Compulsory Gender and Transgender Existence: Adrienne Rich's Queer Possibility

Author(s): C. L. Cole and Shannon L. C. Cate

Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, Trans- (Fall - Winter, 2008), pp. 279-287
Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
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 COMPULSORY AND
GENDER TRANSGENDER
EXISTENCE:
ADRIENNE
RICH'S POSSIBILITY
QUEER

AND
C.L COLE LC. CATE
SHANNON

women are the earliest sources nurture

If of emotional caring and physical for
both female and male children, itwould seem a
logical, from feminist perspec
tive at least, to pose thefollowing questions: whether the search love and
for
tenderness in both sexes does not originally lead toward women; in
why fact
women should ever redirect that search;
species survival, the means
why of
and emotional/erotic should ever have become so
impregnation, relationships
with each otherand why such violentstricturesshould be
rigidlyidentified
to erotic
enforce women's
necessary total emotional, loyalty and subser
found
vience tomen.

Adrienne Rich,

"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence"

Adrienne Rich's and Lesbian Existence,"

"Compulsory Heterosexuality

originally published in 1980 in Signs and reprinted in numerous publica

tions, immediately unsettled feminist That the article
thinking. eventually
faded from more recent feminist and studies debates has been
queer
as a result of breaks: between essentialists and
explained supposed post

structuralists, second-wave and next-wave feminists, feminist and queer

studies (Hesford 2005, 239). Yet the current interest inRich's work?
this particular article?over the past five years seems to suggest
especially
a renewed appreciation from a variety of feminisms for the kind ofwork
thatRich was doing in her canonical piece.1
We were to receive an invitation to revisit
delighted "Compulsory
in this WSQ issue on "trans." trans issues are
Heterosexuality" Although
not addressed we draw our from the
specifically by Rich, inspiration
theme of this issue, to read issues back into the piece's theo
transgender
retical core.

and Lesbian Existence" was devoted

"Compulsory Heterosexuality
to Rich's attention to the many ways het
denaturalizing heterosexuality.
was forced upon women the job of how
erosexuality began teasing apart

[WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 36: 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2008)]

? 2008 by C.L. Cole & Shannon L.C. Cate. All rights reserved.

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28o AND
GENDER
COMPULSORY EXPERIENCE
TRANSGENDER

be understood as a tool of control over

heterosexuality might patriarchal
women and the ways women?even it. At the
feminists?reproduced

time, this was a idea for many feminists, and Rich knew it.
challenging
She irrefutable evidence of coerced nature:
compiles heterosexuality's
"The female wage scale, the enforcement of middle-class women's 'lei

sure,' the glamorization of so-called sexual liberation, the withholding of

education from women, the of art' and culture,

imagery 'high popular
the mystification of the (223). But she also admits that
'personal' sphere"
"to that for women, may not be a
acknowledge heterosexuality 'prefer
ence' at all, but that has had to be orga
something imposed, managed,
and maintained is an to take
nized, propagandized, by force immense step
if you consider to be and heterosexual"
yourself freely 'innately' (216).
masked power as normal, the
Denaturalizing something by organic,

sign of
mature
sexuality, and the basic human social unit, was something
Rich realized would unsettle many of her readers. Yet these self-identi

fied heterosexual feminists were the very people Rich hoped to bring
into
solidarity with lesbian interests. The history of next-wave feminist

and queer studies shows us that, for the most theorists heeded her
part,

call, following somuch in the path of her critique that those in these and
related fields can take her then-radical claims as baseline
today assump
tions in their work.

then, from these baseline we can take Rich's

Leaping assumptions,
into the realm of trans and
logic theory politics.
In her of heterosexuality, Rich asked readers to recon
denaturalizing
sider it as a form of what she termed "male-identification." Coupling
male-identification with the abandonment of "female-identified values,"

Rich seems at first blush to be grounding her argument in a simplistic,

biologically based belief in the category "woman." Yet given her project
and the of the piece, an idea of static,
conceptual logic binary gender
doesn't make sense. How can we resolve this contradiction
seeming
within her argument? We contend that when Rich asks heterosexual

women to the natural of their "choice," in fact, she

question inevitability

suggests the contingency of heterosexuality's basic foundation: the male/

female sex
binary system.
Rather than positing some kind of simplistic battle of the sexes,Rich
uses the idea of male-identification as a way to and think about
explain
women's (including feminist's and lesbian's) investments in the institution

of heterosexuality. Male-identification, as she it, is a political

imagines

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 & CATE
COLE 281

and social that and erases lesbian

practice reproduces heteronormativity
existence.

