits of the c’ounterforce exerted in a given time and place. radical
rebellion. And we can connect these rebellions and the necessity for
them with the physical passion of’ woman for woman that is central to
lesbian existence: the erotic sensuality that has been, precisely, the
most violently erased fact of female experience.
Heterosexuality’ has been both forcibly and subliminally imposed on
women, vet everywhere women have resisted it. often at the cost of
 Corn pulsort/ Heierosexualiti 197
196 ‘ Adrienne Rich
ism. and because heterosexual romance has been represented as the great fe
ph sical torture. imprisonment. psvchosurger social ostrac male adventure, duty. and fulfillment. We may faithfully or ambiva
heterosexual its as named as one of
extreme pos ertv. Compulsory
inst women” by the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes lently have obeyed the institution, but our feelings— and our
the “crimes
from sensuality have not been tamed or contained within it iheic is no
against Women in 1976 Two pieces of testimony from women
the degree to Which persecution of statistical documentation of the numbers of lesbians who have rc
tsso very diffeient cultures suggest
here and now report from Norway mnained in heterosexual marriages for most of then lives But in a letter
sfnaim is a clobal practice’
to the early lesbian publication Ladder, the plavw right Lorraine Hans
relates
berry had this to say:
s ork.
A lesbian in Oslo ss as in a heterosexual marriage that djdt health
so she started taking tranquillizers and ended up at the I suspect that the problem of the married woman who w’ould
sanatorium for treatment and rehahil itation ‘Ihe moment she prefer emotional-physical relationships with other women is pro
that she believed she was a lesbian, portionally much higher than a similar statistic for men. (A statistic
said in family group therapy
doctor told her she was not. lIe knew from “looking into her surely no one will ever really have.) This because the estate of
the sexual
eves,” he said. She had the eves of a woman who wanted woman being what it is, how could we ever begin to guess the
intercourse with her husband. So she was subjected to smealled numbers of women who are not prepared to risk a life alien to
“ what they have been taught all their lives to believc was their
“couch theraps, She ssas put into a comfortably heated room, trs to
naked. on a bed, and fbr an hour her husband was to as alwa s “natural” destiny—AND—their only expectation fbr ECO
excite her sexualls The idea v as that the touching NOMiC security, it seems to be that this is svhv the question has
to end ss ith sexual intel course She felt
stronger and stronger an immensity that it does not have for male homosexuals .....A
as ersioil She threw up and sometimes ran out of the i oom to svoman of strength and honesty may, if she chooses, se’ver her
“
she marriage and! marry a new male mate and society will be upset
as oid this “treatment The more strongls she asserted that
violent the foiced heterosexual inter that the divorce rate is rising so’—but there are few places in the
was ‘i lesbian the more She
‘ourse became. This treatment ss ent on for about six months. United States, in any event, where she will he anything remotely
escaped from the hospital, but she was brought back gain she “
akin to an “outcast Obviously this is not true for a woman who
escaped She has not been there since In the end she’ realized 55
would end her marriage to take up life with another svoman.
