Week 9 notes Compulsive Heterosexuality PDF

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Analysis Notes of Required Readings Professor Guzman...

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Page 1 of 8 Holland Ackerman! Professor Guzman ! Gender 103! Weekly Notes: Adrienne Rich Compulsive Heterosexuality !

“Biologically men have only one innate orientation--a sexual one that draws them to women--while women have two innate orientations, sexual toward men and reproductive toward their young (1).”

male orientation comes from attraction to women where as women are attracted to men due to sexual nature AND reproductive desires. Foundations of Heterosexual relationships/ orientations.

“The bias of compulsory heterosexuality, through which lesbian experience is perceived on a scale ranging from deviant to abhorrent, or simply rendered invisible (1).”

Lesbian experience demonized on a scale defined by heteronormativity. Lesbianism is either vilified on this basis or is made invisible.

“In none of them is the question ever raised, whether in a different context, or other things being equal, women would choose heterosexual coupling and marriage; heterosexuality is presumed as a "sexual preference" of most women," either implicitly or explicitly (2).”

Is the overwhelming sexual preference of women influenced and a result of heteronormativity? If the world was not heteronormative, would women still choose to be heterosexual?

“Their thesis in this book is that the advice given American women by male health professionals, particularly in the areas of marital sex, maternity, and child care, has echoed the dictates of the economic marketplace and the role capitalism has needed women to play in production and/ or reproduction (2).”

(goes over first book into thesis) Economic stability, capitalism, reproductive labor/ power influence women into the role of heterosexual relationships. Male health professionals give women advice that is rooted in these societal constructs.

“…1656 the New Haven Colony prescribed the death penalty for lesbians (3) .”

Lesbians throughout history have been so marginalized as to be put to death. Fear= heteronormativity ? lesbians oppressed throughout history for “their own good”.

“Dorothy Dinnerstein makes an impassioned argument for the sharing of parenting between women and men and for an end to what she perceives as the male/female symbiosis of "gender arrangements," which she feels are leading the species further and further into violence and self-extinction (3).”

strict gender roles in parenting are not benefiting children. parenting needs to be unified and equal.

Page 2 of 8 “…women only, are responsible for child care in the sexual division of labor has led to an entire social organization of gender inequality, and that men as well as women must become primary carers for children if that inequality is to change (4).”

Women gender roles confine women to the household and caregiving. This is the basis of gender inequality. The belief in ending this pillar of gender inequality is by having men contribute an equal amount to child rearing.

“Chodorow concludes that because women have women as mothers, "The mother remains a primary internal object [sic] to the girl, so that heterosexual relationships are on the model of a nonexclusive, second relationship for her, whereas for the boy they recreate an exclusive, primary relationship (4)“.

Because the mother is heterosexual and the identity is ingrained into the minds of the daughters, the daughters believe that heterosexual relationships are the norm/ right. This also allows for the taboos on homosexuality. ! -Also economic dependence on men shown thrown the role of housewife.

“This assumption of female heterosexuality seems to me in itself remarkable: it is an enormous assumption to have glided so silently into the foundations of our thought (5).”

The societal norm of heterosexuality is an assumption that is upheld through the cycle of homophobia and the female Oedipus complex.

“…acknowledge the societal forces that wrench women's emotional and erotic energies away from themselves and other women and from woman identified values. These forces, as I shall try to show, range from literal physical enslavement to the disguising and distorting of possible options (5).”

Societal forces influence women into heteronormative mindsets. These forces keep women oppressed in sexual/emotional shame. Implicit and explicit forces.

“I do not wish to psychologize here, but rather Having men take over the role/job of child carer would not radically change the views/ power of to identify sources of male power I believe large numbers of men could, in fact, undertake the patriarchy. child care on a large scale without radically altering the balance of male power in a male identified society (6).” "men's ability to deny women sexuality or to force it upon them; to command or exploit their labor to control their produce; to control or rob them of their children; to confine them physically and prevent their movement; to use them as objects in male transactions; to cramp their creativeness; or to withhold from them large areas of the society's knowledge and cultural attainments (6).”

In Gough’s writing, she elaborates on the 8 power sources imposed on women by men. These are the 8 characteristics of male power. These power structures enforce the patriarchy and continually oppress women.

Page 3 of 8 “These are some of the methods by which male power is manifested and maintained. Looking at the schema, what surely impresses itself is the fact that we are confronting not a simple maintenance of inequality and property possession, but a pervasive cluster of forces, ranging from physical brutality to control of consciousness, that suggests that an enormous potential counterforce is having to be restrained (7).”

these 8 methods keep men in power. These methods don’t only include tangible sources of power, such as property rights, but also physical violence. The sources of power can be grouped together to continually enforce male dominance and to hurt women in all ways.

“The function of pornography as an influence on consciousness is a major public issue of our time, when a multibillion-dollar industry has the power to disseminate increasingly sadistic, women-degrading visual images (7).”

