“Compulsory” is the opposite of “optional”. “Compulsory heterosexuality” is exactly what it sounds like - being straight is something our culture tries to force on us.
It affects people of every gender, but it’s mostly been studied as something that affects women. This is because compulsory heterosexuality easily ties in with the misogyny that causes women’s sexualities and even identities to be defined by our relationships with men.
Women are taught from a very early age that making men happy is our job. We’re supposed to be pretty for men, we’re supposed to change the way we talk so men will take us more seriously, we’re supposed to want a man’s love more than anything else. Our magazines are full of sex tips on how to better please men, our movies are about how we’re supposed to fall in love with men. We literally cannot exist in public without men loudly grading us on how well we’re pleasing them visually.
So… what happens if you want to be with women? What happens if you’re not attracted to men at all? When you’re trained from childhood to see
romantic/sexual relationships with men - and only men - as major life goals, how do you separate that from what you want?
Compulsory heterosexuality is the voice in my head that says I must really be het even when I’m in love with a woman. Compulsory heterosexuality is what forces lesbians to struggle through learning the difference between what you’ve been taught you want (being with men) and what you do want (being with women), which is why so many lesbians have dated men at
some point.
Compulsory heterosexuality is very similar to heteronormativity - the
assumption that straight is the default. We’re trained from birth to believe that we will find someone of the other binary gender, fall in love, have sex, etc. In a million tiny ways we’re taught that only relationships with the other binary gender are valid. (And if you’re not one of the binary genders, this can be even more confusing.)
Compulsory heterosexuality is built into you from the moment you’re born into this time and place, and it takes a long time to dismantle it.
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Am I a lesbian? (the lesbian masterdoc)
Non-FictionDISCLAIMER!! I am not claiming the lesbian masterdoc I just wanted to share it with all of you. I wanted to help people find this "masterdoc" because it might be hard to find somewhere else. Essentially, the Lesbian Masterdoc is a document that has...
