The invention of the heterosexual
Blank mentions her personal story at the beginning of her provocative new history of heterosexuality, “Straight,” as a way of illustrating just how artificial our notions of “straightness” really are. In her book, Blank, a writer and historian who has written extensively about sexuality and culture, looks at the ways in which social trends and the rise of psychiatry conspired to create this new category in the late 19th and early 20th century. Along the way, she examines the changing definition of marriage, which evolved from a businesslike agreement into a romantic union centered around love, and how social Darwinist ideas shaped the divisions between gay and straight. With her eye-opening book, Blank tactfully deconstructs a facet of modern sexuality that most of us take for granted.
She begins her critique of identity and gender by challenging her readers' assumptions about the distinction often made between sex and gender. (In this distinction, sex is biological while gender is culturally constructed.) In the first place, Butler argues, this distinction introduces a split into the supposedly unified subject of feminism, and in the second place, the distinction proves false. Sexed bodies cannot signify without gender, and the apparent existence of sex prior to discourseand cultural imposition is merely an effect of the functioning of gender. That is, both sex and gender are constructed.
Also: Jonathan Ned Katz's The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995) and Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (2003)
Interesting articles.
I recall reading an article written by a rabbi, the premise of which was that the concepts of "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" go much further back and really emerged with the emergence of Judaism as a faith. Before that, and certainly in Greek, Roman, Pagan societies, bisexuality was the norm and while men and women would form family units in order to procreate and establish a household, etc., men were still expected to have sex with other men (or boys) and that the sexual distinction was not based on male-female but rather on who was doing the penetrating and who was being penetrated, the one doing the penetrating being the dominant one and that it was Judaism which really established the idea that men should only have sex with women and, ideally, within a marriage (though early Judaism allowed for a man to have more than one wife).
proof: what do straight men like to watch in porn? primarily other men cumming. That is the climax event of almost every porn film. Coincidence? i think not.
"gay woman, a straight man, a transman"
Oh good... cis doesn't exist for this author. Well, I'm encouraged... also the argument that a sapient species is somehow inbetween despite their gender identity...
I have referenced this kind of writing before:
"When I'm reading an article that discusses trans issues, I can always tell who the author is by looking for a few key words and constructions. Typically, when an article uses "trans" as a prefix and is good about making sure that the identified sex of the person in question is the only sex that matters for the article, that article is written by a trans person, or by a really good ally. The second kind is one that makes me sigh and acknowledge that it is progress but clearly a quarter loaf. You've read these articles all the time; the words seem to have nervously shuffled inside the door of the argument but clearly aren't comfortable being there. You see the word "transgender" used a lot to refer to a subset much smaller than the word actually applies to. They'll use "biological" when they mean "cis," etc., but they're generally supportive of the right of trans people to live their lives with a reasonable amount of dignity, just as long as they don't demand so much that it offends the other constituency groups that these people depend on for their Liberal Credibility PointsTM."
To reiterate, this piece degenders people in the interests of subverting heteronormativity... which, is, um, plainly bad.