The Straight Mind and Other Essays

The Straight Mind and Other Essays is a collection of essays published in 1992 by Monique Wittig, the French writer and theorist who became a central figure in materialist feminism and avant-garde literature. It consists of an introduction and nine essays, arranged in two parts. In them, Wittig seeks to reframe feminist theory from the standpoint of radical lesbianism, and questions heterosexuality not merely as a sexuality but as a political regime that organizes social life.

The title essay began as a public intervention: it was delivered to the annual convention of the Modern Language Association in 1978, and in April 1979 Wittig presented it as the opening address of a conference at Barnard College. Its publication in French in the journal Questions féministes caused a rift in the editorial collective over "the lesbian question", which ended in the dissolution of the group and of the journal. The text also appeared in English in Feminist Issues.

In these pages Wittig argues that the categories of "male" and "female" mask economic, political and ideological imbalances, and that oppression comes before the idea of a biological sex rather than the reverse. From this she maintains that lesbians are not women, since the word "woman" is defined in relation to man, and she proposes the abolition of the category of sex. In "One Is Not Born a Woman", presented in 1979 at a conference marking the thirtieth anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, she compares the situation of lesbians to that of fugitive slaves. Finally, in "The Trojan Horse" she develops a conception of literature as a war machine, echoing Gilles Deleuze.

The book has had wide influence in feminist theory and queer studies. Rosemary Hennessy, in her review, highlights Wittig's materialist critique, which distinguishes it from queer theory, more attentive to discourse than to the economic dimensions of oppression.