Heterosexuality
Heterosexuality – from the Greek heteros, meaning “other” or “different,” and the Latin sexus, meaning “sex”:
- A sexual orientation manifested in an individual’s feelings and behavior toward people of the opposite sex (Giddens, 1999, p. 671).
- In sociology, a privileged and dominant expression of sexuality that is often regarded as the “natural” form of human sexual desire. In Western culture, heterosexuality has been normalized through institutional practices, including law and social policy. More recently, however, the status of heterosexuality as the social norm has increasingly been questioned and problematized.
- In feminist sociology, particularly in radical and lesbian-feminist approaches, heterosexuality is understood primarily as a political institution that contributes to the subordination of women to men. Adrienne Rich used the term compulsory heterosexuality to describe the social practices and prescriptions that ensure the reproduction of heterosexuality as a privileged form of sexual orientation (Rich, 2003 [1980]).
Within this theoretical perspective, heterosexuality is understood as culturally constructed and as contributing to the maintenance of gender asymmetry. Women’s subordinate social position serves, among other things, to regulate and normalize their sexuality in order to control reproduction within society (Rabzhaeva, 2002, p. 144).
References:
Giddens, A. (1999). Sotsiolohiia [Sociology] (V. Shovkun & A. Oliinyk, Trans.). Kyiv: Osnovy. [in Ukrainian]
Rich, A. C. (2003). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence (1980). Journal of Women’s History, 15(3), 11–48.
Rabzhaeva, M. V. (2002). Gendernaia antropologiia: Kontseptualnaia i institutsionalnaia kharakteristika [Gender anthropology: Conceptual and institutional characteristics]. Zhurnal sotsiologii i sotsialnoi antropologii, 5(2), 133–147. [in Russian]
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