Summary Of Rethinking Sexuality By Diane Richardson

Diane Richardson’s 2000 book Rethinking Sexuality also questions the normativity and naturalization of heterosexuality as the only key determinant of sexual relationships. Richardson believes that heterosexuality is “a socially constructed institution which structures and maintains male domination, in particular through the way it channels women into marriage and motherhood” (20). She argues that heterosexuality is constructed by the hetero-patriarchy to be the only way of existence to further the needs of men. By the same token, the American poet, essayist and radical feminist, Adrienne Rich, in her 1980 polemical essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” she argues that the institution of heterosexuality is not natural in