Compulsory Heterosexuality Info Dump

Compulsory Heterosexuality Info Dump

So because a friend of mine didn't know what comp het was and their internet history is monitored by their parents so they can't just use google, I'm doing a very quick research dive and giving you guys the results in case there are others out there who are in the same situation. I'll also be tagging blogs bigger than me because again, there might be fellow queers out their who are in the same boat as my friend and I want them to have access to this information.

So what is compulsory heterosexuality (or comp het)?

Comp het is in essence the societal belief and enforcement of being straight.

What does this mean?

In basic form it means that the only options presented to everyone, from the moment of birth, is that of a cis, amatonormative, heterosexual lifestyle.

You are given two gender options, these gender options determine the two roles you're allowed to fulfill, husband and wife, and you are told that these two roles are what will make you happy and are what you are supposed to strive for.

Meaning society, if you are born AFAB, tells you you're going to one day get married, it's going to be a boy, and this is what will make you happy. Almost everything in life is then seen through this lens. How attractive your are, how you are supposed to talk, how you're supposed to behave, etc is all considered through the lens of if a man will be attracted to you.

On the flip side, if you are born AMAB society tells you there are roles you have to fulfill as well. You are told you will one day want a wife, that you have to be able to have a job to provide for her, that you have to behave in a certain emotional way to be strong for her, that if the things you like are too feminine well then you're gay or a girl which is a problem because at the end of the day you're supposed to want the girl-fiance-wife.

This literally just sounds like the patriarchy.

Yes, it does, because it's caused by it. Nowadays people commonly know about compulsory heterosexuality from the Lesbian Masterdoc, but the term actually originated by Adrienne Rich in 1980.

Adrienne Rich in her article Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence put forward three ideas, 1) that heterosexuality and lesbianism were institutions themselves/possible political ideologies, 2) that heterosexuality as a system if not constantly maintained and upheld would eventually crumble and 3) that heterosexuality as a system could be opted out of and actively fought against whether or not you were actually attracted to women/non-women.

This is very different from the way we currently think of and define those terms, I am aware of that, but her point does still stand to some degrees that comp het, cisnormativity and amatonormativity all crumble when we stop rigidly enforcing the structures that uphold them, i.e., the patriarchy, misogyny, classism, and racism.

Ok but like what does that actually look like?

It can look like a lot of things, for a lot of different people. In the Lesbian Masterdoc you see comp het presented from a straightforward lesbian lens (of a 19 year old figuring out and defining their own sexuality guys, I'm not gonna sit here and critique it and rip it to death, go do that somewhere else).

This is therefore presented through things like women/non-women who were raised/socialized as women possibly having crushes on men, but they're always unattainable in some way (celebrities, fictional, someone real but they wouldn't actually ever be able to truly be in a relationship with, etc). It might also show up for lesbians as liking the idea of a man but being uncomfortable when one actually wants to move forward in the process. Or even sometimes it might show up as sexual fantasies with men but they're faceless, they're more an idea, or you're actually viewing another woman sleeping with him.

This presentation of comp het has made a lot of bi/pan/mspec people uncomfortable because they feel they too have experiencing comp het and when reading the Lesbian Masterdoc it's presented as if experiencing this is a straight shot towards being a lesbian.

And they're right that comp het isn't experienced by just lesbians. For mspecs who present feminine/as women this could be in the feeling that they have to dress a certain way to be presentable, but presentable is based on appealing to men. This can mean something as simple as women are expected to wear makeup, always, regardless of if they're looking to seek men's attention or not, because that's the base standard.

For mspecs who present masculine this can look like the inability to express themselves in an overly emotional manner because that doesn't make them "strong" and if they're not "strong" then they won't attract women, and that's what they're supposed to be doing.

For mspecs in general that can look like their queer looking relationships to be seen as a phase even if their mspec-ness is respected because of course they're eventually going to get married to a man/woman.

This can affect polyamorous cishet people in that they're seen as doing heterosexuality wrong because you're supposed to have the one partner and the 2.5 kids.

This can affect aspecs because they're told they'll never truly feel fulfilled if they don't have that boyfriend/girlfriend/partner to love them in a way that's so special nothing else could match up.

