I have chosen to use the terms lesbian existence and lesbian continuum because the word lesbianism has a clinical and limiting ring. Lesbian exis- tence 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 range-through each woman's life and throughout history-of woman-identified experience.; not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experi- ence with another w

surgery: it intends that women in the intimate proximity of polygynous marriage will not form sexual relationships with each other; that-from a male, genital-fetishist perspective-female erotic connections, even in a sex-segregated situa- tion, will be literally excis

chema

I do not, myself, assume that mothering-by-women is a "sufficient cause" of lesbian existenc

I will begin by way of examples, briefly discussing four books that have appeared in the last few years, written from different viewpoints and political orientations, but all presenting themselves, and favorably reviewed, as femin

rased. It will require a courageous grasp of the politics and economics, as well as the cultural propaganda, of heterosexuality to carry us beyond individual cases or diversified group situations into the complex kind of overview needed to undo the power men everywhere wield over women, power which has become a model for every other form of exploitation and ill

ther. The lie of compulsory female heterosex- uality today afflicts not just feminist scholarship, but every profession, every reference work, every curriculum, every organizing attempt, every relationship or conversation over which it hovers. It creates, specifically, a profound falseness, hypocrisy, and hysteria in the heterosexual di- alogue, for every heterosexual relationship is lived in the queasy strobelight of that lie. However we chose to identify ourselves, however we find ourselves labeled, it flickers across and distorts our

"eroticization of women's subordina

Catharine A. MacKinnon deli

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to wo

Biologically men have only one innate orientation-a sexual one that draws them to women,-while women have two innate orienta- tions, sexual toward men and reproductive toward their young.1

I am concerned here with two other matters as well: first, how and why women's choice of women as passionate comrades, life partners, co-workers, lovers, tribe, has been crushed, invalidated, forced into hid- ing and disguise; and second, the virtual or total neglect of lesbian exis- tence in a wide range of writings, including feminist scholarship. Obvi- ously there is a connection here. I believe that much feminist theory and criticism is stranded on this shoal.

sing. The fact is that women in every culture and throughout history have undertaken the task of independent, nonheterosexual, woman-connected existence, to the extent made possible by their context, often in the belief that they were the "only ones" ever to have don

femmes se

he "scien- tific" romanticization of the home itself)

utions. Feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration of "lesbianism" as an "alternative life-style," or make token allusion to lesbians. A feminist critique of compulsory heterosexual orientation for women is long over- du

. The assumption made by Rossi, that women are "innately sexually oriented" toward men, or by Lessing, that the lesbian choice is simply an acting-out of bitterness toward men, are by no means theirs alone; they are widely current in literature and in the social sci- ences

While the decision to remove “homosexuality” from DSM-III was a highly polemicized and public one, accomplished only under intense pressure from gay activists outside the profession, the addition to DSM-III of “Gender Identity Disorder of Child- hood” appears to have attracted no outside attention at all—nor even to have been perceived as part of the same conceptual shift.”

He encourages predominantly gay young men to “reassure” their parents that they are “bisexual” (“Tell him just enough so he feels better” [RG, p. 207]) and to consider favorably the option of marrying and keep- ing their wives in the dark about their sexual activities (p. 205).

One serious problem with this way of distinguishing between gender and sexuality is that, while denaturalizing sexual object-choice, it radi- cally renaturalizes gender.

the virulence and chronicity of [social] stress [against it] puts homosexuality in a unique position in the human behav- ioral repertoire,” how to account for “the fact that severe, persistent mor- bidity does not occur more frequently” among gay adolescents

hat homosexuality is associated with some psychological mechanism, not nderstood or even studied to date, that protects the individual from di- u at protects the individual from di TESS PaVCHIATHTE UISOaENS" (p. 236). It “might include mechanisms influ- éncing ego resiliency, growth potential, and the capacity to form intimate FETESSNDS” aN. Rnd "is possi That for reasons thar have not yet been well described, [gender-disturbed boys’] mechanisms for coping with anguish and adversity are unusually effective”

‘Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide’ do not in any way represent my personal beliefs or the policy of this Department. I am strongly committed to advancing traditional family values... . In my opinion, the views expressed in the paper run con- trary to that aim,”!

It’s always open season on gay kids.

The reason effeminate boys turn out gay, according to this account, is that other men don’t validate them as masculine.

What the books I have been discussing, and the institutions to which they are attached, dem- onstrate is that the wish for the dignified treatment of already-gay people is necessarily destined to turn into either trivializing apologetics or, much worse, a silkily camouflaged complicity in oppression—in the absence ofa strong, explicit, erotically invested affirmation of some people’s felt desire or need that there be gay people in the immediate world.

hat whets these fanta- sies more dangerously, because more blandly, is the presentation, often in ostensibly or authentically gay-affirmative contexts, of biologically based “explanations” for deviant behavior that are absolutely invariably couched in terms of “excess,” “deficiency,” or “imbalance”—whether in the hor- mones, in the genetic material, or, as is currently fashionable, in the fetal endocrine environment.

At the same time, however, in the postmodern era it is becoming increasingly problematical to assume that grounding an iden- tity in biology or “essential nature” is a stable way of insulating it from societal interference.

a tradition of assuming that anyone, male or female, who desires a man must by definition be feminine; and that anyone, male or female, who desires a woman must by the same token be masculine.

a girl gets this pathologizing label only in the rare case of asserting that she actually is anatomically male (e.g., “that she has, or will grow, a penis”); while a boy can be treated for Gender Iden- tity Disorder of Childhood if he merely asserts “that it would be better not to have a penis”—or alternatively, if he displays a “preoccupation with female stereotypical activities

repudiated

burgeoning