She uses the terms "lesbian continuum" and "lesbian existence" to

avoid the heteronormative, historical, and clinical associations with the

term "lesbian." As she puts it:

Lesbian existence suggests both the fact of the historical presence

of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that

existence. I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a

each women's life and throughout history?of

range?through
women-identified not that a woman has had or
experience; simply
desired sexual with another woman.
consciously genital experience
Ifwe it to embrace many more forms of primary
expand intensity

between and among women, the sharing of a rich inner

including

life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of

. . .we to grasp the breadths of female his

practical support begin

tory and psychology which have lain out of reach as a consequence

of limited, mostly clinical definitions of "lesbianism." (217)

In spite of the blind alley Rich stumbles down in her notes about "het
erosexual on the part of some lesbians Stein and
role-playing" (Gertrude
Alice B. Toklas are her examples),2 it is not hard to hear a call to resist
normative gender
in passages like this one:

The lie keeps numberless women

psychologically trapped, trying
to fit mind, into a prescribed
spirit and sexuality script because they
cannot look the parameters of the acceptable_The lesbi
beyond
an
trapped in the "closet," the woman imprisoned in prescriptive

ideas of the "normal" share the pain of blocked options, broken

connections, lost access to self-definition freely and powerfully

assumed. (221)

In and Lesbian Existence" Rich develops

"Compulsory Heterosexuality
a strategy for a felt of woman as an
generating deeply self-understanding
or in a context defined by systemic patriarchal
identity subject position
violence and domination. And she calls this strategy the lesbian continu

um. But her is not aimed at for lesbi

argument simply gaining visibility

ans, at least not in any uncritical or way. For Rich, the lesbian
predictable

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282 COMPULSORY AND
GENDER TRANSGENDER
EXPERIENCE

continuum is a strategic mechanism for generating politically viable iden

tities and alliances. It is a way of shifting investments, a reorientation that

to and women's lived

attempts demystify recognize complex experience.

Thus, her call for female-identification, is, to use Victoria Hesford's

characterization, not intended to be a but a

(2005) description, prescrip
tion. It is a a mechanism for in
standpoint, interrupting hetero-patriarchy,
Rich's terms, male-identification.

Where Rich would have heterosexual feminists in the 1980s strategi

claim a on the "lesbian continuum," we use her
cally place today, might
and her calls to to a trans
logic challenge prescriptive sexuality imagine
continuum on which so-called male-born men and female-born
gender
women can find themselves building political connections with those
whose is more outside narrow frame of the
gender obviously society's

"normal," ultimately challenging heteronormative and homonormative

investments in
binary genders altogether.

FROM TOATRANSGENDER
GLBT CONTINUUM
One form this solidaritymight take is to look beyond the alphabet soup
of queer as a matter of "T" to "GLB" and reor
approach politics adding

ganizing queer politics around expanding the reach of a transgender con

tinuum.

We might take Rich's logic of untangling prescriptive, patriarchy

constructed
sex/gender from emotional and erotic desire and into more

liberating territory. If, as Judith Butler (1988) claims, "within the terms
of culture it is not to know sex as distinct from then
possible gender,"
neither does it really make sense to claim or even erotic identities
political
based on the idea of acultural, essential sex or
(as in "lesbian" "gay" when

those terms mean "women-attracted-to-women" or "men-attracted-to

men"). This becomes evident when self-identified lesbians or gay

fallacy
men are asked same-sex heterosexual friends if find
nervously by they
such friends attractive. The fact is, more often than not, supposed lesbi

ans or gay men are in fact attracted to within the broad,

specific genders
clinical category of "female" or "male," and those much
genders require
more than the labels "woman" or
description all-but-meaningless
"man."

The need to endlessly add letters to the GLB soup is evidence of the
breakdown of essentialist, Rich's idea of a continu
gender-binary logic.
um based on identities claimed and
through political goals, strategies,

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 & CATE
COLE 283

work is a much more useful way to identities and

imagine queer political
action The "T" at the end of "GLB" could be, thus,
today. afterthought
moved to the front and center of a political movement for free
usefully
dom from both the and eroticized restrictions of binary sex.
gendered
For women of all kinds "lesbian," "heterosex
example, ("female-born,"

ual," "transsexual," and so take a

"transgender," on) might place strategi
on a continuum for the of the
cally transgender purposes challenging
sex that not two and two
prescriptive patriarchal binary only posits only
static sexes, but also enforces and rewards it
heteronormativity by refusing
to all other and all other sexual attachments or
recognize genders family
formations.

Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter (2006)

begin this kind ofwork in their introduction to their volume, Transgender
Currah, and Minter offer several for trans iden
Rights. Juang, possibilities
tification and from transsexuals to butch lesbians. But
political solidarity,

they also caution that "ultimately, the effectiveness with which the trans

movement addresses the diversity of its constituents will

gender depend
less on finding a and more on how actual
satisfactory vocabulary strategies
for social are on to point out
change implemented." Critically, they go
that "the same is true for creating effective connections with who
people
do not see themselves as Put the movement's effec
transgender. simply,
tiveness will on who benefits from its successes"
depend heavily (xv).
When identities now most often considered to be based in the realm

of the sexual (gay, lesbian, and so forth) are reconsidered in light of their
deviance an individual seem
gender (however "gender-conforming" might
to be), many more become to benefit from increased free
people eligible
doms of gender expression and identity.

WHEN
ISANLALSO
AT?
In her essay and Disciplinari
"Transgender History, Homonormativity,

ty," Susan Stryker (2008) points to the problem of the GLBT construc
tion as one that ultimately homonormative power within queer
preserves
movements not trans-identified but also
only by marginalizing people, by
the "T" "as a containment mechanism for gender trouble of various
using
sorts that works in tandem with assimilative tendencies
gender-normative
within the sexual identities" (148). The assumption behind a GLBT label
is that each of these is distinct from the other, that only one
categories

might be occupied at a time,when the lived reality ofmany is identifica

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284 AND
GENDER
COMPULSORY TRANSGENDER
EXPERIENCE

tion with more than one of them at the same time, or different
configura
tions of one or more of them over the course of an individual's life, or
both. describes trans as with sexual orienta
Stryker identity intersecting
tion rather than somewhere a hetero-homo continuum,
falling along
the "T" on an different from the "G," "L," and
putting entirely plane
"B." A transsexual woman also be a lesbian,
might Stryker suggests by

way of an just as a gay man also be black.

example, might
Yet the idea that and same-sex sexual orientation
transgenderism
have some more natural to each other than class and
affinity say, gender
or race and in much literature on the And
sexuality, persists subject.
some gays or lesbians are assumed, in some kind of commonsense to
way,
be more or less than others. Often, for example, the butch
transgendered
lesbian is imagined as a kind of bridge figure between a trans and a lesbian

identity.
But ifwe were to shift to thinking in terms of putting the G's, L's
and B's (not to mention on a
antipatriarchal heterosexuals) Rich-inspired,

politically activated transgender continuum, the butch is joined by a less

obvious, but, as it turns out, the femme.
quite likely, suspect, namely,
If all sex, and desire are the result of performed acts, there is
gender,
no need to assume that a femme lesbian is any more "natural" a woman

than a butch one simply because her publicly performed gender appears
at first to fall more or less within the narrow
glance patriarchal prescrip
tion for women.

Under in fact, a lesbian who

compulsory heterosexuality, performs
woman in a way that patriarchy as and
possessively regards properly right

fully its "own" The work of being a woman,

challenges hetero-patriarchy.
when done for the satisfaction of herself and other women, becomes not

just what Rich calls "both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a

way of life... also a direct or indirect attack on male

compulsory fand]
of access to women" but also a of the and
right giving rights privileges
demanded the women towomen.
by patriarchy of
A femme lesbian refuses to to the of the culture
respond prescriptions
on women's to a
performance by trying impossibly imagine performance
of woman that falls outside culture or outside for the
patriarchy (which
time and, as far as we can the time to come, is culture). A
being imagine,
femme, instead, takes up the performance of woman with both pleasure
and irony, it for what it is, and to wear it or not, accord
seeing choosing

ing to her own desires, her desire to other women.

including please

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COLE 285

Whether or not her also heterosexual men is

performance pleases
beside the point. She may be reperformed and packaged in pornography
to satisfyheterosexual male desire, but this is an effectof livingwithin the
dominant order. No woman c ommodifi cation of her
gender escapes
within even if it is a form of corn
sexuality heteropatriarchy, reactionary

modification, such as the butch as a feminazi."

