Adrienne Rich Explains Gilmore Girls While I Eat Raviolis

Tomorrow I am meant to discuss Adrienne Rich's "Compulsive Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980) with my study partner, Books and Boots. Tonight I eat ravioli. The only thing the two have in common is that both have instructions that seem so obvious yet I still manage to screw it up.

Let me first set the scene: Farmers Market. Saturday. 10:30 a.m. and the sun is already beating down. My boyfriend has already made fun of me for applying heavy sunscreen on a street corner.

Zoom in on a small booth selling homemade pasta.

Me: Can I, uh, get the butternut squash ravioli.

Woman: Sure! Do you know how to store them and prepare them?

Me: Yeah, uh, in the freezer?

Woman: Yep! And then you boil the water, add them to the pot, and I let them sit an extra minute after they float to the top.

Me: Yeah, yeah. Cool. Sounds good.

Woman: A WHOLE LOT OF INSTRUCTIONS ABOUT THEN ADDING THEM TO BUTTER THAT I DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO BECAUSE THE FIRST INSTRUCTIONS WERE SO OBVIOUS. I LOSE CONTROL OF THE SITUATION BUT DON'T REALIZE IT UNTIL TUESDAY. 7:30 P.M. KITCHEN.

If this was Gilmore Girls, the above dialogue would be twice as long and they would have ordered three times as much pasta along with five pastries, two boxes of poptarts, and a taco.

Okay, back to Rich. So I have to same sort of above-exchange with Rich. From 2017, a lot of the ideas from 1980 sound super straight forward and obvious. But then I find myself confused--hit with a whammy of an idea--and I realize that I had started skimming without realizing I had gotten over my head. Luckily, unlike at the farmers market, I am able to go back and re-read Rich's arguments. Here are my notes.

Rich's essay is a response to the myth of two female desires:

1. to reproduce with men

2. to protect/nurture their reproductions

These expectations stem from the notion that all women are heterosexual. It erases the possibility of queerness or alternative desires. But, as Rich argues, we can't have a coherent feminist discourse without not only acknowledging these identities but fully incorporating them into our cultural consciousness as valid experiences.

So here is what I think is going on. Like Butler, Rich is frustrated that feminist thinkers continue to explore the relationships between men and women as the sole way to create gender equality. By doing so, they push women to the margins of the conversations--specifically excluding conversations about queer women and the inequalities they face.

"Feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration of "lesbianism" as an "alternative life-style," or make token allusion to lesbians."

I've thought about this notion of "tolerance" a lot. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I became deeply invested in the writings of Joey Comeau. Joey Comeau wrote webcomics, short stories, and novels and shared his works across his online platforms. As a teen sequestered in my bedroom with an internet connection, I was obsessed. Comeau wrote about technology and longing and anarchy and rage and intimacy and queer culture. I couldn't get enough of it. One of the things he wrote that has really stuck with me through all these years, though, was about tolerance. One of his characters, a gay man, scorned a bumper sticker promoting tolerance. He said something along the lines of "Why would I want to be tolerated?" We tolerate too-tiny apartments; we tolerate bad smells; we should not tolerate human beings. We should accept human beings and embrace them and recognize them. Tolerance isn't even the bare minimum.

Look at me with my Gilmore Girl-esque pop culture reference!

So tolerating lesbianism? Yeah, Rich is right. We have to push beyond the bare minimum if we are going to have a real discourse.

The first step to expand this discourse is to turn our attention to the relationships between women. Rather than trying to find validation from masculine identities, feminist thinkers need to establish value--even primary value--from relationships between women. Once we derive significance from homosexual/homosocial relationships, we can assert our own agency and independence.

Rich traces the way heterosexual practices and norms are used to prevent gender equality. Rich breaks down the fact that gender inequality is not simply perpetuated by wealth disparity or a straight-forward law. Rather, gender inequality is constructed through a variety of cultural influences ranging from the safety of public spaces to the control of reproduction to the accessibility of education and more. These forces, though, are all underpinned by the assumption of heterosexuality. That is, they all exert control over and through women's sexuality and reproduction which, in turn, continues the idea that women are equally invested in heterosexuality and reproduction.

And so that is where Rich identifies an alternative to compulsory heterosexuality: the lesbian continuum. Now this term can be a bit loaded or confusing. I think this explanation is helpful, though:

"What deserves further exploration is the double-think many women engage in and from which no woman is permanently and utterly free however woman-to-woman relationships, female support networks, a female and feminist value system, are relied on and cherished, indoctrination in male credibility and status can still create synapses in thought, denials of feeling, wishful thinking, a profound sexual and intellectual confusion."

Still confused? No problem. That's what Gilmore Girls is for.

