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this idea that compulsory heterosexuality is an “experience” at all, much less an experience that only lesbians have, is already off base. it’s very individualising and dare I say liberal to treat a set of social & economic forces as if it’s some kind of disease with symptoms
if you say anything like “suffer from comp. het.” as if it’s an illness that can be regarded on the level of the individual (much less the individual’s MIND) you need to rethink your entire approach to this. it defangs the analysis & it’s misogynistic. maybe even pathologising
it’s still very much fuck Adrienne Rich to be clear but it’s telling how many people want to yell about this without even reading that essay (not to say treating it as gospel—just reading and actually trying to understand and think through the concept)
because if you do so (compulsory heterosexuality involves a web of things that work to make heterosexuality & thus providing labour in the home the only option for women--social pressure and social threats, the economic insecurity of lesbians & single women, violence...
...& making the possibility of relationships with women for those who are or would be attracted to them disappear practically or conceptually)--it becomes very obvious that this is a thing that will harm women as a whole (keeping class in mind), regardless of their sexuality
making it unfeasible for straight women to remain single is a part of this. paying women less because their pay cheque is seen as supplementary to a man's is part of this. pressure on straight women to remain with men they don't want for fear of stigma or violence is part of this
so I say it's misogynistic to act like compulsory heterosexuality is a "lesbian-only experience" because if you deny the pressure on, yes, even straight women, to be with men, you end up naturalising heterosexuality.
you lose the ability to see it as political. you end up acting like this is all about lesbians falling afoul of this system bc we naturally and intrinsically diverge from a set of patterns and roles that are apparently natural and comfortable for straight women? which is absurd
in fact, if you fully get the point of conceptualising heterosexuality as political, you'll understand that compulsory heterosexuality obviously effects men too... it guides their behaviour surrounding courtship & while in relationships, leads to entitlement and violence, &c.
so while I disagree with parts of Rich's analysis (she has a radical feminist sort of tendency to conceptualise the oppression of women as transhistorical and transcultural), the concept as she pointed it out has a lot of utility for materialist feminist politics
but sadly some of you do not have the range. you're focused on guarding "lesbian-specific" terminology (as if the essay's title were "Compulsory Heterosexuality IS the Lesbian Experience"?) when in fact "the lesbian experience" is just one resultant thing that's talked about
it arises imo from a broader tendency to see terminology as divorced from a political or social context https://twitter.com/gothhabiba/status/943570469491527680?s=20
or to treat terminology as identity in a way that's frankly influenced by a capitalist understanding of personhood as "demographic" or "type" that certain things can be sold to https://twitter.com/gothhabiba/status/1009182961227501569?s=20
so I see where this may be coming from--& I also understand a knee-jerk reaction of "this is ours" given how difficult it is to talk about any kind of lesbian-specific experience, & given the elision of the lesbian nature of a lot of things (itself a product of comp.het.)
but this one just really truly is not "ours," lmao
and I know you guys haven't read it because if you did you'd be REALLY mad with how Rich describes the "lesbian continuum" 
*Existence, not Experience. these people got in my head
compulsory het. in institutions also has a disastrous impact on trans women as they're pushed to express attraction to men and make themselves desirable to men (ostensibly "natural" aspects of womanhood) in order to access essential medical care, whatever their sexuality
given Rich's transmisogyny it's not surprising that this doesn't come up in the essay. we do need to interrogate the concept and push it further (as, in fact, feminist theorists have been doing) & I'm never against terminology changing--but the change should be an improvement
readings, as always: it's impossible to overstate just how explicitly Rich's essay itself refers to all women. contrary to what I've seen some say, she did not invent the term comp.het., but popularised it. tw's for all kinds of violence against women. http://transasdocorpo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Compulsory-heterosexuality-and-lesbian-existence-2.pdf
"The lie keeps numberless women psychologically trapped, trying to fit mind, spirit, and sexuality into a prescribed script because they cannot look beyond the parameters of the acceptable. It pulls on the energy of such women even as it drains the energy of 'closeted' lesbians"
again, not necessarily fully endorsing but giving examples of things that have been done with the idea of compulsory heterosexuality, and how we can push the concept if we take it seriously as something that describes material & social forces on a broad scale:
Rachel Fraser provides a useful summary of the concept & moves on to discuss "the ways in which compulsory heterosexuality structures both our mental lives and our access to it" http://www.academia.edu/31885212/The_Epistemology_of_Compulsory_Heterosexuality
Desiree Lewis talks about compulsory heterosexuality as it relates to nationalism, particularly in a South African context: "The centrality of patriarchy in the control of women’s bodies is evident in the policing of women’s gender roles in nations" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13634607080110010306
Steven Seidman provides a background of the term through the 60s and 70s, but criticises the "gender structuralism" of the concept: "Lesbian feminists and gay liberationists mistakenly assumed that a condition of compulsory heterosexuality...
...successfully translates a normative gender code into a behavioral social reality." He grounds the term in its (50s-80s) era & suggests new directions. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1525%2Fsrsp.2009.6.1.18
the introduction to Heterosexuality: A Feminism & Psychology Reader is also instructive ("unless the feminist movement is able to accept an understanding of lesbianism that fully believes that lesbian oppression and compulsory heterosexuality hurt all women by limiting...
...their possible visions for their own lives, then we will not survive" -Sarah Shulman https://books.google.com/books?id=ViCBRAMWOuoC
*how explicitly Rich's essay itself refers to all *cis* women, and delineates a concept that can & ought to be interrogated as an aspect of the lives of all women w particular attention to trans women's experiences, as I stated above. very poor wording on my part, I'm sorry
muting this, DM me with questions / comments / if you can’t access the articles
everyone who disagrees with me so far has loudly admitted that they do not read which I think is so funny & speaks for itself
