By analyzing my very own personal investment in the idea that heterosexuality is normal, I have realized that I am currently and that I used to deliberately present myself in a heterosexual persona to the world at large. Personally, when I was young, I used to be uncomfortable with women who broke the social norms of heteronormativity in public. I remember feeling anxious, and believing that one day soon society would perceive me as a divergent towards the norms because I hang out with women who didn’t present a heterosexual persona. I feared unspeakable things that would happen to me once I lost my privileges of being perceived as the ‘good’ heterosexual female. The lost of my social standing in society scared me; I was already a minority, …show more content…
Back in my younger days, I feared to lose my social and economic privilege as being seen as a homosexual female, so I policed myself to present this ‘straight girl’ persona, to avoid being publicly and institutionally sanctioned. Reflecting on Adam’s readings, “Adult heterosexuality was not taken to be an inevitability; it was an achievement of safe passage through adolescence.” (p***) Regardless, of how I felt back when I was young, I still do “act” heterosexual (acting heterosexual is the performance of the traditional straight sexual identity). Be that as it may, now I don't distress when peers around me don’t follow the social rules of normative femininity and heteronormativity in public.”Years ago I would have shunned them, or best, ignored them” (76); and yet with several developed friendships that I have made along my life journey, and a lot of courses that bring awareness to homosexuality; I’m proud to say that “gradually my awareness...was no longer the source of my shame, but the beginning of my empowerment”. (p.75-76) I have reached the point in my life, that now I force myself to acknowledge and not fear the social retaliation of the practices and normalization of heterosexuality by the women I know. Meanwhile, I may still be self-conscious around those women who don’t fit this normative, yet I won’t be imposing my opinions on them, those opinions are up to me
A questionnaire was administered to Hampton University students between the ages of 18-22 while in the student center on campus. They were shown a video pertaining to homosexuals showing different forms of affection towards each other and were given am questionnaire afterwards asking how they felt about what they saw. With this research you will be shown the thoughts of different people from different environment and backgrounds and how they perceive PDA between homosexuals.
In a structured society, as one we’ve continued to create today, has raised concerns over the way society uses the term queer. Queer was a term used to describe “odd” “peculiar” or “strange” beings or things alike, but over the centuries societies began to adapt and incorporate the term into their vocabulary. Many authors such as Natalie Kouri-Towe, Siobhan B. Somerville, and Nikki Sullivan have distinct ways of describing the way the word queer has been shaped over the years and how society has viewed it as a whole. In effect, to talk about the term queer one must understand the hardship and struggle someone from the community faces in their everyday lives. My goal in this paper is to bring attention to the history of the term queer, how different
When it comes the most significant book I’ve read in the past few years, nothing compares to Becky Albertalli’s "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”. Growing up I always knew I was different. The majority of my friends were female, I was never interested in sports, and I never had crushes on any girls. I knew I was different but didn’t know how. While it seems obvious now, growing up I never would have thought I was gay. I told myself I didn’t have the “gay accent” and I wasn’t overly feminine, so how could I have been? Later, through shows like “The Office” with gay character Oscar, and movies like “The Imitation Game”, I came to the realization that gay people were not alike, and maybe I was one. For the first time, I became was aware of
By analyzing the concept of normative heteronormativity, it has become clearer with the use of Adams’ readings, that our discourses and practices of heteronormativity are reinforcing and normalizing the known concept of the normalized behavior of heterosexuals in our society. Adam’s argues that “homosexualities and hetereosexualitites are dichotomized”. (p.59) In sense, there can be no heterosexuality from which homosexuality can differ from: there can’t be on without the other. She argues that society pushes the normalization of having a heterosexual relationship as being categorized as a healthy relationship, while a homosexual intimacy is seen as an “abnormal or perved appetite toward the opposite sex.”(p.60) With this perception, Adam’s
Since the beginning of mankind, the human species has been able to populate and cover the planet through reproduction. The natural reproduction is between a man and women, so heterosexuality is seen as the popular form of sexuality. However, many people believe that not only is heterosexuality not natural, but is constructed by society. Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington, believes that heterosexuality is a construct of cultural norms. Society creates expectations for how sexuality should be presented and performed, but down to the root of human nature heterosexuality is much more prevalent than any other form of sexuality. I disagree with professor Schwartz, and I believe that
In this age where the rights and societal views of the norm have changed considerably transsexuals, transgenders and everything in between, Dr. Gregory Herek looks to find out how this movement has come to be looked at in the eyes of heterosexual males and females To be more specific, Herek looks into the negative attitudes of heterosexual males and females and attempts to find correlations between their standings in religion, political views, educational levels and financial standings to hopefully understand why their views are the way they are. Personal demographic data pools aside, Herek looks to find if perhaps these opinions are based off of assumptive societal norms and expectations. He does this by taking into consideration the gender
K Berg (2003) comments that adopting a marginalizing same-sex orientation is not easy for adolescents. This implies various pathways in the process of “coming out”, as various theories try to explain its phases. The homosexual identity development model (Lesser & Pope, 2010), helps describe the stages Samantha went through: Sensitization, or feeling different when she began to consider herself a-sexual like some plants; Self-recognition, or identity confusion with her “uncomfortable captivation” with Angelina-Jolie; Identity Assumption occurred when she acknowledged her lesbianism during a writing exercise in school; and finally Commitment a...
