Essay On Heteronormativity

Many people from the United States hold the belief that being gay is something that has always been considered to be okay. They believe that it is just a given. Despite people’s current beliefs on the subject, for a very long time, it was something that was widely believed to be taboo. In the past, people were imprisoned due to their sexuality. Regardless, throughout the decades, people have pushed for the widespread acceptance of people who are part of the LGBT community. Today, homophobia still exists in some parts of the United States, but we have come a long way since the early 1900s.

Heterosexism, according to Warren J. Blumenfeld, is the system of advantages given to heterosexuals based on the social construct of gender roles and heterosexual norms, while marginalizing and oppressing homosexuals and others who do not fit into the heterosexual culture (373). The enforcement of this system is known as heteronormality. This is seen in the binary system, which is a social construct that divides people into different strictly bordered categories organized by “social roles, values, stereotypes, and behavioral and attitudinal imperatives, expressions, and expectations” (Blumenfeld 373). Those who stick to the binary system, maintain power and privilege. People who may live in the binary system, but also intentionally

The gay personality may be determined during a child’s early years of development or throughout the individual’s life. A lesbian or gay individual like heterosexual individuals are influenced by family, peers, and society. Family structure, social factors, and cognition and conditioning help the development of sexual identity (Kwiatkowski, 2010). The child while living with the parents, adopt many of the customs and values the parents emphasize. The parents may stress the importance of gender roles in the household which the child may learn to

In society, heterosexuality is a principal method of organizing institutions and regulating individual behavior. A culture based on ideas of heterosexuality values relationships that are between men and women; as a result, sexual contact occurring between same sex individuals is seen as deviant and labeled as homosexual. In her book, Ward explains how straight white men can have sex with other white men while retaining their heterosexuality in addition to gaining a masculine appeal. Ingraham and Namaste’s discussion of heteronormativity, heterogenders, and supplementarity aids in understanding why straight white men are not labeled as homosexual and how this functions to reproduce inequalities based on race, gender, and sexuality.

This paper will continue on, researching the societal change/acceptance in the gay and lesbian community as no longer being unorthodox and with the stigma coming from the gay community itself.

Living in a world full of social perceptions, expectations and limitations make it difficult to survive when everything about a person contradicts those social ideals. Humans are composed and influenced by multiple constituents: they are more than just “gay,” “fat,” or “white.” But because of a society filled with magazines, super models and stereotypes, it’s easy to lose sight of that. Secluded, pushed away and punished, Joe Schwartz lived most of his adolescent life alone, like many others, due to his sexual orientation. From reading his life story, a new perspective can be seen.

From the moment a child is born, the society in which they are born into begins to teach the child what is normal, and what is not. If the aforementioned child has a vagina, they will be labeled a girl and assumed to be heterosexual, and the same principle applies if the child has a penis. Yet the human world is not as simple as this established gender binary. For example, there are people who identify with a gender other than the sex assigned at birth.1 There are also people who are not sexually attracted strictly to the opposite gender, or at all. Such diversions from societal normality are more often than not greeted with opposition, as what is considered normal is also deemed right. The LGBT community has had to deal with fierce societal

James Baldwin once said, “Everybody 's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality. ” From the moment babies are born, most parents treat boys and girls differently. One study says that parents have different expectations for boys and girls as early as 24 hours from birth, according to Susan D. Witt of the University of Akron. According to healthychildren.org, infants become aware of their sex within in the first year of life. Between ages 1 and 2, children begin to notice the physical differences between males and females, and typically by their third birthday they are able to easily identify themselves as a boy or a girl. People are faced with many obstacles that alter their life. Just like the many controversies in society, “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin discusses a young man being gay in a society and a family who are simply not ready to accept his sexual orientation and neither does he. This fiction also emphasizes the battle that he faces with self-acceptance. Gender identity and American norms in society is widely discussed almost every day. Americans are becoming more open and accepting of the LGBT community, as well as against the LGBT community.