So Lorelai is a tough broad. After fleeing her parents' home at sixteen (seventeen?) with her infant, Lorelai forms a wide network of women that care for one another. Her first employer, Mia, her best friend, Sookie, and her town of characters, Miss Patty, Babette, + Gypsy among others. These women watch out for one another, care for each other, and support each other as they accomplish their goals. They talk about men, yes, but they also talk about their work, their experiences, and their ideas. To them, men are outsides--sometimes beloved outsiders but outsiders nevertheless--who intrude upon their inner network. Just look at Taylor who is often resented for his interference or Luke who is often befuddled by everything around him or Kirk who just desperately tries to keep up. Lorelai accomplishes everything she does because she invests in her friendships with women; she truly cares for the women around her and finds meaning in their relationships. These interactions help her grow and create a life for herself on her own terms.

Lorelai leaves home, finds work in an inn, and eventually starts her own business. None of this was the life her parents imagined for her. Her parents had constructed dreams of heterosexual idyllic norms for their daughter. A heterosexual marriage, an education from established institutions (I mean, we can all agree that Yale is the patriarchy, right?), and some sort of respectable job. To them, Lorelai has thrown her bright future away, but what she has really done is reject compulsory heterosexuality. She opts out of patriarchal systems to forge her own way. Lorelai, although a heterosexual woman, is on the lesbian continuum.

And then there is Rory. Rory whom we are told is her mother's daughter but seems to bear little resemblance to the shock of lightning that is Lorelai. Rory does not opt out but instead yearns for patriarchal approval. Now maybe this can be explained away by Chris's poor parenting, but let's take a second to explore this. Rory wants to go to a prestigious school (we're never told why Stars Hallow is such a bad alternative. Instead we are told to accept that ancient Chilton with all of its honors and prestige is simply the best), applies for an Ivy League education, and snubs professional opportunities that lie outside established media outlets. Rory's friendships with women are mostly fleeting and frequently involve her implicit dismissal of them as silly, flighty, or otherwise inferior. Even her friendship with Lane is fraught with issues: Rory consistently prioritizes herself above Lane and often ignores Lane's problems. Rory focuses primarily on her romantic entanglements and seems to derive value from the opinions of men: Dean, Jess, Logan, her grandfather, and Mr. Huntzberger. When Rory fails to receive the approval of the ultimate patriarch, Mr. Huntzberger, she absolutely collapses and loses her entire identity. Why? Because she does not a cherished feminist network to draw support from.

"Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women. But it is more than these, although we may first begin to perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act or resistance. It has of course included role playing, self-hatred, breakdown, alcoholism, suicide, and intrawoman violence; we romanticize at our peril what it means to love and act against the grain, and under heavy penalties; and lesbian existence has been lived (unlike, say, Jewish or Catholic existence) without access to any knowledge of a tradition, a continuity, a social underpinning. The destruction of records and memorabilia and letters documenting the realities of lesbian existence must be taken very seriously as a means of keeping heterosexuality compulsory for women, since what has been kept from our knowledge is joy, sensuality, courage, and community, as well as guilt, self-betrayal, and pain."

Rory does not resist the patriarchy. She accepts heterosexual norms as the standards by which to live. She internalizes these values leading to self-hatred and sometimes hatred of other women.

Imagine a Rory who chooses women. A Rory who acknowledges that Paris is not only the most important women in her life but the most important person. A Rory who does not just "tolerate" Paris but embraces Paris and truly accepts her. Imagine a Rory who loves Paris and works with her to accomplish their goals. In this fantasy, Rory and Paris still have to work through their differences and acknowledge their conflicting opinions, but they work together to grow as individuals and support one another to achieve greater power and influence.

“Woman-identification is a source of energy, a potential springhead of female power, violently curtailed and wasted under the institution of heterosexuality. The denial of reality and visibility to women's passion for women, women's choice of women as allies, life companions and community; the forcing of such relationships into dissimulation and their disintegration under intense pressure, have meant an incalculable loss to the power of all women to change the social relations of the sexes to liberate ourselves and each other.”

Rory could be so much greater than she is if she simply valued her relationships with women rather than dismissing them. She measures her worth by comparing herself to other women through the lens of the primary man in her life. She isolates herself from larger potential woman-identified networks. Consequently, Rory is stunted, passive, and frankly, unaccomplished.

Her one act of rebellion is eating more than the patriarchy would recommend, but even this "resistance" is tempered by her permanently slender form.

Speaking of eating, back to my raviolis!

So after boiling the ravioli in a pot LIKE YOU DO, I fried them in a brown sage butter for a quick couple of minutes. The result was a warm, creamy pasta that melted from crisp corners into soft squash on the tongue. Lorelai would never pull this off, but Sookie would probably fret over my technique. That said, it's delicious and perfect for sharing with a friend.

#adriennerich #queer #lesbian #lesbiancontinuum #compulsoryheterosexuality