that she had been sub ected to forcible rape for six months
1
to Bar This double—life—this apparent acquiescence to an institution
(This. surels is an example of female sexual slas ers ac’c’oiding founded on male interest and prerogative—has been characteristic of
rs 5 definition And from Moiambique. female experience: in motherhood. and in man kinds of heterosexual
that I am behavior, including the rituals of courtship: the pretense of asexualitv
I am c oncleiimed to a life’ of exile because I will not dens a s he to
commitment s are. and will abs
a lesbian, that m primary by the nineteenth—century wife: the simulation of orgasm by the prosti
considered
other women In the new Moiamhique, lesbianism is cis iliiation:
Western tute, the courtesan, the twentieth-century “sexually liberated” woman
a left-c ver from colonialism and decadent Meridel LeSueur’s documentary novel of the Depression, The Girl,
Lesbians aie sent to rehabilitation camps to leain through self is arresting as a study of female double-life. The protagonist, a waitress
cciticism the corseet hue about themselves. II I am forced to
in a Saint Paul working-class speakeasy, feels herself passionatel at
denounce ms own Ins e for women, if’ I therekwe denounce my
self. I could go back to Nlozambiqiie and 1001 forces in the struggle
exciting tracted to the young man Butch, but her survival relationships are svith
and hard struggles of rebcnkling a nation. including the Clara, an older waitress and prostitute. w’ith Belle, whose husband
either osvns the bar, and with Amelia, a union activist. For Clara and Belle
for the emancipation of Niozanihiquan women. As it is. I
risk the rehabilitation camps. or remain in exile and the unnamed protagonist, sex with men is in one sense an escape
Smith- from the bedrock misery of daily life; a flare of intensity in the grey,
or can it be assumed that ssomen like those in Carroll relentless, often brutal web of day-to-day existence:
Rosenberg’s sttid ho married, stayed married, et dwelt in a pro
emotional and passional world, “preferred’ or “chose” It was like he was a magnet pulling me. It was exciting and power
Ibundly female
in ful and frightening. He was after inc too and when he foundl me I
heteroscxualit Women have married because it was in cessary,
have children who would not would run, or he petrified, just standing in front of him like a
order to surs is e economicalls, in order to
remain zany. And he told me not to be wandering with Clara to the
suffer economic depris ation or social ostracism, in ordei to corn
order to do what was expected of’ women because Marigold where we danced with strangers. He said he would
respectable. in knock the shit out of me. Which macIc me shake amid tremble, but
uii out of “abnormal” childhoods they wanted
to feel normal. and
 Compulsory heterosexuality / 199
198 Adrk one Rich
and not kn )wiug discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be —for a
it was better than being a husk full of suffiring woman.
why
But Sula’s last thought at the second of her death is, “Wait’ll I tell Nd
rhroughout the novel the theme of double-life emerges; Belle remi
And after Sula’s death, Nd looks back on her own life-
nisces of her marriage to the bootlegger Hoinek:
the “All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude And‘
You know, when I had that black eye and said I hit it rn tell
cupboard, well he did it the bastard, and then he says don’t the loss pressed down on her chest and caine up into her throat.
lie’s nuts, that s what he is, nuts, and I don’t see “We was girls together,” she said as though explaining something.
anybody. earth. “0 Lord, Sula,” she cried, “Girl, girl, girlgirlgmrl!” It was a fine
why I live with him, why 1 put up with him a minute on this at cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just
But listen kid, she said I’m telling ou something. She looked Goddam circles arid circles of sorrowi’°
me and her face was wonderful. She said, Jesus Christ,
hun I love him that’s why I’m hooked like this all my life, Goddarn The Girl and Sula are both novels that reveal the lesbian continuum
57
him I love him. in contrast to the shallow or sensational “lesbian scenes” in recent
After the protagonist has her first sex with Butch, her womr ii friends commercial fiction.(1 Each shows us woman-identification untarnished
care for her bleeding, give her whiskey, and compare notes. (till the end of LeSueur’s novel) by romanticism; each depicts the
competition of heterosexual compulsion for women’s attention, the
little diffusion and frustration of female bonding that might, in a more con
My luck the first time arid I got into trouble. He gave me astick
mcney and I come to St. Paul where for ten bucks they’d a scious form, reintegrate love with power.
huge vet s needle into you and you start it and then you were on
youi own. I never had no child I’ve just had lb nck to Iv
mother a id a hell of a child he is.
