The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

Rich argued, to have genuine regard for women logically meant not attempting to own them in marriage or otherwise block their intimacy with friends and comrades or inhibit their capacity to live engaged and meaningful lives. For the Radicalesbians, to desire women meant that one’s “energies flowed toward women,” that one desired to “relate more completely to women.”17 It meant disinvesting in “male identification,” or in the practice of supporting, benefiting from, justifying, and being complicit with patriarchal interests. It meant recognizing that while straight men claimed to love women, in fact their energies flowed toward men—toward admiring men, seeking men’s approval, forging bonds with men, and so on. Heterosexuality, lesbian feminists recognized, was an oppressively homosocial—and often homoerotic—institution that romanticized men and women’s alienation from each other.