MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Heterosexism, Clairvoyance, Human Sexuality
Document Summary
These heteronormative practices maintain the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality out of necessity. Identifying as heterosexual in american society grants individuals easy access to a variety of social practices denied to others, including marriage in many states, insurance benefits, medical visitation rights, and more. Sexuality understood as a quality of one"s personal identity, is a product of class warfare in the eighteenth century. Much of foucault"s work supports the notion that the ways people talk about a topic create the truth of the topic, especially when it comes to the topic of ourselves. Even though an internal sense of gender arises from our actions, once it is instantiated as an identity, these internalized conventions may in turn influence the way we exist as sexual beings. Park: many older films link homosexuality to abnormal or antisocial behaviour, affirming heterosexuality as normal in the process, even today, other contemporary films still have remnants linking homosexuality to deviance.