Clara Woman-identification is a source of energy, a potential springhead of
Later they made me go back to Clara s room to lie down me female power, violently curtailed and wasted under the institution of
lay down beside me and put hei arms around inc and wanted se said heterosexuality. The denial of reality and visibility to women’s passion
to tell her about it but she wanted to tell about herself S
old for women, women’s choice of women as allies, life companions, and
she started it when she was twelve with a hunch of boys in an and
shed She said nobody had paid any attention to her bef re community; the forcing of such relationships into dissimulation and
she bccame very popular ..They like it so much, she sai I, why their disintegration under intense pressure, have meant an incalcula
shouldn t you give it to them and get presents and attention? I ble loss to the power of all women to change the social relations of the
never cared anything for it and neither did my mama, But it’s the sexes, to liberate ourselves and each other. The lie of compulsory
only thiug you got that’s valuable female heterosexuality today afflicts not just feminist scholarship, but
every profession, every reference work, every curriculum, every or
Sex is thus equated with attention from the male, who is charismatic ganizing attempt, every relationship or conversation over which it hov
make
though brutal, infantile, or unreliable Yet it is the women who ers. It creates, specifically, a profound falseness, hypocrisy, and
without causing
life endurable for each other, give physical affection hysteria in the heterosexual dialogue, for every heterosexual relation
find my
pain, share, advise, and stick by each other. (I am trying to ship is lived in the queasy strobelight of that lie. However we choose to
women—without my friends, I could not survive.)
strength through identify ourselves, however we find ourselves labeled, it flickers across
another
LeSueur’. The Girl parallels Toni Morrison’s remarkable Sub, and distorts our lives,62
revelation of female double-life: The lie keeps numberless women psychologically trapped, trying to
who fit mind, spirit, and sexuality into a prescribed script because they
Nd was the one person who had wanted nothing from her, reasons
of her. .Nd ,
was. one of the cannot look beyond the parameters of the acceptable. It pulls on the
had accepted all aspects ,
. .had
.
The men.
[Sula) had drifted hack to Medallion energy of such women even as it drains the energy of “closeted” les
personality: the same language of love, the
merged into one large Whenever bians—the energy exhausted in the double-life. The lesbian trapped in
same entertainments of love, the same cooling of love. and go the “closet,” the woman imprisoned in prescriptive ideas of the “nor
she introduced her private thoughts into their rubbings hut love mal,” share the pain of blocked options, broken connections, lost ac
ings, they hooded their eyes. They taught her nothing money. She cess to self-definition freely and powerfully assumed.
tricks, shared nothing but worry, gave nothing but
to The lie is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer—the ro
had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while
 )0 / Adricn or Huh
mantic—asserts that women are iiec itahlv, es en if rashly and tragi
eallv. d an ii to nit ii that even when that attraetio is si iicidal e.g.,
Tristan nod Isolde. Kate Chopiis fur Atcake log it is still an organic
imperative. Iii the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary
lo e hetn ccii the sexes is normal that women need mcii as social and
economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological comple
tion. that the heteresexuall\ constituted flimib is the baSic social unit;
that women who do not attach their pri marc intensity to mci must he,
in functional terms. condemned to an even more devastating outsider-
hood than their outsiderhood as women. Small wonder that lesbians
are reported to be a more hidden population than male liouiosexualS.
The black lesbian feminist critic. Lorraine Bethel is citing on Zora
\eale Ilurston, remarks that fir a black woman— alieadv twice an
outsider—to choos to assuim still another “hated dentiti” is pro!)
1 ‘matic indeed Yet the lesbian coutin uum has bee a lifehnt liw black
V Mi en both in Af c’ am tithe United States,
B ak w unen h vc a ong tradition of bonding togethc i in a
Black / V om n s community that has her n a sourm of vital su ‘viva1
ii it rio ti n psv ‘hi and emotioi ml 5 11)1)01 t loi u Wc have a
stunt Black w man identified fhlk culture based on oui cxperi
nces as Black wonwn in this society symbols, langu ye and
modes of expre ssiou ti it are specific to the i eahtk, of our
lii es. . Beciuse Black women were rarely among those Blacks
and females who g’unecl access to literary and other acknowledged
forums of artistic exprx ssion, this Black feimmale bonding and Black
ivoman-identification has often been hidden and unreeoi dccl ex
cept in the inch’ idual lives of Black women through our own
memories of our particular Black female tradition.
