Category:Compulsory Heterosexuality

Compulsory heterosexuality is a term popularized by radical feminist and poet Adrienne Rich in her landmark 1980 essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. It refers to the social, cultural, political, and economic forces that pressure or coerce women into forming sexual and romantic relationships with men, regardless of their genuine desires or orientations. Within a radical feminist framework, heterosexuality is not seen as a natural or neutral orientation, but as a deeply institutionalized system that upholds male supremacy by ensuring women's emotional, sexual, reproductive, and domestic labour remains accessible to men.

This system is enforced not only through overt violence or discrimination, but through social conditioning, media representation, educational norms, and economic dependency. From early childhood, girls are inundated with messages that pair female worth with male desire, teaching them to aspire to male attention, fear female independence, and view intimacy with men as their ultimate fulfilment. Even women who do not feel authentic attraction to men often conform to heterosexual relationships because alternatives such as celibacy, lesbianism, or non-participation are rendered invisible, ridiculed, or punished. This erasure of possibility makes heterosexuality appear “natural” and inevitable, masking the reality that for many women, it is a role performed under duress.

Compulsory heterosexuality serves the patriarchal order by maintaining women in subordinate positions. In heterosexual relationships, women are disproportionately expected to nurture, submit, and sacrifice. They are the caregivers, the emotional regulators, and the sexual objects often with little reciprocity. By tethering female identity to male partnership, patriarchy ensures that women's energies are redirected away from self-development, female solidarity, or political resistance, and toward the upkeep of men and the nuclear family unit. Even so-called “egalitarian” heterosexual relationships are built on a foundation shaped by centuries of male dominance, and the power imbalances often persist in subtle, normalized ways .Furthermore, compulsory heterosexuality isolates women from one another. Female friendships, when too intimate, are pathologized as suspicious or inappropriate. Women's emotional needs are framed as something that must ultimately be met by a man, even though the deepest emotional intimacy many women experience is often with other women. This enforced emotional disconnection prevents women from building the kind of collective power and shared resistance that could destabilize patriarchal control.