Porn is the visualization of the oppression of women. The industry is just one mode of economic turned systematic (vise versa) oppression. These images continually reaffirm degrading beliefs of women, especially in regard to woman submission. Porn creates a visual representation of violence, misogyny, etc, against women.

“Pornography does not simply create a climate in which sex and violence are interchangeable, it widens the range of behavior considered acceptable from men in heterosexual intercourse--behavior that reiteratively strips women of their autonomy, dignity, and sexual potential, including the potential of loving and being loved by women in mutuality and integrity (7).”

Porn merges sex with violence and allows for men to dehumanize women. This then makes heterosexual men feel like they are allowed to behave this way in real life and in real relationships. This robs women from their autonomy in sexual and romantic heterosexual relationships.

“Thus, women in the workplace are at the mercy of sex-as power in a vicious circle. Economically disadvantaged, women-whether waitresses or professors--endure sexual harassment to keep their jobs and learn to behave in a complaisantly and ingratiatingly heterosexual manner because they discover this is their true qualification for employment, whatever the job description (8).”

Women are taught that in order to keep their jobs, they must be sexually appealing. This especially hurts women in low income areas who must keep their jobs at al costs. This perpetuates the idea that women must be sexual in order to have gainful employment. This also perpetuates a heteronormative culture.

“The fact is that the workplace, among other social institutions, is a place where women have learned to accept male violation of our psychic and physical boundaries as the price of survival; where women have been educated - no less than by romantic literature or by pornography - to perceive ourselves as sexual prey (8).”

Women have endured sexual harassment and standards in the workplace for so long, that they believe it is a normalized phenomena. The violation of boundaries is tolerated in order to keep their jobs. These ideas are perpetuated by romantic literature, movies, porn, etc which allude to the idea that women are only valued in society as sexual prey.

Page 4 of 8 “It seems more probable that men really fear, not that they will have women's sexual appetites forced on them, or that women want to smother and devour them, but that women could be indifferent to them altogether, that men could be allowed sexual and emotional therefore economic - access to women only on women's terms, otherwise being left on the periphery of the matrix (9).”

There is a theory that men fear women because they are more sexually dominant, however it is really because if men were not overtly dominant, then women would be indifferent to them sexually. If this was the case, women would then control the basic sexual function and in turn emotional/ economic access.

“She sees the rape paradigm--where the victim of sexual assault is held responsible for her own victimization--as leading to the rationalization and acceptance of other forms of enslavement where the woman is presumed to have "chosen" her fate, to embrace it passively, or to have courted it perversely through rash or unchaste behavior (9).”

Forms of enslavement upon women of all races and classes stems back to the male need for sexual dominance/oppressive power. The submission of women in these dynamics leads to the rape-paradigm. This teaches women/victims that they are the reason why they were raped, enslaved. It was their choice to become victims.

“From its point of view, women are expendable as long as the sexual and emotional needs of the male can be satisfied (10).”

In this theory, women are valued in society only in regard to men’s needs/wants. Their emotional and sexual submission is treated as a natural phenomena. Eventually women learn to accept this mode of survival.

“Compulsory heterosexuality simplifies the task of the procurer and pimp in worldwide prostitution rings and "eros centers," while, in the privacy of the home, it leads the daughter to "accept" incest/rape by her father, the mother to deny that it is happening, the battered wife to stay on with an abusive husband (10).”

Compulsive heterosexuality allows for the cycle of abuse and oppression to continue inside and outside the home. It makes abuse and submission seem like a fundamental part of femininity. It is hard to escape unless it is actively acknowledged, taught, and challenged.

“The adolescent male sex drive, which, as both young women and men are taught, once triggered cannot take responsibility for itself or take no for an answer, becomes, according to Barry, the norm and rationale for adult male sexual behavior a condition of arrested sexual development (11?12?).”

(I have been doing two quotes per page, but have mixed up which page I am currently on as there are no actual numbers.) I find this quote funny in a sarcastic way. Both boys and girls are taught that the male sexual drive can not be controlled and is therefore, not responsible for its violent and demanding actions. This way of thinking allows men to be reckless in their sexuality and aggressive/controlling of women’s sexuality. Then women are taught to accept this as natural/ normal.

Page 5 of 8 “… indoctrination in male credibility and status can still create synapses in thought, denials of feeling, wishful thinking, a profound sexual and intellectual confusion (12).”

Although women form support groups or radical organizations to redefine male and female sexuality, they are still met with the fundamental belief system of male credibility.

“…one form of false consciousness that serves compulsory heterosexuality is the maintenance of a mother-son relationship between women and men, including the demand that women provide maternal solace, nonjudgmental nurturing, and compassion for their harassers, rapists, and batterers …(13).”

the maintenance of submission of the mother to the son and wife to the husband is created in our heteronormative culture. Mothers are taught to be forgiving and kind to their sons no matter what (including rapists, harassers, etc.) there is no familial consequence of male aggressive actions.

“…the enforcement of heterosexuality for women as a means of assuring male right of physical, economical, and emotional access (13).”

