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this idea that compulsory heterosexuality is an “experience” at all, much less an experience that only lesbians have, is already off base. it’s very individualising and dare I say liberal to treat a set of social & economic forces as if it’s some kind of disease with symptoms
if you say anything like “suffer from comp. het.” as if it’s an illness that can be regarded on the level of the individual (much less the individual’s MIND) you need to rethink your entire approach to this. it defangs the analysis & it’s misogynistic. maybe even pathologising
it’s still very much fuck Adrienne Rich to be clear but it’s telling how many people want to yell about this without even reading that essay (not to say treating it as gospel—just reading and actually trying to understand and think through the concept)
because if you do so (compulsory heterosexuality involves a web of things that work to make heterosexuality & thus providing labour in the home the only option for women--social pressure and social threats, the economic insecurity of lesbians & single women, violence...
...& making the possibility of relationships with women for those who are or would be attracted to them disappear practically or conceptually)--it becomes very obvious that this is a thing that will harm women as a whole (keeping class in mind), regardless of their sexuality
making it unfeasible for straight women to remain single is a part of this. paying women less because their pay cheque is seen as supplementary to a man's is part of this. pressure on straight women to remain with men they don't want for fear of stigma or violence is part of this
so I say it's misogynistic to act like compulsory heterosexuality is a "lesbian-only experience" because if you deny the pressure on, yes, even straight women, to be with men, you end up naturalising heterosexuality.
you lose the ability to see it as political. you end up acting like this is all about lesbians falling afoul of this system bc we naturally and intrinsically diverge from a set of patterns and roles that are apparently natural and comfortable for straight women? which is absurd
in fact, if you fully get the point of conceptualising heterosexuality as political, you'll understand that compulsory heterosexuality obviously effects men too... it guides their behaviour surrounding courtship & while in relationships, leads to entitlement and violence, &c.
so while I disagree with parts of Rich's analysis (she has a radical feminist sort of tendency to conceptualise the oppression of women as transhistorical and transcultural), the concept as she pointed it out has a lot of utility for materialist feminist politics
