autumnal-dawn: Hi! I was wondering if you wouldn't mind educating me about the phrase "compulsory heterosexuality"? I'm wondering what about that is terfy or transphobic. I've used the phrase before and I didn't know that it was a phrase that was exclusionary and that's the last thing I want to be, so I'd like to be educated on the subject so I can share it with others who I know have used it too. Thanks!!
If you go to my tag “compulsory heterosexuality”, you’ll see some trans women and transfeminine ppl explaining it a lot better than I could.
Essentially, it was coined by Adrienne Rich, who was a huge TERF. (As in, helped-Janice-Raymond-write-her-infamous-book type TERF.) She believed that all (cis) women can and should be lesbian, and coined the term to explain away bisexuality. (Oh, there are women who experience attraction to women *and* men? They’re just lesbians experiencing “compulsory heterosexuality”!) Even without the whole biphobia thing, many trans women have talked about the importance of not normalizing terms and other things that were created by TERFs.
I know lots of lesbians (including myself) have gone through a period in life where they truly believed they were attracted to men, because the idea that women have to be attracted to men is so ingrained in our heteropatriarchal society. But there are other words (like “internalized heteronormativity/homophobia/lesbophobia” or “coercive heteronormativity”) that we can use to describe that.
If you really care about not supporting a raging transmisogynist, use like coercive heterosexuality instead.