Dear Editors,

The bias Carolyn Heilbrun finds in Janice Raymond's A Passion for Friends (Women's Review, Vol. III, No. 9, June 1986) is all too clearly Lesbian “bias” – as opposed to the heterosexist (not heterosexual) bias of readers Heilbrun believes might be alienated by Raymond's book. Feminism is not limited to lesbians but we certainly have less of a personal stake than heterosexual feminists in staying within the bounds of prescribed female behavior and a much, much more personal stake in examining all ramifications of the assumption that “woman is for man.”

It's hard to be heterosexual and a feminist. For one thing, hetero - sexuality is for the vast majority of women so much a matter of taken-forgranted social pressures that the possibility of not associating with men in some kind of sexual-familial arrangement never even arises. Second, unless a heterosexual feminist's male partner fights the patriarchy to a degree that puts him in continual economic or personal danger, he is in very important ways not her ally. To remain with any other kind of man (they are in very long supply) requires a woman to distort her thinking, to take customary behavior as moral behavior and restrain from pushing her own feminist requirements “too hard,” like the prisoner who learns to avoid painful contact with an electrified fence by stopping just short of its limits and who then learns to forget the original process of learning so that the fence becomes psychologically invisible and she can pretend she's free.

For the majority of women, avoiding personal sexual association with men simply isn't possible; the price is too high. In trying to become aware of the social forces that limit our behavior as women, public patriarchy is easier to face than the private kind. Ideally all feminists should face both, but as least a lesbian can become aware of the sexism that is trying to kill her without having to face profound personal ambivalence about her partner. For heterosexual women this ambivalence can become tragically intense – which is often why it remains in the clouded area of the notclearly- felt and never-examined.