Adrienne Rich's Essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

From the first settlement of America in 1607, throughout its colonization, and through the Revolutionary War, American citizens owned slaves. They worked in the fields, provided domestic help, performed heavy manual labor, and white settlers depended on them to get the work done. But after these settlers freed themselves from the tyrannical clutches of the British government, many turned their focus to freeing the men they owned. From 1776 onward, American attitudes toward the institution of slavery changed. As the country slowly expanded westward, the opposition of slavery came to the forefront of the nation’s minds, drawing on economic and social ideas, like that of David Wilmot and the American Colonization Society, and on moral implications,

In Stephanie Fairyington's essay, “The Gay Option”, the author expresses regret about the framing she used to explain her sexuality when coming out as a homosexual to her mother. She told her mother that her homosexuality was a result of biology and not choice. As a result, Fairyington's mother began to refer to her sexually as a birth defect. This in not the outcome Fairyington desired. She explains that her intent was to gain acceptance from her mother not pity. That experience lead her to conclude that the best course of action for the LGBT community should be for them to turn away from using biology to explain their sexuality but to look instead to an argument of choice. Fairyington explains that an argument of choice will force the rest

In the 1680’s most Africans were working on plantations. As Mintz explains how black slavery become the dominant labor, “ 1680’s that Black slavery became the dominant labor system on plantations ” (2, Mintz). The colonists wanted the africans because they would work the best on plantations. This quote demonstrates the colonists gained power because more slaves were sold and The colonists gained more profit. In the Colonial America the slaves were being carried to the New World. As Olaudah Equiano illustrates how the slaves were brought to the new world, “ These filled me with astonishment which was soon converted into terror ” (1, Equiano). He was scared and like he never experienced slavery in his life. This quote demonstrates that the colonists gained power because the slaves were afraid of them and if they were afraid of them they wouldn’t

Defending slavery demonstrate the opinions and knowledge that the Southerners held concerning blacks and slavery. Paul Finkelman talks about slave legitimacy in colonial America. He argues that the first defense of slavery became visible after the end of American Revolution; it attempted to justify continuous forced labor with the Declaration of Independence. This essay aims at critically analyzing ideologies and racial theories that Southerners promoted to defend slavery, which included racial, political, legal, economic, and religious ideologies. Most specifically, this essay will discuss the legitimacy of slavery, in the earlier days, and justify this idea by using the religion and

George Chauncey’s Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, goes where no other historian had gone before, and that is into the world of homosexuality before World War II. Chauncey’s 1994 critically acclaimed book was a gender history breakthrough that gave light to a homosexual subculture in New York City. The author argues against the idea that homosexual men lived hidden away from the world. Chauncey’s book exposes an abundant culture throughout the United States, especially in New York. In this book Chauncey not only shows how the gay population existed, but “uncovers three widespread myths about the history of gay life before the rise of the gay movement which was isolation, invisibility, and internalization.” Chauncey argues against these theories that in the years 1890-1940, America had in fact a large gay culture. Chauncey book is impactful in the uncovering of a lost culture, but also works as an urban pre-World War II history giving an inside view of life in the city through sexuality and class.

Settler Colonialism imposes heteropatriarchy which is asocial framework in which heterosexuality and patriarchy are seen as ordinary, and natural, and in which different configurations are perceived as unusual, deviant, and offensive.

In her essay titled “Compulsive Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich claims that any alternative to heterosexual outcome is discouraged by society. The essay claims that Western tradition has used the heterosexual family model as the basic social

The controversies surrounding slavery have been established in many societies worldwide for centuries. In past generations, although slavery did exists and was tolerated, it was certainly very questionable,” ethically“. Today, the morality of such an act would not only be unimaginable, but would also be morally wrong. As things change over the course of history we seek to not only explain why things happen, but as well to understand why they do. For this reason, we will look further into how slavery has evolved throughout History in American society, as well as the impacts that it has had.

