If you were wondering where the sexual revolution was going, this is it. This kind of thinking has been a mainstay in feminist literature for decades. Now it is spilling over into popular culture. As a matter of course, young women are increasingly being conditioned to believe that embracing lesbianism is a culturally approved way of fighting misogyny. And don’t forget that Bianco says this is the “vanguard of feminist thought.”
If you’ve ever wondered about the connection between feminism and LGBT identities, a recent article by Marcie Bianco at NBC News clears things up. Among other things, Bianco says this:
Men need heterosexuality to maintain their societal dominance over women. Women, on the other hand, are increasingly realizing not only that they don’t need heterosexuality, but that it also is often the bedrock of their global oppression.
Patriarchy is at its most potent when oppression doesn’t feel like oppression, or when it is packaged in terms of biology, religion or basic social needs like security comfort, acceptance and success. Heterosexuality offers women all these things as selling points to their consensual subjection.
Historically, women have been conditioned to believe that heterosexuality is natural or innate, just as they have been conditioned to believe that their main purpose is to make babies — and if they fail to do so, they are condemned as not “real,” or as bad, women.
Bianco goes on to tell the stories of two female celebrities—Miley Cyrus and Julianne Hough—who have recently turned from heterosexuality to LGBT identities. Bianco contends that Cyrus and Hough are in the vanguard of feminist liberation.
How does renouncing heterosexuality liberate them according to Bianco? Feminists generally view marriage and motherhood as institutions that limit a woman’s agency and freedom. These institutions make women dependent upon and subordinate to men. The only way for women to have true freedom and empowerment over their male oppressors is to sever all natural connections between sex, marriage, and childbirth. Contraception and abortion free women from the consequences of their own fertility and from the economies of marriage. Likewise, embracing an LGBT identity is the ultimate declaration of independence from these patriarchal impositions on female freedom.
