å Tuesday, March 21st, 2017

Due Monday, March 27th, by midnight. Word count: 300 words. Please make sure everything is in your own words. Absolutely no quotes should be used. If you paraphrase from the text (from Peterson and Parisi’s work or anywhere else), you must be sure to include the proper citation (either MLA or APA).

In their work, V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi argue that we should interrogate the connection of “human rights” in connection to heterosexism rather than focusing on, as other feminists have, the androcentrism of human rights discourse. In your own words, explain why they believe heterosexism is a more precise way of analyzing the relationship of gender difference and human rights.

I agree with Rich’s idea that heterosexuality is institutionalized. There are so many ways we see women being forced to be subservient to men, or to care what men think of them more than what they think of themselves. We are taught from a young age that women marry men and we become housewives who take care of the men and the children and clean and cook, etc. There is this idealized idea of a woman as a 1960’s housewife that enforces the idea of a woman as a heterosexual. MY best friend is bisexual and the first time she told her boy friend at the time, the first words out of his mouth were, “Cool! Are we going to have a threesome?” Lesbianism is a sexualized fantasy for men, even the thing that Rich argues is the one thing women can really have, is still taken to this perverse place.

I’ve heard many arguments about women being more open to homosexuality than men are; since we tend to be more comfortable touching each other and showing affection. If this is true, it does not make the public more open to it. If you look even at TV shows, gay couples such as in Modern Family, we see that the male homosexual couples are much more accepted, shown as family oriented and funny or cute, while their female counterparts tend to be heavily focused on sexual arousal and sex scenes. Lesbian couples seem to make society more uncomfortable than male homosexual couples. Even in lesbian couples we often try to force a heterosexual model onto it by asking, “Who is the man and who is the woman in the relationship?”

I believe Rich is arguing that women are drawn to each other because they are oppressed by men, and because men can never fully understand what it means to be a woman because they do not have the same types of harassment and oppressions that we do, yet women are still forced into heterosexual relationships.

Feminist theory targets gender inequality, and narrows in on discrimination, oppression, and sexual objectification. Adrienne Rich argues that heterosexuality is institutionalized, and in the examples she introduces in her work, she believes the view of female homosexuals are bias, and looked at as abnormal. Assuming in a sense that lesbians are just spiteful and resentful towards men, so that explains why they prefer other women, which is false. Therefore in this article it is shown that women choosing other women as their lovers/ partners is suppressed and greatly  discredited.

She argues that their is a lack of understanding of gender equality in literature, not enough texts exist on lesbians precisely, yet heterosexual romance is shown all over in films, books, and even art. There is the demolition of documents focused on lesbians specifically, and undercover messages showing that cruel heterosexuality is normal rather than sexual attractiveness between two women. Rich claims that in society heterosexuality is some what forced on women due to male domination. Women were overpowered, and discriminated against professionally in the work place, with no education, they were poorly paid, men controlled childbirth, abortion, and contraception along with physical sexual harassment such as rape. Being exposed to chastity belts, child marriage, arranged marriages, and even brutal surgeries (clitoridectomy) where the clitoris is cut to make a female more “marriageable” and making sure that female sexual relations will be cut out is also a sign of male domination. Feminists viewed this as female torture.

Men were economically powerful, so for women to keep their service jobs being sexualized came along with it, they would have to look a certain way, purposely promoting sexual attractiveness for men so they can keep their jobs. Women were automatically considered “dried up” lesbian, or sexless if they happen to withstand these sexual approaches on the job. I agree this is form of female enslavement, as well as female torture because a lesbian women would have to actually deny her true relationship with another women, pretending to be heterosexual although she might not have been, in order to maintain her employment. Dressing up and playing the ‘feminine’ role she then was considered a real women. These women were put under certain pressures, forced conditions, and continuously endured exploitation…. because they simply had to. Rich shows in her article that heterosexuality is indeed institutionalized.