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Lesbianism as a Political Strategy
Lesbianism is essential as a political strategy of the women's movement. It's time to remind ourselves of that. When we recognize what Adrienne Rich and others have pointed out, that heterosexuality in our society is compulsory, necessary to maintain the hierarchies that oppress women, peoples of color, those of different physical abilities, and other people who are not heterosexual white men, we understand that resistance to heterosexuality brings liberation from that aspect of institutional sexism.
We can never remind ourselves enough that lesbianism is a political choice; it is never enough that lesbianism be seen as a "lifestyle."
My sister has a boyfriend, my mother tells me. My sister, 23 years old, has never had a boyfriend. She has, however, had women lovers. The context in which she saw her lesbianism was that of athletics, not feminism. She had "girlfriends." She never talked of "lovers," but she did talk about women who wanted to "marry" her. Perhaps for her, sleeping with women was a convenient alternative to sleeping with men.
For women who see lesbianism as just another way of loving," seeing men is, of course, not basically different from seeing women. And, they discover, it can be a lot easier. Or so our families, the state, the media tell us.
But Mary had a basic feminist consciousness. She'd taken women's studies courses, done some feminist reading, snatched an occasional halfhour chat with her big sister. So how did we lose her? And why is every woman who goes back to men a tragedy anyway?
In the late 60s and early 70s, feminists wrote of the necessity for women to abandon support of the institution of heterosexuality, to stop sleeping with men. Of course it has never been as easy as all that -- very few women were able to walk away from what they saw as satisfactory relationships with men, to turn to lesbianism out of pure political commitment. But sustained critique of heterosexuality, exposure of its deadliness for women, combined with the newly visible option of lesbianism to finally give women a choice, a choice based in politics.
But we forget that the choice is easily taken away. When we...