Compulsory Heterosexuality

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Compulsory Heterosexuality

In today’s world, as humankind is still in progress, we have a much more liberated world compared to past. In terms of politics, we learned discrimination is not a honourable case to be involved in and we tried to minimize constraints reflected on “other” races, “other” nationalities, in short all of the others that are not similar to “us”. “Us” is, without doubt, white, Western man. Despite all the back-drawed prejudices of others in the name of liberation, respect and equality, it does not seem to be the situation for non-heteronormatives to live in a peaceful environment. Since I came to Amsterdam as an exchange student this term, I had the opportunity to experience daily-life with all the people from different sexes, genders not considered “normal” which is rarely the case in Turkey. Amsterdam made me face non-heterosexual world and I realized that these people do suffer from unequal rights mostly in other parts of the world. I questioned myself as being far away from that topic in the past and it really made sense to me to investigate about supremacy of heterosexuals.

In my opinion, only after we learn to respect all kinds of differences out of majority we are able to have liberal minds, which makes the world a better place to live for all people. That is the reason I decided to write my paper on compulsory heterosexuality. To come to main idea, my arguement will be dominantly on heteronormativity. I will try to prove that both heteronormativity and gender are social constructs, which means that they are all learned behaviours by society through culture, tradition and religion. I will show a world where any norms and taboos exist, to turn our origins of nature. I will support my arguement by the works of writers and researchers on that topic. My whole effort will be on to claim that there is nothing called heteronormativity by nature, it can not be. We can not rule out the genes and instinct behaviour of people. It is just a coverage, to live in a reproductive and moral society.

My final idea would be to accept all forms of non-heterosexuality as being “normal” , just like heterosexuality, by ignoring all social constructs to open our mind to a brighter world.

Review

There is quite extensive research on studies of lesbians and gays and the compulsory heteronormativity. One major researcher is Adrienne Rich.

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