Compulsory Heterosexuality in 2024

I know that I'm a bit notorious for hating the phrase "comphet" because of how it has been mis-used in biphobic, laterally homophobic, and transphobic ways—but I do think that Adrienne Rich's original conception of "compulsory heterosexuality" has like, some grounding and usefulness (not all of that paper which has some bizarre ideas in it... but the core economic argument is keen I think.)

Even as a legitimately heterosexual woman myself (I've certainly done my due diligence to confirm it) participation in normative heterosexuality is still economically coercive. I think that the framing device of amatonormativity also is useful here. Even if I am predominantly attracted to men, that doesn't mean I need to be drawn towards monogamous marriage and economic dependence on a man. I could very well be heterosexual and never marry, never settle down, and only have casual flings here and there.

But my field, librarianship, is a female-dominated and highly-gendered field. There is a very wide perception that librarians are not bread-winners. Even when this is not explicitly on the minds of those budgeting for librarians, or setting salaries, it is evidence in how librarian positions in many places are structured. Why in the world would it ever make sense to require a masters degree for a job yet only give 16 hours a week at $25/hr? Yet this is what we see in suburban libraries. How do they expect these librarians to make a living like this? They don't. The assumption is that librarians, being all women, are all married to men who earn more money. The librarian is not the breadwinner in these suburban towns. The librarian is perceived to be a bored housewife who wants to play at having a part-time career between taking care of the kids and cleaning the house.

What Adrienne Rich wrote in Compulsory Heterosexuality is that for women, the surest path to financial stability and security is financial dependence on a man through heterosexual marriage. Especially when she first wrote the paper, female-dominated fields like airline stewardess, waitress, secretary, teacher, etc. were the only jobs women could generally get. They were rarely economically stabilizing careers. They were seen as places where young women would work and inch by temporarily until they met a man to marry her. And within these jobs, performance of heterosexuality was required as part of the job. Flirting with customers, playing at being available, dressing in ways deemed attractive to men. Even to this day in my own professional, female librarians are always addressed as "Miss" even if we are married. It is an implied availability to men.

In this economic environment, a lot of women will not even consider being lesbians. Marrying a man is not about being attracted to men or loving a man, it is entirely about money. Attraction to men is a performance utilized to become married and financially stable. Expressing attraction to men is a way to be attractive to men. Back then, you could not be provided for by another woman, so it simply would not be a realistic option in the minds of most women.

I think we are very fortunate that, in most of the United States at the very least, the economic environment for women has improved drastically. Women can now work in any profession and can be independently financially successful. When considering if you want to love other women, you no longer have to heavily weigh whether you'll be able to economically get by together as two hustling waitresses with no men involved to finance the arrangement.

But I don't think we are entirely freed from compulsory heterosexuality. Besides the cultural vestiges of an older time being still perpetuated by parents upon youth, stressing the importance of finding a wealthy man to marry—we have not reached an economy where a woman can dependably be economically independent and stable in that position. To be a financially independent woman is still often to be a precarious woman. And this has now also to an extent become the case for men too. Because we have now entered the dual-income economy where it is now expected that everyone has a partner who is also working if you hope to do things like buy a house and raise kids. And don't forget hospital visitation rights, next-of-kin designations, family law, family leave policies, and everything else built around the nuclear family.

At the end of the day, it is still the case that when you look at our economic environment, a heteronormative marriage of financial dependence or interdependence is the most viable path to stability. In some parts of the United States and Canada, your heteronormative marriage can now also be same-sex and ethically non-monogamous. Fantastic. Big improvement, genuinely, but marriage is still critical to stability for anyone who wasn't born to wealthy loving supportive parents.

Even though I am genuinely attracted to men for reasons completely unrelated to money (I have certainly dated women who could provide for me better than any man I've ever dated), I am still affected by compulsory heterosexuality economically. Because when anything threatens my precarious financial independence, what is the first thing that comes to mind? What is the thing I lack that would make this entire situation far less stressful and precarious? A spouse. If I had some rich STEM-bro husband I picked up at the local board game shop, I would have stability unknown to most trans women. (Even some trans women working in tech!) This exerts pressure on my decisions. It's a meme at this point that the bar is on the floor for straight men... and for some reason straight women tolerate that. Well, yes. Marriage to a man is still the surest path to a stable, safe, comfortable life, even if you have your own successful career. Why would you be picky? Straight women are willing to tolerate so much from straight men because of material economic pressures that give men power. If you are a woman, being attractive to men is still economically important. If you are a man, it is pretty much never economically important to be attractive to women. If you want a wife, then yes, being attractive would help. But so does having money. And if you don't have a wife, well, that's just more money for you. So really, men can take it or leave it when it comes to getting a wife. It's only cultural pressures that push them towards that.

I still think that the "comphet" colloquialism is fucking stupid. Tell people to experiment and see what they like. Don't gaslight people with social justice language into denying or feeling guilty for their own desires Compulsory Heterosexuality is not and has never been about desire, in my opinion and interpretation. It is about money, and how money influences our behaviors and what we allow ourselves to desire. The desire is tangential. It's about the money.

Anyway, in the meantime, while we live in the current economy... if any wealthy neurodivergent men in the greater philadelphia area want to wife up an incredibly sexy kinky grey-asexual trans woman who's read most of Marx and Engels, you know... uh... I'm taking applications for a mutually beneficial economic arrangement. Yes. Uh huh.