This affects all of us guys is my point.

How is this helpful to me?

Well for sapphics and lesbians (or sapphics/mspecs confused on if they are actually lesbians) this can be a helpful concept to consider because it can help you determine what relationships you truly want to pursue, which is the main point I feel is to be gained from the Lesbian Masterdoc. As she's put it "it's way more important to ask yourself if you can be truthfully happy with a man than if you’re attracted to them"

So if you're a sapphic who experiences attraction to men but you honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider the idea of comp het.

If you're Achillean the opposite of this can be true, if you've been attracted to women before but honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider whether comp het is working on you.

For mspecs this can be a helpful term to throw over the table back at your parents when they ask when you're going to get a "real relationship".

This can be a helpful term to consider when asking "am I forcing myself to wear mascara because I feel this is the only way I look presentable or do I actually like mascara."

Or it can be a helpful concept to look back on when undermining our internalized ideals of misogyny, towards ourselves and others.

This is a helpful term to put in our tool boxes to talk about the harm the systems of patriarchy, classism, and racism impose upon us.

Comp het can help us to understand why so many people look down on polyamory as a legitimate way of life.

It can be a helpful term for aspecs who are trying to figure out if they really want to date/have sex, or if they just believe these are the only things that will make you happy.

In general

Compulsory heterosexuality is just another term to describe a system we are all intimately familiar with. But by giving us the words to describe our experiences, it gives us the power to communicate those experiences more effectively, and to possibly understand why we're experiencing them.

This is just a bare basic knowledge post.

Honestly if you have the ability to, as in your internet history is not monitored in the way my friend's is, I encourage you to go on the deep dive through the sources listed below. Many of them are honestly only 30 pages long, that's a relatively short read, and understanding queer theory like this not only helps you to understand your own identity, but the ways in which you are connected to the rest of the fellow queer community.

Sources

Lesbian Masterdoc

Queer Theory 101: Compulsory Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Normativities Defined

Taglist

I'm tagging blogs bigger than me so that this has an easier time getting passed around as I mainly talk about aspec issues because I am aspec, but as stated above, I wanted to make sure that queer people who's internet histories are monitored and are only able to find information through tumblr safely could do so.

@our-queer-experience @our-sapphic-experience @our-lesbian-experience @our-aspec-experience @our-polyamorous-experience @our-pansexual-experience @our-unlabelled-experience @our-aroace-experience @our-mspec-experience @our-questioning-experience @our-bisexual-experience

like I'm genuinely so fucking tired of white lgbts

I love being a lesbian! I love the community that lesbians of colour have built!

but it's a damn shame that we had to build our own distinct community because of how white lesbians treat us

white lesbians have like four different ways that they treat us: fetishization, disgust, erasure, and false allyship. and they're all equally bad and hurtful

constantly telling studs that you want them to beat you up. talking about lesbians of colour like we're sex objects. defending so-called "raceplay". do you really think you're better than the white men who tell woc that they're really into asian girls or latinas? it's fetishization!

and the disgust. disrespecting our cultures, our skintones. talking about your "preference" for other white girls. talking shit about black lesbians' hair.

or you try to erase us. you only acknowledge white lesbians. your wlw positivity blog is only white girls. you talk about iconic lesbians and only mention white ones. you imply or outright say that cultures of colour (especially in the global south) are inherently homophobic, like lesbians of colour don't even exist.

and the one that leaves the worst taste in my mouth? the false allyship. claiming to support us until it comes time to actually do something about it. letting people get away with racism because they're lgbt+. getting mad at us for calling out racism in the community. telling us it's okay to talk about racism, but we have to be nicer about it, that we're too judgemental or confrontational

and no matter which of these forms of white supremacy a white lesbian practices, they will always always hide behind being lgbt+ to get away with it. white lesbians will form a united front to defend each other from accountability for racism

it's no fucking wonder we've built our own communities away from you.

as an aroace lesbian, this reminded me of earlier today when there was this discussion over mfs deliberately telling lesbians that sexuality is fluid and they can still be attracted to men at some point. Just like these statments of "ace/aro can still have sex/date", it is true; but SOMETIMES and for SOME PEOPLE.