Male domination in the form of compulsive heteronormativity is a means of economic, sexual, emotional, physical oppression against women. This is fundamentally much more than “gender inequality”.

“Yet 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 (14).”

Heterosexuality is a cultural restriction that is enforced through oppression and societal norms like Racism and the Caste system. Heteronormativity is created and maintained but he forces within male dominance.

“The destruction of records and memorabilia and letters documenting the realities of lesbian existence must be taken very seriously as a means of keeping heterosexuality compulsory for women, since what has been kept from our knowledge is joy, sensuality, courage, and community, as well as guilt, self-betrayal, and pain (14).”

The invisibility of lesbianism is enforced by the destruction of lesbian memorabilia. This destruction is a mode of enforcement of heteronormative compulsory. Lesbians have been continually denied joy and freedom, and they have been bogged down by shame.

"I perceive the lesbian experience as being, like motherhood, a profoundly female experience, with particular oppressions, meanings, and potentialities we cannot comprehend as long as we simply bracket it with other sexually stigmatized existences (15).”

The lesbian experience is individual and is profoundly female in nature. The grouping of lesbians with other sexual orientations, experiences, marginalized groups takes away from their hardships and experiences.

“…clinical associations in its patriarchal definition, female friendship and comradeship have been set apart from the erotic, thus limiting the erotic itself (15).”

The patriarchy defines female relationships as strictly asexual. This is taught through history and in society until any sort or erotic nature is ignored in female camaraderie.

Page 6 of 8 “Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as "apolitical " both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life (16).”

Women who resisted the ideals of marriage in society were considered odd, but defined their own sexual/emotional identities without men. These women used their work and their life experiences to portray a world without male dominance in marriage.

“If we think of heterosexuality as the "natural" emotional and sensual inclination for women, lives such as these are seen as deviant, as pathological, or as emotionally and sensually deprived (16).”

A heteronormative culture denies women their choice of sexual liberation and enforces male dominance. This deprives them of sexual, pathological emotional, etc. senses and exploration.

“We can no longer have patience with Dinnerstein's view that women have simply collaborated with men in the "sexual arrangements" of history; we begin to observe behavior, both in history and in individual biography, that has hitherto been invisible or misnamed; behavior that often constitutes, given the limits of the counterforce exerted in a given time and place, radical rebellion (17).”

There needs to be a distinct separation of women and men equal relationships and that of male dominance in heteronormativity. The behavior needs to change in order to create radical rebellion of social norms.

“Heterosexuality has been both forcibly and subliminally imposed on women, yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment~ psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty "Compulsory heterosexuality'' was named as one of the "crimes against women by the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes against Women in 1976 (17).”

The testimonies of the two women. Women were raped in order to accept their “heterosexual nature” and to deny their lesbian desires. They were tortured, imprisoned, etc by doctors and their husbands. Compulsory heterosexuality is a crime against women.

“We may faithfully or ambivalently have obeyed the institution, but our feelings--and our sensuality--have not been tamed or contained within it (18).”

Lesbians cannot be contained within the oppressive institution of compulsive heteronormativity.

“…in motherhood, and in many kinds of heterosexual behavior, including the rituals of courtship; the pretense of asexuality by the nineteenth-century wife; the simulation of orgasm by the prostitute, the courtesan, the twentieth-century "sexually liberated" woman (18).”

This is the “double life”, the crux of female experience. The history of female sexual oppression and the denial of lesbianism.

Page 7 of 8 “Sex is thus equated with attention from the male, who is charismatic though brutal, infantile, or unreliable (19)”.

Females are subjected to violence and neglect in sexual and romantic relationships. Though they believe this is normal in the heteronormative culture and in their heterosexual relationship. The discourse is equated with love and sex is equated with attention from the male.

“Throughout the novel the theme of doublelife emerges… (19).”

The double life phenomenon through the experiences of Belle and her husband Hoinck. Violence and neglect= sex=love. He hurts her, but she can’t leave him.

“The denial of reality and visibility to women's passion for women, women's choice of women as allies, life companions~ and community; the forcing of such relationships into dissimulation and their disintegration under intense pressure, have meant an incalculable loss to the power of all women to change the social relations of the sexes to liberate ourselves and each other (20).”

Compulsive heterosexuality denies women their own forms of power. It denies them the ability to choose their own life partners and to evaluate their own relationships with other women. By forcing lesbians to hide their relationships and to assimilate into heterosexual relationships, the patriarchy gains more power. Power comes from self-identification and women-identification.

“It pulls on the energy of such women even as it drains the energy of "closeted" lesbians--the energy exhausted in the double-lire (20).”

Compulsive heterosexuality drains the power that comes from Women-identification. Closeted lesbians are forced to drain their own power by conforming to heterosexual relationships and identities.

“Yet woman-hatred is so embedded in culture, so "normal" does it seem, so profoundly is it neglected as a social phenomenal, that any women, even feminists and lesbians, fail to identify it until it takes, in their own lives, some permanently unmistakable and shattering form Lesbian exi...