Adrienne Rich or ACR as Sylvia Plath referred to her, made her way to "
Rich marries hoping to escape familial confines/duties only to find herself unhappily in the same trapped place, only worse; with children."I married in part because I knew no better way to disconnect from my first family," she says. "I wanted what I saw as a full woman's life, whatever was possible."
Rich's dishonestly in the marriage lead to both her and her husband having affairs:"I wanted, then, more than anything, the one thing of which there was never enough: time to think, time to write."
Shortly thereafter, her husband Alfred Conrad committed suicide:
Apparently she was such a hotty ALL the men in NY wanted a piece of her pie! Umm sure, okay!
Like Radical Feminists in Rich's day and RadFems now, Rich desperately needed the IDEA of Lesbian to both vent her anger and (mistakenly) use as a means to remove herself from (in her mind) Heterosexuality/Heterocentric confines rendering her helpless/afraid/weak and ineffectual. As a Heterosexual woman, Rich could only access Lesbian through lying:
I will show shortly in Rich's piece de resistance that Rich (unlike some STRAIGHTBIANS), selfishly planned and executed her lies.
It is precisely codswallop like this that fully seals ANY question (were you to have any) of Rich's Heterosexuality. Radical Feminists like Rich tell themselves collective man enforces Heterosexual female grooming/dress etc (when actually it is Heterosexual females who both desire/enforce beauty standards) yet cannot explain why Lesbians en masse do not fall prey to the same Heterocentric grooming standards.
Lesbians have always existed and have never required validation for our existence. Women, particularly damaged Radical Feminists like Rich spend their lives/careers seeking some sort of warped validation and blame men for not GIVING it to them!
Rich often talks out of both sides of her mouth; on one side she claims her "erotic" feelings for women have been stifled via Patriarchy and on the other side she claims sexual feelings between women are not necessary for qualifying them as Lesbian! Rich ignores or doesnt bother to notice most Lesbians do not have the luxury of a closet, most Dykes are visibly Lesbian. Lesbian visibility shines for some Lesbians physically and mentally and other Lesbians less physically and more mentally. Either way, Dyke thought processes alone peg us for Lesbian, as any Lesbian can attest to since the advent of the internet. Even online with a genderless name and no image of ourselves, we are often assumed/believed by Hets (usually Het women) to be men!
In Diversity and Variability in Women’s Sexual Identities STRAIGHTBIAN Carla Rappaport Golden said of Rich's lesbian:
Lesbian was problematic for Rich precisely because of the ugly depraved dykey sexually perverted masculinist ideas held by Hetero society/Heterosexuals like Adrienne Rich herself. But Adrienne Rich desperately needed Lesbian because it encompassed (to her) anti maleness, what she didnt need was the alienating baggage attached to Lesbian. So Rich tried to simultaneously redefine Lesbian for Heterosexual Feminist inclusion while distancing the debauchery attached to Lesbian, thus Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence was born.
Adrienne Rich begins Comp Het with a Straightbianesque quote from Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook:
Rich believed that Lesbian scholarship was forced into hiding by a patriarchal driven Compulsory Heterosexuality that even mid range Feminism enforced. Rich failed to understand that Lesbian erudition wasnt (isnt) quashed or silenced by patriarchy, it wasnt (isnt) understood by Heterosexuals, particularly Het women! Rich feared losing academic clout by choosing Lesbian as her modus vivendi and through RadFem speak tried to make HER brand of lesbian acceptable to greater Feminism.
Rich assumes Homophobia alone inhabited Feminists (Het women) from trying to coral Het women toward a
Further in the essay Rich says:
Rich brings up Lesbians being closeted in the workplace but the exact experiences she uses to make her points are the experiences Heterosexual women (like her), claiming to be Lesbians (like her) had with the luxury of being closeted! Most Dykes NEVER have that luxury and most Dykes even if they did would NOT put some fucking job over their entire lives! The only Homophobe here is Adrienne Rich!
Because Rich herself (a Heterosexual woman) didnt feel or experience blatant Homophobia (why would she?) she ignorantly theorised compulsory heterosexuality was to blame for Feminist silence about Lesbians/Lesbian issues, including the reason Feminists wouldnt platform Lesbianism as a possible choice against patriarchy/men! Rich claims non Radical Feminists were in collusion WITH patriarchy! Non Radical Feminists, according to Rich, helped provide patriarchy with pussy, pay and passion!
Rich found the term Lesbian limiting because Lesbian didnt include STRAIGHT women like her and because Rich didnt like the psycho-logical definitions defining Lesbian or the societal connotations colouring Lesbian by Het society. By expanding Lesbian to include all female relationship types, not simply "genital" as Rich crudely puts it, Lesbian wouldnt be so foul an idea, for women or society. Rich fails to acknowledge the LIMITS, limits based on HER HETEROSEXUALLY driven assumptions about biological Lesbians, that real Lesbianism isnt defined by pussy licking or KFC pussy (finger licking good). Lesbian was crude, vulgar, plebian not because it was/is, BUT because it was based on Adrienne Rich's own sick fucked up homophobic warped fucking views of Lesbian!
Adrienne Rich, in typical Heterosexual fashion, was a
In other words, Adrienne Rich and Radical Feminism itself are NOT LESBIAN! Bizarrely in this strange (sick) passage Rich twice brings up/equates a child/mother being turned on during infant feeding. I refuse to think past Rich's statement here because to do so is just toooooo fucking SICK and it most certainly is NOT Lesbian!
Adrienee Rich said of women's diminutiveness art/history in When We Dead Awaken:
Precisely because of STRAIGHTBIANS like Adrienne Rich, Lesbians/Lesbian youth flounder and flail trying to find ourselves in the world. Thanks to the likes of Rich and her warped RadFem ilk, most of the signs and symbols labeled Lesbian are false. They point us right back to female Heterosexual mindset and body that paints us into a corner of dysphoria, reinforcing Lesbian confusion and resulting in a
Adrienne Rich discovered Lesbian in the same way Christopher Columbus discovered America, she ignored those already living here and those she couldnt ignore she kindly smothered in blankets of smallpox.
dirt and Mrs Dirt
I'm glad you quoted Rich's (stomach-churning) passage on breast-feeding. Just by itself, it demonstrates that (even) gay men have a better understanding of being lesbian than she does.
ReplyDeleteshe equates the neurotic desire to return to the breast/the mother, hiding from the big bad world, with lesbianism.
ReplyDeletefor heterosexual women, loving other women is loving the mother (not the other) through them, the symbiotic undifferentiable coenesthetic mother they were alienated from via becoming individuals that grew up, by tracing/replicating the mother and maternity as feminine essence throughout all women.
this entails asexuality as sexuality requires being the object in someone else's gaze which is HORRIFYING to these women. DEVASTATING. sexual games of beautification and flirtation and play are precarious, other, 'unnatural' and threatening and equated with rape and therefore men must be responsible for it somehow
This stuff is supposedly written by a woman. If that is indeed the case, I wonder what on earth she thinks of feminism in general and feminist solidarity in particular? And why should the term lesbian be so narrowly defined? What of political lesbians? You DO know (I assume) that Rich lived with Michelle Cliff until she died. Why isn't it possible for a woman to have an epiphany--no matter at what age? I would really like some non-sarcastic, bitter answers.
ReplyDeleteRich was clearly bisexual, not heterosexual. Don't drag straight women into her lesbophobia.
ReplyDelete