Female Relationships and Identity

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence Overview

• Argues against the erasure of lesbian existence in feminist literature
• Encourages heterosexual feminists to view heterosexuality as a political institution that disempowers women
• Suggests new criticism types and questions for classrooms and journals, bridging the gap between lesbian and feminist perspectives
• Urges feminists to read, write or teach from a perspective of unexamined heterocentricity

Intensified Pressures and Institutional Control

• Post essay writing the pressure to conform in an increasingly conservative society intensifies
• The New Right promotes that women are men's emotional and sexual property
• Institutions traditionally controlling women like patriarchal motherhood, economic exploitation, nuclear family and compulsory heterosexuality are strengthened
• Legislation, religious fiat, media imagery and censorship efforts contribute to this strengthening

Economic & Social Challenges Faced by Lesbians

• Single mothers face increasing economic hardship
• Lesbians, if not in disguise, experience discrimination in hiring, harassment, and street violence
• Open lesbians are fired and others warned to stay closeted even within feminist-inspired institutions
• Assimilation by the retreat into sameness is the most debilitating response to repression, economic insecurity, and renewed open season on difference

Male Violence & Intensified Sexuality Debates

• There is increasing documentation of male violence against women within the home
• Consistent stream of writing and criticism comes from women and lesbians of color
• An intensified debate on female sexuality continues with sadomasochism and pornography as key words

The Core Argument

• Acknowledges some parts of the essay would be worded differently, qualified, or expanded currently
• Heterosexual feminists will gain political strength by critically assessing the ideology that demands heterosexuality
• Lesbians should not assume immunity from this ideology and the institutions it supports
• Critique is for recognizing one's strength and no thinking of oneself as a victim
• Resistance holds a major theme in this essay and women's lives

Innate orientations and compulsory heterosexuality bias

• Biologically men have only one innate sexual orientation towards women
• Whereas women have two, sexual towards men and reproductive towards their young
• Compulsory heterosexuality biases perceiving lesbian experience scales from deviant to abhorrent or invisible

Women in Contemporary society

• Criticizes the assumption women are "innately" sexually oriented to men
• Finds the one that lesbians act out of bitterness toward men, and widespread in literature and sciences,
• Investigates how & why women's intimacy, partnership & love has been crushed, invalidated, and forced into disguise
• Explores the neglect of lesbian existence in writings, also feminist scholarship

Feminist Shortcomings Criticized

• Any theory/creation treating lesbian existence as marginal, "sexual preference," or mirror of hetero/homosexual relations is weakened
• Argues feminist theory no longer voice toleration of “lesbianism" as an "alternative lifestyle" or hint to lesbians
• The feminist critique on compulsory heterosexual orientation for women is overdue

Compulsory Heterosexuality and its Impact

• Starts by discussing four feminist books
• Takes that the sexes disordered and problematic and seek changing paths as a basic assumption
• Explores how authors failed to address lesbian existence as a reality, how it is knowledge and influence for women
• Or heterosexuality itself as male dominance base, with heterosexuality presupposed in their considerations

Overlooked Aspects

• There is a failure to examine the power structure affecting preferences
• Analysis excludes the death penalty for lesbians (New Haven Colony)
• There is a historical link to the medical profession treating lesbians, including documents of torture
• No examination of the economics of prescriptive heterosexuality with the economics imperative to heterosexuality, marriage, sanctions imposed on single women, and widows as deviant despite an often enlightening Marxist-feminist analysis

Silence on the matter

• Despite that Miller's book is about the psychology of women she does not mention lesions
• Heterocentric assumptions are shared according to favourable book reviews
• Dinnerstein ahistorical view of collaborative social relations are hostile, exploitative, and destructive to life itself
• Separism has something to teach us: "separate women could in principle set out to learn from scratch"
• The phrases lack on the many forms of separatism have actually been addressing

The Lesbian Reality

• Women's resistance throughout history to nonheterosexual existence to the made possible extent by their contexts
• Undertake it even though few women have been in financial security resist marriage alogether
• Attacks against spinsters and unmarried varied from aspersion, mockery to the burning and torturing of millions
• Chodorow has the fact that women and women, are only responsible for looking after offspring, leading an entire organisation or gender inequality

Compulsory heterosexuality effect on emotionality & eroticism

• There is the fact that emotionally important is related to women and intense mixed for relationships for the "double life" for the reasons given
• Women’s feelings are secondary as relationships that lack intensity and emotional connection result
• Compulsory heterosexuality is not "preference,” fragments the erotic from the emotional

Overlooked Factors

• The socializations and overt power of forces for channeling ladies enter marriage/het romance, pressure by the silences literature/television images
• As if women drawing themselves complementaries (Mystical/Biological), heterosexual inclination, "preference," "choice" which draws them to men
• Oedipus complex needed due to the torturous
• The extension can be asserted by world genuinel equality or Nurturing
• The such is a notion sexuality or liberal or not

Feminist Perspective & Societal forces

• Feminist perspective; The following can be seen
• "Would'Ve women redirect that search"-emotional erotic to be enforced loyalty/subservience to men.
• Feminist/Theorists pains "know".-Forces wrench emotion and way

Lesbian existence and sources of male power

• Mothering sufficient the air accompanied view increased parenting minimize antagonism sexes/equality of an imbalance.
• Psychologise Sources of power a large % alter balance male "identified"
• A framework is that: Men's ability deny women’s sexuality: (by means of chastity punishment adultery punishment/death)
• Forces it Upon Them (Socialization "drive", Prostitution, harems, frigidity)

Means of Control

• command or use male means (Institutions, horizontal segregation contraception)
• Children father legal kidnapping sterilisation
• Confined "Feminine (high heals veiling)
• Women as object price, arranged prostitute "host"
• Cramp Creativeness (restriction for "sexual tradition

Societal Normalization of Abuse

• Simple/un/fair maintenance, control ranging from Brutality with be Resisted".
• "Easily enforce heterosexual (Belt / Film / Literature / Exicision)
• Multi power dissemination erotic less women degrading images or (so)
• Natural sexual prey love Humiliation erotica or (submission is normal sexual "sensuality)
• Inter change strips potential by mutuality

Harassment and Gender Segregation in the Workplace

• Under gender, Inferior in raises "collectively, individual the female point

Subservience and Manipulation

Requirement to attract to men. The women are economically sexually in the trap for the bottom" - forces society "employees" to control sexual behavior for

• Professor/Waitress "employment"-qualifications
• Being closed job simply relationships
• Play differential required

Feminist Views

• Radically (force Intercourse as used force than" daily critics BrownMiller)
• "Inter course Rape one (define preliminary)
• Equality may as eroticism

The Power of Consent

• In a place-boundary, "self" Prey. Economic for/the protect institution from (a.q-macKinon finally)
• Inter the conceptions incidents desires for "ordinary” sexuality as self harm

Lesbians and their "Double Lives"

• How is more men"
• No the" women are now
• Re-exhibition
• How much, their-selves correct that "in the and" the for

Explores the societal pressures affecting female relationships in the protagonist's life, examining how social sciences contribute to marginalization and critiques of heterosexual norms. It studies differences in experiences such as sex and identity. Lorraine Bethel's views on Black women and lesbian identity are examined.