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Feminist analysis of sexual inequalities initially focused on the cultural and physical oppression that women suffered at the hands of men, thus inevitably producing a focus on gender inequalities within heterosexual relations (Jackson and Scott, 1996a). The emergence of more explicit feminist critiques of heterosexuality was partly the logical consequence of characterizing heterosexuality as an oppressive institution, and partly driven by those who identified themselves as lesbians. In these debates, it is important to be aware of different strands of lesbian feminism. Political lesbians were those who saw lesbianism primarily as a form of resistance to patriarchy rather than simply a sexual preference. This tendency has retained a strong hold on contemporary cultural imaginations of feminism, with ‘man- hating’, ‘masculine’ looking and – above all – lesbian, stereotypes of feminists put forward as representing all feminisms. That such a negative caricature of feminism exists reflects the persistence of homophobia in that lesbianism is seen as deviant enough to use it to stigmatize feminists and regulate women’s conduct. What this caricature also reflects is an interpretation of the ideas of political lesbianism which emerged during the second wave feminist movement, whereby the developing critiques of sexual inequalities led some to argue that any kind of interaction with men, particularly at the level of sexual and emotional relationships, constituted a betrayal of feminist positions and loyalties. In part, this was a reaction to the marginalization of lesbian concerns within the Women’s Liberation Movement, but it was also an identification of lesbianism as a political stance. Groups such as the New York- based Radicalesbians argued that women should put their political and emotional energies into other women, not male- dominated political movements or intimate relationships with men. In the UK the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group (1981) maintained that heterosexual sex was a symbolic and material manifestation of male domination and that heterosexual feminists were colluding in their own oppression and engaging in ‘counter- revolutionary activity’. Such sentiments are, of course, extremely radical and avowedly anti- male, but this was a minority tendency even among political lesbians, many of whom distanced themselves from condemnation of heterosexual women.

Political lesbianism ultimately made a lasting and significant contribution to radical feminism, and to second wave feminism as a whole, through more sociologically informed critiques of heterosexuality as an institution. Most influential among these was Adrienne Rich’s essay ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, published in 1980. Rich developed a social typology of male power to elaborate how a number of social practices effectively coerced women into a subordinated femininity as part of a ‘compulsory’ heterosexuality. She drew upon other feminist studies of the workplace, family structures, economic inequality and violence to produce a sophisticated theory of how heterosexuality and its gender divisions are imposed upon women, producing femininity in its current subordinated form while simultaneously stigmatizing lesbianism and rendering it invisible. Similarly, Monique Wittig writes: ‘I describe heterosexuality not as an institution but as a political regime which rests on the submission and appropriation of women’ (1992: xv), and, as a materialist lesbian theorist, she goes on to argue that ‘the refusal to become (or remain) heterosexual always meant the refusal to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian, this goes further than the refusal of the role “woman”. It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man’ (1992: 13).

A later generation of feminists have continued to engage with these theorizations of heterosexuality. Significantly they have insisted that the critique of heterosexuality as an institution should not imply criticism of heterosexual women and that a more nuanced account of the complexity of heterosexual desires and practices is needed (see Jackson, 1999, 2006b). The analyses provided by lesbian feminists such as Rich and Wittig, however, have continued to inform explorations and critiques of heterosexuality as a social and political structure which privileges marriage and heterosexual families and influences laws, policies and ideologies affecting every aspect of social life (see Ch. 5.3)