In such statements, Rich challenges the concept and language of “inclusion” afforded to lesbians within homosexual (men’s) liberation. Noting differences in economic and social privilege and mobility carried by men – for example, what is at stake for homosexual men and women. Within LGBPOA¹⁷I have omitted the T here and added ‘POA (Pansexual, Omnisexual, Asexual)’ to draw attention to conflations of gender and sexual desire to produce identities. communities, there is a shared focus on expressing one’s desires, sexual and otherwise. This begs an excellent question: Will women have improved access to social and economic benefits if their ‘intimate’ desires for other women can be known and protected by law?

As a point of divergence from homosexual men, Rich cites the prevalence of anonymous sex in their communities as another key difference that must be considered – what forms of intimacy are being legitimised by an inclusive form of gay liberation? She then manoeuvres lesbianism away from a home with homosexuality towards a lesbian existence that falls onto the aforementioned continuum of “a profoundly female experience.” And this is the big turn that concerns me most. The task of naming the scope of ‘profoundly female’ runs the risk of delving into the feedback loops of identity politics. However, the process of engaging is generative. Thinking about and with ‘profoundly female’, Rich finds thinking about eroticism (the joy of desires) in terms that do not centralise the expression of the felt experience to one part of the body (the genitals) a generative start¹⁸This is something of a theme in feminist thought for decades. Two outstanding examples: Audre Lorde, ‘The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 1993, 339–43; Luce Irigaray, ‘Female Desire’, in The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Welton Donn (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 353–60..

Framed this way, compulsory heterosexuality is not entirely about desiring needs be met by someone of the opposite sex – the issue is the institutionalisation of a practice of sexual desire, other forms of intimacy, and economic agency are conflated into the only viable way to access any of it. So, to contrast this conflation, she invokes ‘lesbian’ as a term to describe this specifically female phenomenon – and in doing so, inadvertently, raises a debate as to why there is no other (English) name for other forms of female same-sex intimacy. Motherhood? Sisterhood? Friendship? Each of these suffices in some instances, and all carry aspects of a profoundly female experience. The collective terminology demonstrates the limited, recognised choices folx have to access fundamental human desires for physical and emotional intimacy as well as economic stability. The only name for female same-sex intimacy implicates same-sex copulation (as ‘lesbian’ does) – how does that reflect on our perception of valid forms of intimacy en masse? How does that reflect our perception of what is needed to make/have a ‘life’?

The threat of men losing access to women through ‘lesbianism’ comes to the surface in this scenario – if there were apparent, visible alternatives to compulsory heterosexuality, would folx choose to stay in it? Does meeting all of one’s needs in one package afford a satisfying meeting of desires that amounts to ‘a life’? If the choice to seek divergent arrangements of intimate (female) relations is not visible, then not only are alternative options and models absent, but future configurations of relations that open new paths of existence (for all) are less likely to be pursued and realised. Rich encourages the reader to explore, identify, and pursue intimate relations on their terms. References to women’s communities and coalitions are found with little reference to specifically and overtly sexual connections between women. Rich notes that in a compulsory heterosexuality mindset, attempts for women to facilitate and create independent existences are often perceived as a form of absolute separatism – the queer co-op is seen in a light not that different from a convent: a bunch of FLINTA folx isolating themselves from the ‘real world’ (which trying to make good via carefully curated social action). These forms of knowing and being are interpreted as a ‘lifestyle’ choice or an act of man-hating (or penis envy).

The perception of independent living as a preference or style results from an imposition and presumption of heterosexuality on women. Heterosexuality is normal and legitimate. Female same-sex intimacy is a style and preference. While highlighting examples of women’s communities, she points out that women “have always resisted¹⁹Rich, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, 653..” Perhaps resistance isn’t the right word – perhaps a better word would be ‘existed’. Nonetheless, the meaning is the same: women living and being intimate with each other independently of men is neither new nor radical, yet continues to be seen as an ‘alternative’ and a ‘lifestyle’. For Rich, the countless examples of women’s communities / independent living have been erased to hide valid forms of sensualities that have always existed outside of the institutions she critiques – yet continue to be misnamed or marginalised.

Forty-three years after Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence was published, we still do not have terms to describe the types of relations she cites, nor have we found ways to elevate forms of knowing and being that sit outside the institution to something valid. I agree with Rich’s 2004 assessment that her writing was clumsy  – it takes several readings and a lot of patience to ‘get’ what she is groping for terms to describe the phenomena that not only invalidates but dehumanises intimacies and relations to the point that they can’t even be perceived. Since 1980, the term ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’ has taken a life of its own, sometimes anagrammed to CH or abbreviated to comphet. I’ve encountered the term frequently in various sex-positive and polyamorous spaces. Concepts such as relationships anarchy (RA) and identities in the omni- and poly-gender, sexual, and amorous zones touch on it. To Rich’s point, however the sexual centre remains. RA and ‘poly talk’ frequently contextualise conversations in relation or response to genitals (your gender) and sexual intercourse. Rather than focusing on what is invisible and hidden and the potentialities that lie there, discussions involving Rich’s terminology – lesbian erasure and comphet – always return to the same problem she is trying to get away from a life defined by who and what gender the folx you sleep with are (or are not)?

Regardless of Rich’s role in popularising the terminology in academic and queer (social/political) circles, regardless of how it has been adopted by various communities exploring their own sexual, gender, and relationship identities – the issue remains that her arguments by way of example all point to the clear conflation lesbianism carries with sex and male exclusion. In the mid-2020s, the dropping of the connection lesbians has to comphet further demonstrates this centrality of sex. The term has been universalised to engage in various discussions about intimacy and the domestic. By dropping the centrality of a ‘profoundly female experience’ and the lost agency of FLINTA folx in a comphet world, sexual desire remains centralised. Therefore, Rich’s message is just as relevant today as it was nearly a half-century ago: As we move through transforming consciousness, to move to a more equitable and liberated society, to change the politics and economics that allow for some power over others, we must explore the variety of intimate relations that have always existed outside single-body-part sensualities and erotic’s (those related to genitals). To undo the institution of compulsory heterosexuality (and its companions of racism and classism), we must first acknowledge and exercise our choice to leave it. The profoundly female will then be explored anew as our knowledge of gender and sexuality evolves away from this model.