SOC 345 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12 part 2/5: Sexual Repression, Heterosexuality
Document Summary
The social construction of sexuality. (3rd ed) new york: ww norton. (pp 209 - 211) Heterosexual romance infuses deep meaning and purpose into our lives and brings psychological and social benefits. (1) the extent that heterosexual marriage is the model or idea of intimacy. It devalues, sometimes stigmatizes a wide range of intimate choices. The decoupling of sex and love, romance, and marriage is disproportionately the choice of the young, the poor and racial minorities. (2) privileging heterosexuality means enforcing a gender order that sustains dichotomous gender roles that constrain men, while systematically disadvantaging women. Gay men and lesbian women challenge these gender norms. (3) the taken-for-granted status of heterosexuality and marriage, the sense of facticity, of it being an arrangement that has always been and always be, easily allows us to lose awareness of its socially produced character. Our psyches, social imperative, law, does not have to be gendered. Religion sees sexual choice and pleasure as wrong.
