quote · Legacy record
The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer—the romantic—asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’) it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is ‘normal,’ that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women.
The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer—the romantic—asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’) it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is ‘normal,’ that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women.
Approximate author period: c. 1970 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Adrienne Rich
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1970 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1929 to 2012; Wikidata Q270705, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q270705 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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- Contributor-provided quotation collection
Supplied reference C; CSV row 151193; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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