Sociology Plus
Compulsory Heterosexuality Definition
Compulsory heterosexuality is the cultural assumption that both males and females are biologically predisposed to heterosexuality, so that heterosexual attraction is treated as the only natural form of desire. The concept was popularised by Adrienne Rich (1981) and describes the hegemonic process by which heterosexuality is reified and naturalised while homosexuality is dismissed as psychological dysfunction or a deviant personal choice — deviant precisely because it is thought to run against supposedly natural inclinations.
Naturalisation and Its Flaws
Hegemonic understandings of heterosexuality have often leaned on the misconception that other animals are exclusively heterosexual. Bagemihl (1999), however, has documented homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom, both as temporary sexual behaviour and as long-term pair-bonding, undermining the biological argument on which the assumption rests.
Institutional Inequality
One consequence of naturalising heterosexuality while stigmatising homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism is cultural and institutional inequality for non-heterosexuals. The institutionalisation of heterosexuality runs through every level of Western societies, distributing power and privilege unevenly in heterosexuals’ favour. Restricting civil marriage to heterosexual couples, for example, grants them insurance, taxation, and numerous other economic and social advantages denied to gay and lesbian couples.
Rich’s Feminist Argument
Rich argued further that the validation of heterosexuals at the expense of everyone else helps reproduce male privilege in patriarchal society, through both political means and social violence. Where men control most aspects of women’s institutional lives — including access to birth control, abortion, and occupational equality — women are bound into a binary system of oppression: those who opt out of the heterosexual family structure are stigmatised and denied social and institutional support. Rich held that the naturalisation of heterosexuality is so hegemonic that even feminists had underestimated its role in women’s oppression, and she suggested it underwrites a political institution of domestic violence: male violence against women is excused on the grounds that “that’s just the way it (biologically) is” — a “boys will be boys” logic that casts men as victims of their own biological destiny.
From Compulsory Heterosexuality to Heterosexism
The controversy surrounding Rich’s thesis has faded over the years, arguably because of the substantial institutional and cultural gains made by gays and lesbians since 1981. Discussion has largely shifted to heterosexism — the assumption that heterosexuality is, and ought to remain, culturally and institutionally privileged. Heterosexism operates with less overt homophobia and through more covert mechanisms, and research by Clausell and Fiske (2005) and others shows that prejudice against non-heterosexuals increasingly takes the form of ambivalence, mixing positive and negative attitudes. Since ambivalence rarely disturbs the status quo, it slows continuing progress towards full civil and cultural equality.