The lesbian experience is often described as isolating – because, in a world built by men for men, you'd have to unlearn the societal conditioning that your life must revolve around them.
When I started questioning my sexuality, I found myself watching a lot of coming out videos. Through this, I was exposed to a diverse set of queer stories. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to every queer person’s journey, a particular narrative kept popping up: “I think I’ve always known.”
I thought I was alone in this feeling; maybe I’m just a straight girl faking it for attention ? That was until I came across a word on the internet that perfectly captured my dilemma:Comphet has been the subject of many online contemporary queer discourse. It was featured in the controversial, a 31-page informal self-reflection manual for women who were unsure of their sexual orientation that was first released by Angeli Luz on Tumblr in 2018.
This concept is actually not new. The term was first coined in the 1980s by the Marxist-feminist writer Adrienne Rich in her essay titled “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Here, she argued that comphet must be analyzed within the context of oppressive systems like patriarchy and capitalism. In our society, sexuality had been commodified and heterosexuality was considered leverage.
One may argue that Rich’s framework has ceased to stay relevant today, because gender inequality has lessened over time – after all, we’re already living in the era of the. Still, underneath hollow notions of empowerment and equality, comphet remains deeply embedded in the female experience. Josephine de Jesus, a 21-year-old lesbian, recounted how it was so much easier for her to accept that she liked women than it was for her to acknowledge that she was not at all attracted to men. She recalled how, despite only feeling attraction towards the same sex, labeling herself as a “lesbian” was not even an option that she considered until much later.
However, when she briefly tried dating men during her teenage years, it became more apparent that this was not what she really wanted. Iniisip ko na, baka nung una pa lang talaga, ayoko na sa lalaki. Kaya lang naman siguro ako pumatol sa lalaki kasi yun lang yung nakikita ko. Akala ko ayun lang yung tama, akala ko yun lang yung pwedeThe road to acceptance had not been smooth for her, given that her identity was shrouded by decades’ worth of conditioning that she constantly had to question.
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