Summer 1980 637 pressures ranging from the selling of daughters to postindustrial eco nomics to the silences of literature to the images of the television screen she, like Dinnerstein, is stuck with trying to reform a man-made stitution--compulsory heterosexuality-as if, despite profound emo tional impulses and complementarities drawing women toward women. there is a mystical/biological heterosexual inclination, a"preference"or "choice"which draws women toward men Moreover, it is understood that this"preference"does not need to be explained, unless through the tortuous theory of the female Oedipus omplex or the necessity for species reproduction. It is lesbian sexuality which(usually, and, incorrectly, "included"under male homosexuality seen as requiring explanation. This assumption of female heterosex- uality seems to me in itself remarkable: it is an enormous assumption to have glided so silently into the foundations of our thought The extension of this assumption is the frequently heard assertion that in a world of genuine equality, where men were nonoppressive and nurturing, everyone would be bisexual. Such a notion blurs and sen timentalizes the actualities within which women have experienced sexu ality; it is the old liberal leap across the tasks and struggles of here and now, the continuing process of sexual definition which will generate its own possibilities and choices. (It also assumes that women who have chosen women have done so simply because men are oppressive and emotionally unavailable: which still fails to account for women who con tinue to pursue relationships with oppressive and/or emotionally un- satisfying men. ) I am suggesting that heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution-even,or especially, by those individuals who feel they are, in their personal e perience, the precursors of a new social relation between the sexes If women are the earliest sources of emotional caring and physical nurture for both female and male children, it would seem logical, from a feminist perspective at least, to pose the following questions: whether the search for love and tenderness in both sexes does not originally lead toward women; why in fact women would ever redirect that search; why species-survival, the means of impregnation, and emotionalerotic re- lationships should ever have become so rigidly identified with each other; and why such violent strictures should be found necessary to enforce women's total emotional, erotic loyalty and subservience to men. I doubt that enough feminist scholars and theorists have taken the pains to acknowledge the societal forces which wrench women's emo- from themselves and othSummer 1980 637 pressures ranging from the selling of daughters to postindustrial eco￾nomics to the silences of literature to the images of the television screen, she, like Dinnerstein, is stuck with trying to reform a man-made institution-compulsory heterosexuality-as if, despite profound emo￾tional impulses and complementarities drawing women toward women, there is a mystical/biological heterosexual inclination, a "preference" or "choice" which draws women toward men. Moreover, it is understood that this "preference" does not need to be explained, unless through the tortuous theory of the female Oedipus complex or the necessity for species reproduction. It is lesbian sexuality which (usually, and, incorrectly, "included" under male homosexuality) is seen as requiring explanation. This assumption of female heterosex￾uality seems to me in itself remarkable: it is an enormous assumption to have glided so silently into the foundations of our thought. The extension of this assumption is the frequently heard assertion that in a world of genuine equality, where men were nonoppressive and nurturing, everyone would be bisexual. Such a notion blurs and sen￾timentalizes the actualities within which women have experienced sexu￾ality; it is the old liberal leap across the tasks and struggles of here and now, the continuing process of sexual definition which will generate its own possibilities and choices. (It also assumes that women who have chosen women have done so simply because men are oppressive and emotionally unavailable: which still fails to account for women who con￾tinue to pursue relationships with oppressive and/or emotionally un￾satisfying men.) I am suggesting that heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution-even, or especially, by those individuals who feel they are, in their personal ex￾perience, the precursors of a new social relation between the sexes. II If women are the earliest sources of emotional caring and physical nurture for both female and male children, it would seem logical, from a feminist perspective at least, to pose the following questions: whether the search for love and tenderness in both sexes does not originally lead toward women; why in fact women would ever redirect that search; why species-survival, the means of impregnation, and emotional/erotic re￾lationships should ever have become so rigidly identified with each other; and why such violent strictures should be found necessary to enforce women's total emotional, erotic loyalty and subservience to men. I doubt that enough feminist scholars and theorists have taken the pains to acknowledge the societal forces which wrench women's emo￾tional and erotic energies away from themselves and other women and Signs