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Female witches were often feared
and persecuted for their “otherness.”
In the late 15th century it was believed
that they possessed the power to cause
impotence and infertility in men.Lesbianism can, then, be placed
on a continuum, which includes
those who are sexually attracted
to women and those who may be
heterosexual but are politically
connected to other women. This
does not mean there are degrees
of lesbian experience, with those
who are “less” lesbian being more
socially acceptable. Instead, Rich is
suggesting that there have always
been women who have resisted the
compulsory way of life and existed
in and out of the continuum for
hundreds of years—from the many
women in Europe, in the 16th and
17th centuries in particular, who
were hanged or burned as witches,
often for living outside of patriarchy,
to the late 19th-century “Wigan Pit
Brow Lasses,” colliery workers who
caused scandal in Britain by
insisting on wearing trousers.
Rich’s idea of a lesbian
continuum has caused considerable
debate, partly because it can be
seen as desexualizing lesbianism
and allows feminists to claim to
be part of the continuum without
examining their heterosexuality.
Sheila Jeffreys, a British radical
feminist, argued that it allowed
heterosexual women to continue
their relationships with men while
feeling politically validated. But
the strength of Rich’s work is that
rather than critiquing heterosexual
women, it critiques heterosexuality
as an institution.
Rich’s ideas also challenge
the hetero/homo binary and thus
anticipate queer theorists such
as US scholar Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick, who argues that sexual
identity is a construct of Western
culture. Sedgwick also opposes
the assumption that these
constructions of sexuality are only
an issue for “minority” groups such
as lesbians and gay men.A conceptual shift
The ideas put forward in Rich’s
1980 essay have arguably provided
the most important conceptual
shift in studies of sexuality by
inviting an examination of
heterosexuality as an institution.
This had never been done before
because, as British sociologistFAMILIES AND INTIMACIES
Carol Smart suggests, heterosexual
identity, like white colonial identity,
has maintained an effortless
superiority and an ability to
remain invisible because it has
constructed itself as the norm.
Heterosexual feminists such
as British sociologist Stevi
Jackson have gone on to unpick
heterosexuality as a direct result
of Rich’s work. French feminist
Monique Wittig argued in 1992 that
heterosexuality is a political regime
that relies on the subordination and
appropriation of women.
The recent revelation in the
UK of the sexual abuse of girls
by celebrities and the abduction
of more than 200 schoolgirls in
Nigeria, Africa, by the militant
Islamist group Boko Haram,
are glaring examples of how
heterosexuality is still forced on
women and girls. The arguments
put forward by Rich thus continue
to inform important explorations
of heterosexuality as a social and
political structure. ■The patriarchal institution
of motherhood is not the
“human condition” any more
than rape, prostitution,
and slavery are.
Adrienne Rich