5 Assignment 06

Many people in this world think heterosexuality, being attracted at male and female each other, is the natural thing as a human being. However, in her essay, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, Adrienne Rich contends that heterosexuality is not natural thing in mankind, but an institution forced by societies and culture that oppress women into subordinate situation. For example, throughout many generations, women were depend on men economically and therefore they had less right in the family. The only way for women to get the power was a marriage. However, as female got depend on male, societies started to represent the male power over female.

Male had stronger power so that they denied women sexuality. In addition, male forced female to satisfy male sexuality by means of rape, which including marital rape. Therefore, society only gave an option of heterosexual marriage, and women had no chance to show their sexuality, and hid them to stay in the society. Women had to be in that format no matter what the marriage made them happy or not. On the other hand, nowadays, women have power and right to achieve those economic status so that they started to get out of that social institution of heterosexuality, and having relation of lesbian like homosexual marriage. Nevertheless, male still trying to oppress rebel of female. For example, most of the States in United States have laws that homosexual marriage is illegal. In addition, there are still oppression of male towards female to keep the male power over female. We could see it by the number of males working at professional jobs compare to number of females’.

Another point Rich argued in this essay is about the potential of feminist thought. It is true that most female in this world are heterosexual. However, Rich pointed out that Feminist didn’t concern or include the existence of lesbian in the writings like feminist scholarship. Rich see that lesbian is also part of the feminist. All these examples that Rich wrote on her essay proves that women have lack of choice which led to inhibition of women to show their true sexuality.

Heterosexuality being institutionalized forces all women to be seen and regarded as having to fit a certain role, which in turn, oppresses them. This idea of women only being able to be heterosexual is forced upon on them by men and being lesbian is seen as taboo or even not existent in our society. In media, such as movies, shows, and art, women are mostly shown to be in heterosexual relationships, whereas lesbian relationships are almost never shown. Chick flicks, for example, almost always show a woman and man trying to pursue a relationship with each other. But then there are almost none showing a woman and woman relationship. The way the media sort of ignores the existence of lesbian relationships further perpetuates how society forces women into having heterosexual relationships, as women feel less comfortable admitting they are lesbian and even less are comfortable confronting problems that are oppressing them in everyday life.   Women are paid less in a work place because of this institutionalization as they are still seen as below men. They are taken advantage of sexually and if they refuse, they risk losing their job to the men that are trying to control their sexuality and how they express it. Many cultures still see women as objects that can be gifted in marriage or used in rape. In general, women are seen as needing men to survive and if they don’t, they are perceived to be abnormal even though being lesbian shouldn’t have such a huge taboo around it. These underlying social norms forces women into not being able to express their sexuality and in turn many women are stuck in heterosexual relationships that they are not happy with. It is also hard for women to identify with being lesbian as society does not talk about it openly and tries to hide it, forcing female thoughts and ideas to be dominated by male ones.

In her essay Adrienne Rich explains that there is an assumption of most of women are born heterosexual and that the existence of lesbian has been omitted in the writings and history texts. She also explains that through the time men have imposed their sexuality forcing women to give up their own. Women have been submitted to many humiliations, mistreatments, sexual abuse, prostitution, among other things and all of it is allowed by a society that prefers a cruel heterosexuality rather than sexuality between women.

In one hand, men power was manifested in the control that they had over women consciousness, which they used to convince them that the best life option was heterosexual marriage, even if this is not what women really wanted or even when they felt repressive and unhappy. In another hand, society has contributed in this disproportionate relation between men and women. Even though they perform the same job, women have lower paying than men. Men have the economic power forcing women to depend on them or give in to their pressures and sexual harassment to get a job. There is not place for lesbians in the market place, to keep their jobs they are forced to play the role of heterosexual women.

Heterosexuality empowers men over women. For society, homosexuality is not a natural instincts in humans, but for Rich, heterosexuality is an institution imposed by society to subordinate women. Rich also sees lesbianism as part of feminism. Lesbian existence breaks the men’s right of access to women and the rule of a obligatory heterosexuality. Many women have married because they need men to survive economically or because society expects that women have children or because they are afraid of a society that punishes those who dare to feel different or because heterosexual marriages have been imposed as a rule to fulfill women’s role. The truth is that lack of choice causes women to remain in relationships where they are inhibited from expressing their own sexuality.

At the base of a compulsively heterosexual society is the absence of female choice, not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that the act of choosing is entirely dismissed as a choice when made by a woman. The dismissal of female choice, Rich explains, is the model of control and exploitation of women. Many generations of women have been raised to be economically dependent on men through marriage or work place sexualization. Still today, when in the work place women are often held to higher standards of service than men, male colleagues are have expectations of physical and emotional access to female colleagues, or women risk perpetually passed up for higher levels of employment. These ideas begin early in adolescence, teenage girls are told that the penis has a mind of it’s own and cannot be controlled the same way that female impulses can be, perhaps because female impulses aren’t considered real without an equally magnetic male impulse. Similarity many women have been raised to associate love with control of male behavior, incessantly consciously or unconsciously self-sexualizing themselves for the male gaze. If a ‘sexualized’ woman is sexually assaulted or raped the man cannot be held responsible, due to the uncontrollable penis and her physical display of availability.
Not mentioned in Rich’s work is how this conditioning of female sexuality also attempts to demoralize female friendships, but I do think it ties into the persistent idea of women only depending on each other to spite men. If women are in constant competition to control men for economic stability and not fighting for our own interests and education then we continue to support the invalidation of our own ability to make choices. Additionally, with the erasure of lesbian history from feminist theory we have no point of reference. Female camaraderie is rarely separated from the erotic and due to the deviant associations many women don’t know the empowerment found in these relationships. Further, to dismiss the lesbian existence from female history is to disregard the continuing lack of privilege in relation to men, culturally and economically, which is specific to women because homosexual men can retain a respectable bachelor status at any age without social repercussions. Rich makes a clear argument that to really analyze gender equality is to also normalize all female relationships and their varying levels of intimacy.

Please Note: This writing assignment has been cancelled to give you extra time to study for the midterm exam this weekend.

Due Monday, March 13th, 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 Rich’s work or anywhere else), you must be sure to include the proper citation (either MLA or APA).

In her chapter titled “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich argues that heterosexuality is institutionalized. Drawing on the examples she introduces in her work, explain her characterization of this institutionality in relationship to the potential of feminist thought.