Another liii er of the lie is the frecuentlv encountered implication
that women turn to women out of hatred for men. Profound skepti—
cisin. caution antI righteous paranoia about men may mcleed be part of
am healthy ivomans response to the woman—hatred embedded in
male-dominated culture, to the forms assumed by “normal” male sexu
ality. and to tiic’faiinrc r ccii of”sen sitic’e or political men to perceive
orjind these trouhhng \ et woman-hatred is Si) mbeclded in culture,
so normal does it see ii SO profoundly is it neglected as a social
henomenon. that many women. even ft’mciinists and lesbians. Ihil to
identif it until it takes, in their own lives, some permanently unmis
takable anti shattc ring form. I esbian existence is also represented as
mc rehigc fi mu male abuse’ rather than as an electric and empower
ng charge between women I fi id it interesting that one of the most
f c luently quoted literary passages on lesbian relationship is that in
x hit b Colette’s Hence, in The Vagabond, describe s ‘the melancholy
and touehun image of two weak creatures who have perhaps found
shelter in each o her s arms there to sheep and weep, safe from man
Cmnpuhory Hcterosexualitc,’ I 201
whit) is often cruel, anti there to taste better’ than any pleasure, the
bitter happiness of feeling themselves akin, frail and forgotten
“
[emphasis added]. Colette is often considered a lesbian writer: her
popular reputation has. I think, much to do with the’ liiet that she
writes about lesbian existence as if for a male audience: her earliest
“lesbian novels, the Claudine series, were written under compulsion
for her husband anti published under both their names. At all events,
except for hier writings on her mother, Colette is a far less reliable
source on lesbian existence than. I svouhcl think. Charlotte Brontë. who
understood that while women may, indeed must. be one another’s
allies, mentors, and comforters in the female struggle for survival,
there is quite extraneous delight in each other’s company and attrac
tion to each others’ minds anti character, which proceeds from a recog
nition of each others’ stiengths,
By the same token, we can say that there is a nascent f’eininist
political content in the act of choosing a womnian lover or life partner in
the face of institutionalized heterosexuahmty.’ But for lesbian existence
to realize this political content in an ultimately liberating form, the
erotic choice must deepen and expand mto conscious woman
identification—into lesbian/feminism.
The work that lies ahead of unearthing and describing what I call
here lesbian existence, is potentially liberating for all women, It is
work that must assuredly move beyond the limits of white and middle
class Western women’s studies to examine ss’omens lives, work, antI
groupings within everx racial, ethnic, and political structure. There are
differences, moreover, between lesbian existence and the lesbian con
tinuum—differences is e can discern even in the movement of our own
lives. The lesbian continuum, I suggest. needs delineation in light of
the double—life ofwomnen, not only women self—described as heterosex
ual but also of self-described lesbians. We need a far more exhaustive
account of the forms the double-life has assumed. Historians need to
ask at every point how heterosexuahtv as institution has been orga
nized anti maintained through the female wage scale the enforcement
of middle—class women’s “leisure,” the glamorization of so—called sexual
liberation, the withholding of education from women the image’rv of’
“high art” and popular culture, the mystification of the “personal”
sphere, and much else. We need aim economics that comprehends the
institution of heterosexuality, with its doubled workload for women
and its sexual divisions of labor, as the most idealized of economic
relations,
The question inevitably will arise. Are we then to condemn all fit t
erosexual relationships, including those that are least oppressive? I
believe this question, though often heartfelt, is the wrong question
here. We have been stalled in a maze of false dichotomies that pre
vents our apprehending the institution as a whole “good” versus “bad”
202 / Adrieunc Rich
marriages liarriage for love” versus arranged marriage: ‘lii crated”
sex s ersus prostitution: heterosexual intercourse versus rape. Liebes
ithin the institution
7 accurately that it is not that feniirus,iu has produced niore lesbians. There have
chmerz versus humiliation and dependency. W
exist, of co irse, jualitative differences of experience; but the ibsence
of choice r i iains the great unacknowledged reality, and in the ab 5,
6.
sence of choice, women will remain dependent on the chance or luck of
particular relationships and vill have no collective pox’’r to determine
the meaning and place of sexuality in their lives As we address the 7.
institution itself, moreover, we begin to perceive a history of female
resistance that has nevet fully understood itself because it has been so
8.
fragmented miscalled erased It will require a courageous grasp of the
politics and economics, as well as the cultural propaganda, of hetero—
sexualit to carry us beyond indis idual eases or diversified group situa
tions into the complex kind of overvietv needed to undo the pov er mcii
everywhcie wield over women, power that has become a n odd for
every other form of exploitation and illegitimate control 9.
