WGST 2P98 Chapter Notes - Chapter WGST 2P98, Week 5, Michael A. Messner, Reading Note: Herbert Marcuse, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Hegemonic Masculinity

• School: Brock University
• Department: Women's and Gender Studies
• Course: WGST 2P98
• Professor: Sharlee Cranston- Reimer

Document Summary

Common fluidity and changeability of sexual desire over the life-course. Kinsey found that large numbers of adult heterosexual men had previously, as adoles- cents and young adults experienced sexual desire for males (alfred kinsey). Page | 1: sigmund freud shocked the post-victorian world by suggesting that all people go through a stage, early in life, when they are attracted to people of the same sex. Adult experiences, freud argued, eventually led most people to shift their sexual desire to what he called an appropriate love object a person of the opposite sex. : compulsory heterosexuality (adrienne rich). Radical theorist herbert marcuse called the sublimation of homoerotic desire into an ag- gressive, violent act as serving to construct a clear line of demarcation between self and other. Sublimation, according to marcuse, involves the driving underground, into the un- conscious, of sexual desires that might appear dangerous due to their socially stigmatized status.