stereotyping "man-hating

Trying to interrogate the origin of gendered desire is futile. Nonetheless,

on" femme, like putting on
drag, is a that, as Judith
"putting performance
Butler has famously out, calls attention back to itself as perfor
pointed
mance and thus can call all gender into
question.
A femme may be more cognizant of her challenge
to
compulsory
bmarism than a heterosexual woman who wears the same shade of
gender

lipstick. But, by sharing that lipstick, perhaps it is the femme, even more
so than the butch, who is the best bridge across which
political alliances
can form as more to themselves and their interests
people begin recognize
as a continuum. About Rich
falling upon transgender heterosexuality,
concluded: "Within the institution exist, of course, differences
qualitative
of but the absence of choice remains the great unacknowl
experience;
and in the absence of choice, women still remain
edged reality, depen
dent the chance or luck of particular and will have no
upon relationships
collective to determine the and of sexuality in their
power meaning place
lives" (223). The challenge inRich's words is thatwomen living in het
erosexual relationships recognize thatwhether they are individually happy
or not, the of heterosexual is moot
question choosing identity really
within may find them
patriarchy. Similarly, gender-conforming people
selves comfortable and even successful in the gender
quite they perform,
but consciousness should cause them to the limits and
political recognize
constraints of this performance. Thus the most
might gender-normative
individual be brought within a strategic political spectrum of agitators for

transgender rights and freedom.

THE
TRANSGENDER TRANSGENDER
CONTINUUM/THE IMAGINARY
RIGHTS
In a context defined an visible and vibrant
by increasingly transgender
movement and, and medical to the sex
relatedly, regular legal challenges

binary, Paisley Currah (2003) conceived "The Transgender Rights Imag

In "The Currah asks how we
inary." Transgender Rights Imaginary"
reconcile two trajectories: "How should
might seemingly contradictory
we the tensions between an movement of gen
negotiate identity politics

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286 GENDER
COMPULSORY AND EXPERIENCE
TRANSGENDER

der-variant that seeks to amend the definitions of the

people primarily
sex classification scheme, and the of dis-establishing sex
binary larger goal
as a a that remains in as a means
meaningful legal category, category place
of distributing rights and resources equally?" (705).
Indeed, Currah's question recalls the different kinds of work per
sort of
formed by Rich's continuum and suggests the political activism

that the continuum as Rich denat

transgender might ideally inspire. Just
uralized heterosexuality and foregrounded its violences and its real effects,

it is crucial that the continuum the violences of

transgender foreground
sexual binaries. inconsistencies in paradigmatic
Identifying binary sexing;
attention to the of lived, and
drawing diversity gendered experience; cap
on are mechanisms for sex.
italizing gender performativity denaturalizing
At the same time, to the remarkable of sexual
they point resiliency regu

lation, the of bodies and the very real violence it entails,

ongoing policing
and the absolute need to address those While the
injustices. trajectories

may not be the same, are distinct and

they only seemingly contradictory:
we need to remain to the that each holds for the other.
open possibilities

C.L. COLE is professor of gender and women's studies and media studies at

the University of Illinois at where she also serves as

Urbana-Champaign,
the director ofMedia Studies.

SHANNON
L.C. CATEreceived her PhD in American literature from George
and teaches courses on race,
Washington University currently gender,
and at the of Illinois at
sexuality University Urbana-Champaign.

NOTES
1. For example, "Compulsory served as the thematic focus for
Heterosexuality"
Journal ofWomen's History in 2003 and for Sexualities' (2008) recently published series
of articles.
2. Even in the case of her comments on Stein and Toklas, it is possible to argue
that itwasn't these women themselves (and their gender Rich
objected expressions)
to, but their seeming acceptance by the patriarchy, which she believes results from what
itmistakenly as an imitation of itself. She does not go into
recognizes enough detail
in her short footnote to be accused of believing that Stein and Toklas were intention

ally, in fact, mimicking patriarchy.

WORKS
CITED
Butler, Judith. 1988. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phe

nomenology and Feminist Theory." Theat reJournal 49(1) :519?31.

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 & CATE
COLE 287

Currah, Paisley. 2003. "The Transgender Rights Imaginary." Georgetown Journal of

Gender and theLaw 4:705?20.

Currah, Paisley, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter, eds. 2006. Transgen
derRights. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hesford, Victoria. 2005. "Feminism and Its Ghosts: The Spectre of the Feminist-as

Lesbian." Feminist Theory 6(3):227-50.

Stryker, Susan. 2008. "Transgender History, Homonormativity, and Disciplinanty."

Radical History Review 100:145-57.

Rich, Adrienne. 1993. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." In

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose, ed. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert

Gelpi. New York: W. W. Norton.

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