10,
11.
12.
13.
ccc , t appeared i s the United Kmgdon as a paniphle pul hshc I by Only— 14.
nonie Press
1. xh Rossi Ch,ldren and Wo, k in the Lis i’s of ‘A omen. ravr d,’bs ered at the 15.
Unis ersits 01 Arizona. Tucson. F’ebruars 196. 16.
2. Doris 1€ ssnig, The (,olden Ni ti/took 1962; Ness o,k. Bantam 13o ks, 1977), 17.
p 450 18.
2 Nanc s (1 odorow i’he Rc produ hon of ‘v/other tug BerG lc’t Un,versit of ( alifor—
ii a Press, 1975 , Doroths Dinnerstein The Meru,aei and t/n Mn,otaor: Sexual
trraiiemeuts and the human iIul,nse New Tot 1: Flaiper and Row.
1976. Barbara
Elirv’nreicli and Deirdre English. Pot Her Ott, (2a’d 100 CurS of I/c P iperts 19.
I It ice 0 ‘s1ome,i Garden City s.Y Diubledas N Iticlior, 1975 Jean Baker
Miller, 1 , ‘ard a \‘emc Psychology of Wot mu (Boston Beacon 1 ress, 1276
I I c mId I ave chosen sanv other serious and influential recent hooks incluchng
anthologies, that would ill,,sti ate the same point e g. Our Bodies. On se/mci, the 20.
Boston Women s Health Coilectis c’ s bestseller New \ork: Simon and Schuster,
1976 cvh,ci, c/ns otes a separate and inadequate chapte, to lesbians. Intl whose 21.
O essage is that hc’tcrosenialits is oust wonien s 1db preference Bc’reni, e
(aroil, 22.
,
ci Librat0 g WOOe. 5 history: Iheouct,cal and Critical Essays Urbana, Umver—
,
sitv of Illinc is Pri ss 1976 which does not iocludr eve,, a token essis on tise lesbian 23.
presence to histo, s’ though an ‘ssas b Linda Gordon Persis Hunt, et ‘il notes the 24.
‘
use by male historians of sexual deviance’ as a catego, to discredit amid dismiss
Inna Hosvarci Shaw. Jane Acldams, anti other feinittists “Historical Phallacies: Sex—
,sin in Anserican Historical Writing”’, and 13-nate Bridenthal and Claudia Koontz,
ens. Becoming Visible Women in European history Boston’ Houghtou Muffin, 25,
1977, wh,h curtauls three n,cutaais of i’,ale liun,osexualit but no n,ds rials that I
isave [tee,, able to locate on lesbians. (,eda Lerner, ccl., The /‘e,ua/e Ex crience: An 26.
American Hoc umcutary Indianapolis: Bobbs’1slerrill 1977. cc,,itain’ an abridg— 27.
irient of two lesbian ‘fenii,ust position papers froni the c’ontemnporars niosenient but 28.
no other documentation of lesbian existence. L,erm r does note in her preface,
however Isow the ch’i ge of deviance has been used to fragment women and dss
Corn pulsonj Iletci’osexuality / 203
courage women’s resistance. Linda Gordon, in Woman’s Bony. Woman’s Right A
Social Ilvstor,j of Birth Control in ,Imerica New \ork: S ik’iug Press. 1976. m,ots
alnavs been moans lesbians, despite’ high levels of reprv ssion. and most lesbians
experience their sexual preference as innate” p. 410).
Jonathan Katz, Gay American history (New York: l’homnas Y Crowell, 1976).