It is uneasy to accept the fact that the way our society is set up is changing; things are not what our history books have said to be anymore. Some changes are, indeed are for the worse, causing despair and agony, but, there are some changes that bring people closer, help spread love and have the vibrancy of beautifying unexplainable emotions flowing. This beautiful change is spreading like the unstoppable virus, captivating the hearts of those stone cold citizens who prefer to live the way our “norms” are set up. This beautiful change is no other than love, same-sex love. Or decades, those who were lesbian or gay have struggled, bullied, tortured, and disowned by their friend and families and all toward what? Because they were different, because they did not live up to the society 's norms, because they fell in love. Our society needs to stop defining the meaning of love; let our hearts define it
As a gay male, I have encountered a numerous amount of situations in my lifetime where i was discriminated against or harassed for my sexuality. However, every instance I have encountered this discriminatory situations, I have gained valuable insight in what it means to not be accepted. Going into a foreign culture, I hope to spread this understanding
Queerness encompasses the shared position of marginality relative to power, not solely based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is a refusal to accept dominant understandings of sexuality, therefore, queer is how people see themselves rather than how society would categorize them by using socially constructed labels. Queer is understood as a term for sexual and gender minorities. Queerness is best understood as a broader concept than just sexual orientation or gender identity and is about challenging conventional identity categories. Visibility is power; therefore, gender and race are intersections that help us better understand this broader concept of queerness.
I scored the lowest on section A, B, and C with eight points. My highest score is on section D with 15 points. I think that overall my scores are similar and are not at the same times because My section A, B, C, and F are either the same or one point off. But my section D and E, they are so far from the others yet with each other they are similar. I am disappointed in my score because I think of myself as an open-minded person, but after seeing my score, I know that I to be more open-minded than I was before. I think one of the reasons, why I scored high on disability is because I am not familiar with that social group, therefore I do not know how to feel and act around them and that make me kind of uncomfortable. For section E, I think the reason my score is high is because I, myself, am still not confident about my weights, therefore it makes me not as comfortable with the
“Given our cultural rules for identifying gender (i.e, there are only two and that masculinity is assumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary)” (Lucal, 1999). The binary being defined as the heterosexual normative and cis-gender categories of societal norms in which the pre-assumption and narrative is that your gender, male or female, defines your attraction to the opposite gender. Through this social construct we learn to “read people’s gender by learning rules that enables us to classify individuals with a wide range of gender presentations into two and only two gender categories” (Kessler and McKenna, 1978). Furthermore, the pre-assumption of the binary, relegates the categories of sexual preference and gender to be defined by each other, although it is understood for the most part in academia that “sex and gender are something distinct, and that gender is something that we do” (Lucal, 1999). This distinction is important to acknowledge because the idea that sex and gender are intrinsically intertwined is outdated, but still often believed to be true throughout mainstream audiences. “The assumption affects not only our perception, but individuals’ senses of their own gendered self.” (Lucal, 1999). This then creates problematic ideologies surrounding sexual politics and the self, the self being that of the gender or non-gender that you
This is evident when conversations in a bar that is popular with lesbians and gay men are associated with curiosities about gender roles assumed by individuals in a relationship (Jolly, 2000). It is thought that gay men and lesbians have more flexibility in thinking which gender roles and identities one can assume (Jolly, 2000). These individuals recognize that it is not the body that dictates if one is male or female, but what one chooses to do with their body (Jolly, 2000). However, there is an issue with being labelled as ‘queer’ as some individuals face marginalization and oppression (Jolly, 2000). This is a consequence of their refusal to conform to traditional sexual and gender norms that society has indirectly said is normal (Jolly, 2000).
This Diverse Other assignment helped me to understand a sexual orientation that is different than my own. It lead me to become knowledgeable about pansexuality and how it differs from traditional, and even other non-traditional sexualities. I conducted my interview with an individual named Christina March. She is my roommate, which is how I found her for the interview. I decided to ask March questions due to her sexual orientation of pansexuality. March describes pansexuality as a sexuality that gender does not matter to them, their attraction depends more on the person themselves rather than the gender they identify with. During my interview I expected to hear about how her sexual orientation has caused people to treat her different, when she learned she was a non-traditional sexual orientation, and the difficulties that she personally faces due to her sexuality. All of my expectations and more were met
When one hears the words “LGBT” and “Homosexuality” it often conjures up a mental picture of people fighting for their rights, which were unjustly taken away or even the social emergence of gay culture in the world in the1980s and the discovery of AIDS. However, many people do not know that the history of LGBT people stretches as far back in humanity’s history, and continues in this day and age. Nevertheless, the LGBT community today faces much discrimination and adversity. Many think the problem lies within society itself, and often enough that may be the case. Society holds preconceptions and prejudice of the LGBT community, though not always due to actual hatred of the LGBT community, but rather through lack of knowledge and poor media portrayal.