Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Sherronda J. Brown

Author:Sherronda J. Brown [J. Brown, Sherronda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623177119
Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Compulsory (Hetero)Sexuality

Adrienne Rich’s “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” is considered a seminal feminist text, especially among lesbians. It calls for heterosexuality to be understood and studied as a “political institution” that constantly works to “disempower women” sexually and socially.24 Within said institution, lesbianism is “perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorrent or simply rendered invisible” in a society invested in compulsory heterosexuality.25 In this work, Rich identifies compulsory heterosexuality as the assumption that all women are heterosexual. She also details the institutional agenda to convince women that their attraction to and heterosexual involvement with men is inevitable and obligatory, creating barriers to seeing lesbianism as a valid existence:

Messages to women have been, precisely, that we are the emotional and sexual property of men, and that the autonomy and equality of women threaten the family, religion, and state. The institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled—patriarchal motherhood, economic exploitation, the nuclear family, compulsory heterosexuality—are being strengthened by legislation, religious fiat, media imagery, and efforts at censorship.26

Here, I would be remiss not to acknowledge Rich’s transphobia. She was an ardent supporter of Janice Raymond, who conceived of the deeply anti-trans book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, which accuses trans people of “coloniz[ing] feminist identification, culture, politics, and sexuality.”27 According to Raymond, “Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem noninvasive.”28 After its publishing in 1979, it would directly contribute to the oppression of and violence against trans people for decades.

That being said, Rich’s essay and the development of “compulsory heterosexuality” have been invaluable for an untold amount of queer people who are expected to perform heterosexuality and womanhood. She gave us much-needed language to talk about what we experience as people who do not fit easily into heterosexuality or the gender binary but are instead coerced into it. Moreover, various scholars—asexual and otherwise—have built on Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality in order to identify and analyze the phenomenon of compulsory sexuality. Though Rich does not explicitly name asexuals, she includes “femmes seules” (lone women), “marriage resisters,” and “spinsters”29 in her discussion. Asexuals exist in each of these categories, all likewise experiencing the “violent strictures [that are] necessary to enforce women’s total emotional, erotic loyalty and subservience to men.”30

Rich also notes that people socialized as women often “endure sexual harassment to keep [our] jobs and learn to behave in a complacently and ingratiatingly heterosexual manner … the woman who too decisively resists sexual overtures in the workplace is accused of being ‘dried-up’ and sexless, or lesbian.”31 Both “dried-up” and “sexless” echo the language around “female sexual dysfunction” or “frigidity” and are understood as undesirable, shameful ways to exist in a society that demands our sexual availability to men and that socializes us “to feel that male sexual ‘drive’ amounts to a right.”32 Asexuals and lesbians are often similarly put in the position of having to appeal to men, abide by certain expectations of traditional womanhood, and comport ourselves in an “ingratiatingly heterosexual manner” for our livelihood and survival.

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