Nancy Sahh, “Smashing: Women’s Relationships Before the Fall. Chrysalis A ‘
Magazine of Women’s Cu/tori’S (1979): 17—27. A sersion of the article was presented
at the Third Berkshire Conference on the Historx of ‘,Vorn,’n. June 11. 1976
This is a book I base publicly endorsed, I would still do so, though with the altos e
caveat. It is only sinai’ beginning to ‘,s rite this article tlsat I fully appreciated how
enormous is the unasked question in Ebrenreich anti English’s book,
Kathleen Barr’. Female Sexual Slavery (Englewood ChiPs, N.J : Prentice-flail,
1979): Susan Bi’uss’nmiller. Against Our 51.211’ ‘len. W’omcu. and Rape New Sork.
Simon and Schuster, 1975t: Mary Daly, Gyn / Ecology; The Meta-Ethics of Radical
Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978): Susan GrifTin, S’oman and Nature: The
Roaring Inside lice (New York: Harper and Row, 1978); Diana Russell and Nicole
van do Vens, eds., Proceedings of the international Tribunal on C,’inres Against
Women (Millbrae, Calif.: Les Femmes, 1976).
,
Dinnerstein .SIer,naid, p. 272.
DaIs. Gun Ecology. pp. 184—85; 114—3:3.
Chodorow, Reproduction of Mothering, pp. 197—95.
Ibid., PP 198—99.
,
Ibid p. 200.
Kathleen Cough, “The Origin of the Famils ,“ in Toward an Anthropology of
W’omemi, ed. Ba’, na Reiter (New York: Slorithlv Be’ ii”,’, Press 197,5, pp. 69—7t).
Barry, Female Sexual Slavery, pp. 216—19.
Anna Demeter, Legal Kidnapping Boston: Beacon Press. 1977). pp. xx. 126-25
Daly, Gyn/Ecology, pp. 132, 1311—41. 16:3—65.
Barbara Ebreureuch amid Deirdre English, Witches, ,‘vlidwires, antI Nurses A liii
tory of Women healers (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press. 1973); Andrea Dss or
kin. Woman Hating (New York. E. P. I),ittomm. 1974/. pp. 118—54: DaIs, Cii,n
Ecology, pp. 178—222.
See Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s On.’n London: Hogarth Press. 1929’. antI
idem, Three Cit incas (1938; New York: Flarcourt Brace, 1966); Tillie Olsen, Silences
(Boston: Delaeorte Press, 1975); Michelle Cliff “flue Resonance of Interruption,
Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture 8 (1979): 29—37.
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father Boston. Beacon Press. 1973), pp. 347—51:
Olsen. Silence,,, pp. 22—46.
DaIs. Beyond Cod the Father, p. 9:3,
‘
Fran P. hlosken, “The S’ioience of’ Power; Genital Mutil,itiomi of F’einales, Heresies
6 (1979). 28—35; Russell and van de Veu, Proceedings, pp. 194—95.
Barry, Female Sexual Slavery, pp 163—64.
The issue’ of “lesbian sadomasochism” needs tim he examined in term, of the domni—
nant cultures’ teachings about the relation of sex anti violence, and also of the
acceptance by some lesbians of male homosexual mores. I believe this to he another
example of the double—life of women.
Catherine A. MacKinnon, Sexual harassment of Working Women A Case of Sex
Discrimination (New Haven, Coon.: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 15—16.
Ibid., p. 174.
Browumiller. Against Our Will.
