SPOILERS AHEAD
Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" is a thorough dive into the gaps in feminist study during the time period (1970s-early 1980s). Rich defines "compulsory heterosexuality" and evaluates the ways that it informs gendered expectations, the impact it has on how we interact with others, and the real-life manifestations and implications of this practice. Most shocking is the similarities we see between the environment that inspired this essay from Rich and gender/sexuality studies of the modern day.
Rich's main complaint is the interdisciplinary assumption of heterosexuality as "default." She argues that this has major implications for how women, especially lesbian women, navigate the intersections of femininity, sexual orientation, economy, and identity. She mentions how historically women did not have the luxury of loving what is natural to them as heterosexuality was required for economic survival via marriage. Failure to adhere to social expectations often resulted in social or even violent consequences, vastly skewing older studies about femininity, sexual orientation, and "womanness."
Rich also believes that how "modern" gender and sexuality studies are built on a foundation of female (particularly lesbian) sexuality as viewed through the male heterosexual lens. In other words, Rich wants future scholarship to consider heterosexuality as a "political institution" as scholarship does with lesbianism (637). She continues this by listing concrete examples of how female/lesbian sexuality is evaluated in erudition with the masculine heterosexual tilt.
Rich's article shows the shift between more archaic gender and sexuality studies to where we are today which, even by Rich's standards, is better but not where we need to be. This is most important to her as gendered discrimination is akin to other forms of domination. She ends the article by prompting the reader to achieve a better "grasp of the politics and economics, as well as the cultural propaganda, of heterosexuality to carry us beyond individual cases or diversified group situations into the complex kind of overview needed to undo the power men everywhere wield over women, power which has become a model for every other form of exploitation and control" (Rich 660).
