Introduction: Background

Rich's (1980) conception of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ to explain the existence of female homosexuality as resistance to heterosexuality has been criticized for its ignorance of the range of female sexuality and the inability to imagine women's same-sex desires as anything but resistance to heterosexuality (Blackwood & Wieringa 1999). However, Rich's central thesis remains unchallenged that many societies are characterized by systems of compulsory heterosexuality, symptomatic of patriarchy.

Rich's (1980) continuity approach located all women on a lesbian continuum with respect to their practices that resist compulsory heterosexuality and dependence on men, defining lesbianism cross-culturally and trans-historically as forms of ‘women-loving women’ (Radicalesbians 1973; Cook 1977; Sahli 1979; Faderman 1981). Discontinuous approaches focusing on lesbianism as geographically rooted and historically developed do not recognize commonalities in universal structures of male domination and reject notions of lesbianism as resistance to patriarchy. Like postmodern feminism, discontinuous approaches are concerned with the divisions among lesbians on issues of race, ethnicity, class, etc. (Ferguson 1990). This chapter examines some of these concerns among Chinese women to find support for Rich's (1980) thesis.

The political agendas of lesbians and feminists in Europe and North America have not always been coterminous. The connection between female homosexuality and feminism came about in the development of lesbian feminist theory during the 1970s, where ‘feminism is the complaint, lesbianism the solution’ (Johnston 1973), and where ‘feminism is the theory, lesbianism the practice’ (Ti-Grace Atkinson cited in Echols 1989: 238). Political lesbianism was strongly advocated as revolutionary action – e.g. Radicalesbians (1973: 240) proclaimed that ‘a lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion’, advocating lesbianism as a significant form of resistance to patriarchy and identifying lesbians as, first and foremost, feminist.

Political lesbianism in the West has been influential in shaping the aspirations of young lesbians in Hong Kong as they access feminist/lesbian theories through institutes of higher learning. This chapter employs a dialectical historical approach in examining two diachronic groups in the interlocution of local socio-cultural dynamics in Southern China, and of historical developments in urban modernity. Sworn sisterhoods emerged in the mid nineteenth century in Guangdong Province while its modern-day counterparts are represented by self-identified lesbians in Hong Kong.