MacKiniton, Sexual Harassment, p. 219. Susan Schecter ss rites; “The push for het
erosexual union at whateser cost is so intense that .,. it has become a cultural force
of its own ‘that creates battering. The ideology of romantic lose amid its jealous
204 / Adrienne KWh
possession of the partner as property provide tie masquerade for vs hat can heconic
sevete abuse Aegis Wagazine on Lnding Violence Against Women [July August
1979] 50-51
29 MacKmm n Si rual Harassment, p 298
30 Ibid p 220
,
31 Ibid p 221
32 Barry, Femak Secoal Slateri
33 Ibid p 33
,
34 Ibid p 103
35 Ibid 5 bammd and wmtlm regard to mssothenlsoocf, mutual aid, satisfaction of pci sommal rev’nge
36 Ibid p 100
37 Ibid p 218
38 Ibid p 140
39 Ibid p 172
40 Else where I has e suggested that male identification has been a powerful source of
white women’s racism, and that it has been women who were seen as ‘disloyal” to
male code5 and ss stems who have actively battled against it (Adrienne Hi Ii, “I)is
loyal to Civ diiation Feminism, Racism, (ynephobia,” in On Lies Secrets, and
Silence Sekcted Prose, 1960-1978 [New York W W Norton, 1979]
11 Bans Female Smxual Slacermj p 220
‘
Lebian Origins Ph 1) russ Department of Sociology Rutgem s,
2 ms,cs ( as m
1 he State I nis ci sits of N en’ Jersey, 1978, chap 6
13 1 o ins erect tion of heteros xuahity as an economic institution, I un indebted to
L sa Leghorn and Kathei inc Parker svho ahlosseci me to me ad the unpublished
i anuscmmpt of then hook Woman s Worth Sesual Econoow c and the
World of
34 omen (London and Boston Rontlecige and Kegan Paul, 1981)
14 1 would suggest that Ic slsiaim existence has been most rccognm/edl and tolei ated
hei e it has i esembled a ‘deviant’ xci sion of hetemosexualit e g whew lesbians
I lye, like Stein and Toklas, played heteiosexual roles oi seemed to um public) and
have beei chiefly identified with nma]e culture See also ( laude F Schaeflem, “The
Kuteram Female Berdache Courier, Go mdc, Prophctess and Vt ,mrrmoi, F thnohi stor
2, no 3 Sumi ser 1965 19,4 236 Berdache ‘an mdiv idu 4 of a definite physiologi
cal sex in or f ] who assumes th role and status of the opposite sex ai d svho is
viewed by th community as heumg of one sex pbs siologic aIls hut as havuil assumed
toe role sod status of the uppuvite vex Subaflei p 231] Lesbian i’xisten( e has
als( been relegated to an upper class phenomenon, an elite decadence as in the
fasc in stion vs mth Pai s salon lesbians stir Is as Hence ‘mis ien and Natalie Cliflorcl
,
Barnes to the bscsirmng of such coinm( n vs omen as Judy (,mahn depi ‘ts um her
Tli’ Work sf a (‘ronmoOn Wooman N en York St Martin s Press, I 98th ai I True to
[if’ Adm ermtore Stories Oakland (‘abf Diana Pm ess, 1978
4 I)aly Gyn Fe ology p 15
16 In a hostile svodd in which women are not supposed to stirs we except i rs’lation
with such in sets ice to men, entire cmnmunities of women wet e’ sunplv erased
llmstois tends to heirs what it seeks to reject’ Blanche’ W Cook, ‘‘\Vomen Alone
$tn Ms Ins igination Lesbianism and the’ C ultural I madmtiori,’ Signs I, no 4
Suininei 1979] 719—20) The lesbian Hem stoi s Archives um New York ( ity is one
sttempt to pi escm xc c’ontempoi ars doe cinsents on lesbian existence—a project of
enoi moos value and meaning, still pitted against the continuing censnrslnp and
3-liter ition I relationslnps, networks, c ommnnnities, in otW’r arc hives and else-
wIse ie in the c nut i
4 Audi e I orde C me s of the Em otu The l,rotme as Power Out & Out Books Pamphlet
No 3 Ness Yoik Out & Out Books [476 2d Stieet, Brooklyn, Ness York 11215],
1979)
18 Idnic nne Rid, ‘Conditions foi Vt ork The Common \Vom Id of Vs omen, ii On Lies,
