Articles for DWF
Books reviewed by DWF
Articles for DWF
Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, 1985, n. 23-24, pp. 5-40
The author asks and tries to answer two questions: on the one hand why the choice of a woman to share her life and passions with another woman has been denied or compelled to disguise itself; on the other hand the reasons for a continued silence on lesbian existence even in openly feminist books.
She analyses several writings which take heterosexuality for granted, instead of considering its essence as a political institution, and then looks at the ways male power controls female sexuality. Reflecting on the writings of Catharine A. MacKinnon and Kathleen Barry, Rich examines the economical, symbolic and emotional aspects of these oppressive practices as ways of imposing heterosexuality upon women, in order to guarantee men's physical, economical and emotional rights of control.
The third and fourth parts of the essay introduce the concepts of lesbian existence and lesbian continuum - in opposition to clinical reductive definitions - to point to a series of experiences which embody the internalisation of a female subjectivity historically marking women's resistance to oppression, to institutionalised heterosexuality, to marriage. Erotic sensuality is the most violently repressed feature of women's experience.
Internalising a female subjectivity is a source of energy for all women, in order to change the social relations between the sexes: bringing to light this energy is a necessary step to dismantle the power wielded by men in all fields, which has provided a model for all other forms of exploitation and oppressive control.
Read the abstracts of the whole issue
go up
RICH Adrienne, Nato di donna, Milano, Garzanti, 1977
rev. by Marina Camboni, 1978, n. 9, pp. 161-163
RICH Adrienne, Lo spacco alla radice. Sources, a cura di Liana Borghi, Firenze,
Estro, 1985
rev. by Sara Zanghì, 1986, n. 2, pp. 144-146
RICH Adrienne, Come la tela del ragno. Poesie e saggi, edited by Marina
Camboni, Roma, La Goliardica, 1985
rev. by Sara Zanghì, 1986, n. 2, pp. 144-146