and througout this disscussion, it was mentioned that this shit happens mostly to lesbians and not straight women/gay men/ bi people because lesbian is an orientation that completely exclude men, it doesn't centralize cishet masculimity at all.

and, tbh, if this was applied on the a-spect discourse... IT WOULD STILL MAKE COMPLETE SENSE

think with me, aro & ace are two orientations that primarily exclude men out of romantic and sexual attraction and relationships, which is a tool of domination of cis men over non cis men in general, sex & romantic relationships. even with oriented aroaces, romo & sexual domination are out of question.

long story short: lesbians + aroace spec = being constantly impliedly told that they can change for simply not focusing on patriarchal manhood.

here's the thing. "ace people can still have sex" and "aro people can still be in relationships" are objectively true statements. this is because people can do whatever the fuck they want forever regardless of their label/orientation. however some of you have GOT to get your shit together and stop using those statements to undermine larger conversations about aspec identity. following up "ace people don't owe you sex in a relationship" with "ace people can still have sex in a relationship though!" is not fucking helpful! yes it's true. yes it's a reality for many people. however if we used our fucking brains for a second and thought about how following up "people don't have to conform to societal expectation" with "but people can still conform!! don't worry they can still conform!!!!" is counterproductive and very frustrating for a lot of people then we could get back to the actual point which is not "aspec people can still have sex/be in relationships" but "aspec people can do whatever they want with their relationships and their bodies". which they can, by the way. they can do whatever they want forever. and you should give them 200 dollars every time you see them for dealing with this shit

Christianity, as a religion, is very unorganized and messy. 10% of the reason being the Christian Bible itself and other 90% because of the Protestant Reformation.

So, let's elaborate; The first 10 percentages of the reason why Christianity is so messy comes from the Christian Bible itself.

Long story short, the Christian Bible is a junction of the appropriation of the Tanakh and the letters sent to kingdoms by the apostles. And heavy on the appropriation of the Tanakh, friends.

It seems that Constantine was goin nuts when he created the Christian Bible, because he took the entire Jewish sacred book, took it out of context, left easily misunderstood shit without explanation and put it as the old testament. And then, he grabs the writings and annotations of the apostles, mix all of them, and call it new testament. And that nigga decided to mix all that shit together and boom: Christian Bible.

And that makes the Christian ideology already very messy; Judaism has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, except the fact that Jesus was a Jew. He's not mentioned or hinted on any of the Jewish prophecies. Jesus as the Messiah is incompatible with Judaism, so mixing the Tanakh with the apostles's writings will get the Christian belief very unorganized.

But, okay, the Catholics did their little jumps and modifications so it would be at least 2% coherent. Okay, fine, and everything was kind of alright until Martin fucking Luther.

And here we get to the other 90% of reasons why Christianity has such an unorganized theology.

All this crusty dirty smelly white european boi did was get the damn Bible, translate it the way he wanted, give it to the people and say: “Go, do whatever you want with it. Read it, translate it, modify it, hell, you can even interpret to your criteria! Just spread the chaos. ❤️”

Do y'all realize how fucking dangerous is doing that? Well, we all do because we're living the consequences of it right now.

Christians can't decide what is literal and what is metaphorical, and can shape it to however they like. A proof of that is that when I was trying to be Christian, I wouldn't be a church Christian; I would study the bible according to my interpretation. On my own will. I was literally deciding to make a personal religious strand of my own. This is the capacity that Luther gave us. And it results of people being fucking hypocrites. Creating cults on god's name. And that is fucking wild.

So, yeah, Christianity is an unorganized, messy religion and not even the Christians are sure of what they believe in.

Other people's MJ scenario: “first we date, then we fuk, then we get married, and then-”

Me:

(Yes, I was the one to draw this piece of shit. A masterpiece, isn't it? 😘)

the "humans are egoistical by nature, so capitalism is natural" ngas probably never thought enough to realize that, if it was true, humanity would have never survived in the first place.

The “no one would ever work for free” crowd never really considered the eternal bond between humans and increasingly complex tools