Compulsory Heteroscxuality / 205
,
Secrets, and Silence, p 209 H D 1 rthute to Freud Oxford Carcaiset Press 1971
PP 50—54
49 Woolf, A Boom of One’s Omen, p 126
50 ‘
Gracma Clamk “The Begunmes A Medmaexal ‘A omen s Comssnsm rmity Quest A Feme
inst Quarterly 1, no 4 (1975 73—SO
51 See Denise Paimlmé, ed Women of TropicalAjrmca Beikeles C nmscismty of Cahfoi
nia Press, 1963), pp 7, 266—67 Soisme of these somormtmes aie di’seriberl as ‘a kind mmf
defensive svmmdicate agaumst time male elenseimt”—tlmeir ansms he irmg “tcs ofler commcc mtc’d
resistance to an oppressms e patrmarcbatc,” “nmdepenclenc’e mn relation to omse’s bus
See also Andre Lorde, “Scratchiimg the Surface Sonic Notes on Barriers to Woinemm
arid Los nmg,” Black Scholar 9, no 7 (1978 31—35 Mamjoi me Toplev, “Marriage
Resistance mit Rnmral Kwangtunmg,’ in Women in Chmmmese Soc ie’ty cd M Wolf and H
Witke (Staimford, Calif Staimforcl University Press 1978 pp 67—89, Agnes Smecl
hey, Portraits of Chinese Women in Becolution, cci J Mac Kmnimon and S Mac Kim
non (Old Westbury, N Y Femsimnmst Press, 1976 pp 103- If),
52 See Rmmsalnsd Petclsesky, “Dmssolvmng the Hvplmeim ‘m Report on Marxmst Femnsmst
Groups 1 5,” in Capmtalist Patriarchy and the (‘ast for Socialist Feminism ed
Zmllah Eisensteimm (New York Momsth]v Review Press 1979) p 387
53 Andiea Dwoikin Pornography Men Possessing Wome’mm (New York C P Pmstimam
Sons, 1981
54 Russell and vats dIe ‘mcmi, Pioceednmgs, pp 42—43 56—57
55 I am indebted to Jonathan Kati’s Gay A imiem’ican history for bringing to ins attentmoim
Hansbermy’s letters to Ladder and to Barbara Crier for supplying mne with copies of
melevammt page’s frcm Ladder, quoted here by peimnmssioim of Barbama Gimer See also
time reprinted sc’nmes of Ladder, ed Jonatisams Kati et al Nesv York Amno Press), anti
,
Demrclre Carmimcxly “Letters b 5 Eleaimcr Rocmsevelt Detail F’i iendshmp with Loremma
IImc’kok,” Veo. York Times, 21 O’tober 1979
56 Menidel LeSneur The Girl (Camlmnmdge, Mass West End Press, 1978) pp 10—11
LeSneur describes, mn an afterwom d, how this book was di avvn Ii om time wi mtimsgs armnl
esi al narrations of women in the Workers Alliance who met as a writers’ group duriimg
the Depression
57 ,
Ibid p 20
58 Ibnl ps 53—54
59 ,
Ibid p 55
60, Toni Morrisoim, Sula (New York Bantam Books, 1973), pp 103-4, 149 I am mu
debted to Lorraine Bethel s essay, “‘This Infinity of Conscious Pain’ Zora Neale
Hurstoim amid time Black Female Literary Tradmtmon, us All the Women Air White, All
the Blacks Are Men, But Soimie of C’s Are Brace Black Women’s Studies, ccl
Cmi ma 3’ Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (Old ‘mVestburs N Y Tue
Fennimmst Press, 1982
61 See Manreeim Brady and Judith McDaniel, “Lesbians ns the Maimmstream The Image
of Lesbians in Recent Commercial Fiction,” Conditions 6 (1979
62 See’ Rimsseil amid van de \‘en, Proceedings p 40 “ few heterosexual woirmerm realmie
their lack of free choice abommt their sexuality, aisd few realm7e how arid wiss coisipiml
sory heterosexuality is also a crime agaumsst thetis
63 Bethel, “I’Imms Infinity of Conscious Pain
64 I)mniserstemn, the nsost receust writer to quote this passage, acids onnnonslv “But
svhat has to be added to her acccmunt is that these women enlaced ,mre sheltering
cads othet not just fromms what men want to des to thenm, but also froimm svhat they want
to do to each other” (Time Mermaid, p 103 The fact is, lsemwever, that wonsaim-to
woman violence is a minute gmamn in time Imnuverse of inale-agammsst-female violence
perpetrated and ratmomiahmied in every social mnstmtutioim
65 Conversation with Blancise W Cook, New York City March 1979