Sex and gender categories, such as “men,” “women,” “masculine” and “feminine,” have been in place for generations. They are socially constructed categories and expectations assigned to children at birth, in order to regulate and shape them into this “ideal” heterosexual being. Men are expected to embrace masculine qualities, while women are required to be feminine and submissive to the male authority. Monique Wittig’s article, “One is Not Born a Woman” observes how the class of “women” is not “natural,” but is created by the society and framed by the male ideology, as a way of producing a clear gender difference between men and women. J. M Coetzee reinforces Wittig’s beliefs by sharing similar ideas of hegemonic masculinity and male dominance

Adrienne Rich also speak compulsory heterosexuality in her work, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Compulsory heterosexuality as discussed by Rich is how we view heterosexuality as a part of institution of capitalism that maintains power through the ideas of heterosexuality being acceptable to society and how we do not allow for differences in the binary system. As Rich states, “the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness” (Rich, 135). Meaning that we understand how heterosexuality is maintained by our capitalism system just as we understand oppression of classism, racism, and gender differences. Heterosexuality becomes institutionalized by maintaining through the normalization of forcing us to believe in the capitalism

LGBTQ social movements have evolved over time from liberationist politics of the 1970s to an enormous contemporary focus on gay and lesbian marriage rights, a controversial and arguably assimilationist priority for mainstream LGBTQ advocacy groups. Different forms of activism have approached assimilationism versus societal reformation or preservation of unique constructions of queer identities with a myriad of arguments. In “The Trouble with Normal” by Michael Warner, the author focuses primarily on a criticism of gay marriage rights activism in which he posits that all marriage is “selective legitimacy.” He points to other LGBT movements and issues as more worthy of pursuing, particularly intersectional pursuits of equal rights for people regardless of coupled status. In “Marital Discord: Understanding the Contested Place of Marriage in the Lesbian and Gay Movement” authors Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor give a snapshot history of LGBTQ activism since the 1970s and offer similar arguments as Warner about the heteronormative and neoliberal nature of placing the fight for legal marriage rights at the forefront of LGBTQ activism, although they do also introduce emerging improvements with the increasingly intersectional awareness of modern advocacy efforts.

The United States, Africa, the Middle East and mostly all of the countries around the world have been known to in some shape or form to inhabit slaves and to engage in the business of slave trading. According to the text, in 1619 there were a small group of people, 32 to be exact that reached the shores of America in the Chesapeake (D. Hine, W. Hine and Harrold, 55). It has been long believed that this was the first group of African Americans in British North America; apart of a group who was taken from their home in Angola. Unfortunately during this time, it became apparent that the slaves and those of African descent would be apart of “chattel slavery,” a term coined by the British in the Chesapeake in reference to the enslaved being treated equally to that of the livestock and thus legally treated as property (57). Though the Emancipation Proclamation wouldn’t be a key event until 1863 that would ultimately “free the slaves,” there was a revolt thousands of years earlier by slaves that would lay the ground work for those like them in the future.

In the interwar period, concepts of sexuality and marriage were beginning to transform from union practises to marriages based on the idea of love and happiness. Notably, the happiness of a marriage was dependent on how fulfilling their sexual relationship is. The eroticization of marriage, as Angus McLaren describes the budding shift in the definition of marriage, created a subversive concept that both constrains heterosexual and homosexual practising men and women in middle-class society through the creation of prescribed gender traits. Which white middle-class men and women should participate in and adhere to to avoid being seen as an ‘abnormal’ sexual deviant as opposed to the budding normalisation of heterosexual practices as biologically ‘natural’.

The second essay by Adrienne Rich about “compulsory heterosexuality” argues that the only acceptable form of sexual relationship is only between a man and a woman. She claims that heterosexuality is not innate and only a product of different social constructs. Furthermore, she states that it served as a way to pacify the women and benefit from it for the idea simply leaves the woman to be submissive to the dominance of the male culture. This idea disempowers women and gives false consciousness. One example given was the male identification of women which means the internalization of the culture and the values of the oppressor. In simpler words, it is the act of women putting the well-being on the man above theirs. Therefore, male-dominated

Colonist ideology states that the world and its occupants are either the colonizers or the colonized. From this perspective, it is evident that everything is either black or white, with ideally no room for any gray areas. One example of this division is the colonial practice of “othering.” In Using Critical Theory, Lois Tyson explains that “one of the clearest symptoms of colonist ideology is the practice of othering: judging those who are different as inferior” (248). Here, the European colonizers become the “self” and the colonized natives become the “other.” The other is seen as “unintelligent,” “savage,” and “primitive,” or everything the civilized colonists are not (Tyson 248). As a result, colonial subjects are placed on the bottom rung of social hierarchy and regarded as such.