Lorde Homophobia, lesbian-baiting, and compulsory heterosexuality are pieces in a complex of interrelated ideas that many argue support and sustain sexist power structures that harm more than lesbians. Our society often promotes the notion that no real woman lacks a man. Thus, any woman not connected to or approved of by a man is often seen as somehow diminished, less than a woman, unsexed. The idea that a woman ought to be connected to a man is so entrenched that many women marry simply to marry.
Many women wind up spending their lives in a lie.
Lesbian-baiting is a control tactic. One function of maintaining homophobia, then, is to keep women within traditionally defined gender roles. Some suggest that in the myriad ways this traditional idea continues to get played out and perpetuated lie one of the roots of the wage differential between men and women. Societal fears that these intimacies might lead to sexual intercourse is especially frustrating to some because any same-sex intimate bodily contact may be freely stigmatized. Women in our society no longer walk along holding hands in public, for instance.