The Normativity of the Concept of Heteronormativity

The aim of the article is to analyze and to critically examine use of the concept of heteronormativity. We find it important to adjust the concept to some extent in order to analyze, for example, changes occurring in homosexual families, contemporary gender-equal families, or the progressive youth culture. We find two approaches when using the concept. One minimizes the importance of how sexual practices are embedded in social institutions. The first approach becomes too idealistic, whereas the second approach often is based on a structural view of society. This approach makes it hard to imagine a transformation of the family that could lead to more equal and democratic relations in contemporary families. We suggest a third approach, and the possibility of finding creative ways of analyzing actual change and contestations of heteronormativity. An approach containing a space of reflexivity and aiming at political change both involving subjects as well as structures.     

Saying the Unsaid: Probing Homosexuality in The Hairdresser of Harare

ABSTRACT

Homosexuality in Zimbabwe often evokes strong reactions. Due to a tradition of silence, the topic largely continues to be taboo. However, it has been used by some politicians and church leaders to strengthen arguments and to denounce opponents. It is against this background that The Hairdresser of Harare (Huchu, 2010) ought to be understood. The novel gives helpful clues into discourses on homosexuality in contemporary Zimbabwe. This article analyzes the author’s approach to the subject and critiques it. It maintains that the author’s view on homosexuality has been limited by attaching the theme to postcolonial politics and violence. However, the article appreciates his courage in exploring the theme.     

天堂里的单身汉:一个国家的主题

文学中的单身汉具有多样性和特殊性的特点,并且已变成一种媒介,即研究社会和人类不同文化结构特点的媒介。同时单身汉主题的出现,也为小说理论提供了新的性别分类方法。它展现了一个弯曲的阶级和一种特定的文化特征;即使它不能完全呈现出来,其重要性也已建立在时代特征的框架上了。"唐人街的单身汉"为我们提供了一个研究潜在性特征结构的假想空间,通过自然主义的审美描写昭示对社会的看法。随着文学主题学批评对单身汉和男性结合主题关注的增多,单身汉主题自成一派,我们也意识到其政治意义的冗长和压制(压抑)。     

Masculine Status,Sexual Performance,and the Sexual Stigmatization of Women

Collegiate hookup culture advances ideas of masculinity but contradicts notions of appropriate feminine sexuality. Drawing on focus group and interview data with college students, I examine how a group of class‐ and race‐privileged fraternity men face dilemmas as they enact a group constructed masculinity focused on sexual performance and the objectification of women. I employ a symbolic interactionist framework to illustrate how men, attentive to peer status yet anxious about the sexual stigmatization of women, draw on cultural ideas about appropriate feminine sexuality as they account for their approaches to sex and women (both with whom they interact sexually and how) along a range of intimacy—from hookups to committed relationships. I demonstrate that heterosexual interaction does not unequivocally link to masculine status and that men sometimes strive to limit the impact of casual sex or avoid it altogether.     

The Nature and Value of Sex - A BOOK REVIEW OF: Sex: A Philosophical Primer,Expanded Edition by Irving Singer

Heterosexual and homosexual males who erotically preferred physically mature partners were compared with respect to the erotic impact of the nonpreferred age groups (of the preferred gender) and the nonpreferred gender. Erotic impact was assessed by phallometric test of erotic gender and age preferences. This measures penile volume changes during the presentation of potentially erotic stimuli. Homosexual males who preferred physically mature partners responded no more to male children than heterosexual males who preferred physically mature partners responded to female children. Although heterosexual males showed a (slight) erotic aversion to the male stimuli, and homosexual males did not show an aversion to the female stimuli, this difference was minimal.     

The “Sassy Woman” and the “Performing Man”: Heterosexual casual sex advice and the (re)constitution of gendered subjectivities

Media forums that provide “sex advice” are a rich source of (sexual) information for heterosexual individuals and have been critically examined for the ways in which they construct heterosexuality (and sexual subjectivities). The representations of (heterosexual) casual sex are also prevalent across the mass media. This paper uses a Foucauldian/poststructuralist mode of discourse analysis to explore how casual sex “advice” in three self-help books (two aimed at women, one aimed at men), and online advice articles, constituted casual sex and masculine and feminine heterosexual subjectivities. Four main (profoundly gendered) subject positions were identified in the texts: the “strategic man”; the “performing man”; the “sassy woman”; and the “vulnerable woman.” It is argued that although some alternative ways of constituting heterosexual identities were provided (particularly for women), gender difference was not only implicated in such advice but also, at times, crudely exaggerated. The implications of these representations are discussed in relation to contemporary heterosexualities, heterosexual sexual identities, and heterosexual power relations.     

Heterosexual relationships among young black men in the construction of masculinity at a South African university

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interviews conducted with young men residing in a hostel in a tertiary institution in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 2016, this article explores young black men’s construction of masculine sexuality, their approaches to romantic relationships, and responsibility within them. Through the use of semi-structured interviews conducted with young black men, the study investigated the relationship between the social construction of masculinities and the way in which these young men understood, talked about, and explained their views and actions regarding romance and sexuality. The study focuses on the voices of acceptance and resistance to traditional, patriarchal versions of manhood and the variations in men’s discourses and ways of being. It highlights through these voices that heterosexual masculinities are not inherently reckless, impassive, and uncaring, but are situationally and contextually constructed. The findings reveal that while the young men inhabited subject positions offered by traditional discourses of heterosexual masculinity, at the same time they also contested these dominant discourses in the complex and multifarious processes through which these young men constituted their identity.     

Havelock Ellis's Literary Criticism,Canon Formation,and the Heterosexual Shakespeare

Famous as the author of an early full-length scientific study of sexual inversion or homosexuality, English sexologist Havelock Ellis was also a literary critic responsible for initiating publication of the famous Mermaid Series of “The Best of Plays of the Old Dramatists” in the late-nineteenth century. Personally editing the first volume of plays by Christopher Marlowe and a later collection by tragedian John Ford, Ellis associated these playwrights here and in his scientific work, Sexual Inversion, with ideas about normative and so-called abnormal sexualities at the start of the twentieth century. Ellis, thus, helped give expression to a literary canon of early English dramatists in which modern, anachronistic ideas about sexual subjectivity play a part. While this article does not claim that Ellis was the necessary source for later criticism, it shows how, over the whole of the twentieth century, Shakespeare's priority in the literary canon came to be posited at least in part on his apparent sexual normality in contrast with a supposedly homosexual Christopher Marlowe and other playwrights such as Ford or Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher associated with varying degrees of sexual difference.     

‘Keeping it straight’ what do South African queer youth say they need from sexuality education?

Drawing on Rich’s [Rich, A. 2004. “Reflections on ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality.’.” Journal of Women's History 16: 9–11; Rich, A. 1980. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5: 631–660] conceptualization of heterosexuality as an institutionalized and compulsory system that supports gender and sexuality inequality, this paper answers the following questions – how do queer youth take up, question and say what they need from sexuality education. The study is based on in-depth interviews with 19 queer learners, aged between 16 and 19 years and living and schooling in the Free State Province, South Africa. This paper contends that what queer youth say need from sexuality education is a curriculum that – recognizes sexuality diversity; is without assumptions about their sexual experience or lack of it and does not focus solely on associating non-normative sexualities with issues of disease, deviance and danger. The findings highlight the inescapable power of compulsory heterosexuality and its perilousness and argue for a more defined and inclusive sexuality education curricula framework.