Happy Pride to those who celebrate, and as the meme says, “Wishing all the homophobes a super uncomfortable month.” Welcome to the first in my annual series of Pride articles. Last year I covered gay baseball, zombies, homophobia and late life lesbians.
First up is some education, so grab an uncomfortable, splintered, too-small wooden desk if you’re someone who judges gays, and a plush floral print chaise with an adorable Squishmallow if you’re on the team and need this link to passively-aggressively post on Facebook for the fake-Jesus freaks back on the ranch.
Do you know what compulsive heterosexuality is? Often nicknamed “comphet,” it’s a term coined in 1980 by Adrienne Rich to refer to compulsive pressure and expectations that women feel to conform to heterosexuality in society even if they don’t feel attracted to men. It’s the idea that heterosexuality isn’t necessarily universal or natural but is a social construct created and enforced by the patriarchy to keep women in traditional gender roles. Society sees a man and woman couple as “the norm”—see also, Disney movies, bride and groom in a store picture frame, and terribly scripted “romantic” movies that don’t resemble anyone you know.
Rich notes: “To take the step of questioning heterosexuality as a “preference” or “choice” for women—and to do the intellectual and emotional work that follows— will call for a special quality of courage in heterosexually identified feminists, but I think the rewards will be great: a freeing-up of thinking, the exploring of new paths, the shattering of another great silence, new clarity in personal relationships.”
Imagine if children were simply educated on all the flags of identification in the Pride spectrum (here are 51 to choose from!) and told that people identify in many different ways throughout their lifetime—technically this would be simply be known as abrosexuality, which, if I had to pick a label I’d probably choose since it means don’t make me pick a label, labels are dumb, everyone’s sexuality is fluid and changes over time and besides, the abrosexual watermelon flag colors are elite.
That education doesn’t happen, because in our current Handmaid’s Tale political environment, you’d be carted off by camo-masked ICE agents for even saying the name of the novel Pride and Prejudice because the word “pride” is in it. So, comphet happens, always has, always will, just ask Eve of Adam and Eve how it went for her.
Back in the 1980s I sure didn’t know any lesbian couples at my high school—and I was in the theatre program. What the hell—we should’ve been making out backstage regardless of gender with the pit orchestra band. We didn’t grow up believing that a relationship with a woman could be romantic. Did we go around having (platonic) romantic relationships with women? Every fucking day. The letters we wrote, the way we dressed for each other (and not the guys), the tears we shed over hurt feelings. Those weren’t always because we had crushes on each other. But when you come out in your 50s and you think back across your life, you realize when they were. There’s a different quality to the “bestie” relationships that you normalize because you had a boyfriend or a husband and you shoehorn these interactions into a societally-acceptable correct category.
One side effect of comphet in society is women remaining in miserable marriages and relationships because they don’t realize why they’re unhappy is that they weren’t attracted to men in the first place, or at a minimum are bisexual, leading to shame, guilt, limited exploration and gender identity, substance abuse and addiction, and internalized homophobia, where individuals may fear or dislike same-sex attractions and identities.
Even straight women are affected by comphet in a political environment in which J.D. Vance proclaims that women need to have more babies. Straight women are affected by comp het because it’s not enough that a woman is heterosexual, she must also be actively committed to a man to conform to patriarchy. This allows every individual woman to be managed by an individual man, who maintains her compliance. A man who fails to do so risks social sanctions, such as losing the respect of his peers.
Overcoming comphet won’t happen in the current political climate, but if you’re a women and feel you may be a victim of comphet, you might be enitled to compensation. Just kidding. Go to a Pride event—the gays aren’t scary and we have better swag and brunches. Seriously, one thing you can do is think. Read. Watch The L Word where you’ll learn that “all girls are straight until they’re not.” Challenge the societal norms that have lied to us our whole lives. I’ve lost friends over this societal closetedness who aren’t willing to look in the mirror. Authenticity to yourself beats people-pleasing a joyless family and a prison sentence in a dark closet.