Throughout history, society’s views of homosexuality and of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer or questioning (LGBTQ) have changed. These views have changed how the members of this community feel about their personal identity as a whole. Over the last ten years, homosexuality and the LGBTQ community have become more accepted in society. In fact, a recent victory for the LGBTQ community occurred in June of 2015 when gay marriage become legalized in all fifty states. Despite the immense torture that members of the LGBTQ have received over decades, they are slowly becoming more accepted in today’s society. As society begins to become more tolerant with different ideals, the new and younger generations will continue to become more accepting of the people who identify as members of the LGBTQ community. These members will become more comfortable in their own skin and be allowed the same opportunities so other members of society.

Unfortunately in the currently society, one of the many terrible situations that is seen is the situation of same-sex attraction. This issue has caused tremendous stress, not only on a part of society that somehow has kept many of the existing moral principles, but this issue has also affected the individuals who were are affected and all those who are around them, either by the shame that this entails, or simply by the ignorance that exists among many who did not want to accept this terrible reality.

In society, there is often an invisible privilege associated with heterosexuality (Adams, 2010). For an example, heterosexual couples can walk down the street with their partner without fear of being verbally or physically attacked. This is a right that most heterosexual people don’t consider because they have never been forced to question their attraction, or love for the opposite gender, since this behavior is viewed by society as “natural” or a “normal” part being part of being a women or a man. However, the opposite is true for LGB individuals, these feelings of love or attraction for members of the same sex are often questioned by family, friends, religious and government organizations and societal norms. Like all other forms of oppression, heterosexism operates on multiple levels.

There are individuals that live in fear of showing their true identity to the world because they simply fear that society won’t accept them for having a different sexual orientation. Society advocates that individuals should be able to be proud of who they are, but yet they judge homosexuals for being different. People are taught not to judge others based on their race or religion, so why do they still discriminate against homosexuals? The homosexual subculture is not accepted by society, looked down upon, and misjudged; however, they are human beings and deserve to be treated equally.

The realization of the homosexuality in the modern western world as a cultural, sexual and a social category has been a result of complex power relations that surround sexuality and gender. The acceptance of homosexuality in the society has met its fair share of resistance and skepticism. The view that homosexuality can be in the same league as heterosexual has led it to be viewed as a normal behavioral and moral standard (Gallagher & Baker, 2006). Inasmuch as the skeptics may not want to accept the existence of homosexuality studies show that the habit is rampant today with many gay people coming out in the open. Of interest is the political acceptance of homosexuality with passing gay rights so that it can be recognized by law. This move has given homosexuals the ability to engage in legal entities like marriage (Gallagher & Baker, 2006).

Gender and sexual orientation is a topic that has been and still today is not talked about in such a way it should be because of how society has chosen to structure and control it. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided up into layers according to their relative privileges (power, property, and prestige). It’s a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges (Vela-McConnell 2016). People, who deviate from the norm of the “accepted” gender and sexual orientation that society has placed upon us, are stratified below the norm of a dominating binary gender and sexual orientation. People who are queer face the struggle of mistreatment and an unaccepting society that has been socialized to see and act on gender and sexual orientation to being a dualistic system.

Upon entering this course, my understanding of human sexuality was decent; I was aware of certain aspects of sexuality such as being straight, gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, etc. Nevertheless, I did not realize how expansive sexuality is; it never occurred to me that sexual health, prostitution, marriage, rape, sex trafficking, divorce, families, etc., all fell under the umbrella of human sexuality. Books and essays such as Renee Hill’s Walk Together and David Shneer’s “Out of School” showcased the multiple facets of human sexuality and how terms like queer are not directly related to homosexuality. While sexuality and homosexuality are linked, frequently, people mistake them as being synonymous; before entering this class, I was searching for a definition of sexuality, and often in the thesaurus section of dictionary websites homosexuality and or sexual orientation was considered a synonym of sexuality. Formerly, I too would have agreed they were the same, however, after taking this course, I concluded that homosexuality is just one topic in the broad discussion of sexuality. My understanding of sexuality now is that it