Heteronormative Culture

With society’s constantly growing narcissism and deeply ingrained heteronormativity, issues also begin to grow between different sexualities. Twenge As people become more narcissistic, they become fixated on themselves and begin to lack concern for others’ opinions, allowing them to focus more on their own opinions. After the emergence of narcissism, it continues to grow alongside the LGBTQ community’s movement against heteronormative culture. Excessive self-esteem allows the LGBTQ community to have less concern over the opinion of the oppressive heteronormative culture, encouraging the LGBTQ community to stand up for themselves. Unfortunately, the influence of narcissism influences not only the LGBTQ community but also heteronormativity. While

Heteronormativity first began when the terms heterosexuality and homosexuality were coined by a physician named Hughes, off of the belief that all sex without the purpose of reproduction was a waste of sperm, referring to homosexuality and masturbation (Ward 54). By coining these terms, Hughes created the idea that the sexual behaviors of the person defines their identity as well. Furthermore, due to the way Hughes defined these terms, society adopted a perspective that only heterosexuality could be biologically sound, as other types of sexuality failed to satisfy survival needs of reproduction. This heteronormative belief is only further reinforced by the negative portrayal of other sexualities in media. For instance, Ward refers to the controversy caused by Congressman Hinson’s homosexual actions during his campaign, such as “tearoom participation” (Ward 78), which is a public homosexual sex house, and “giving a blowjob to a black employee” (Ward 79). Eventually, Hinson was forced to resign after many people refused to support his candidacy following “his relegation to the ranks of true homosexuals” (Ward 80). The media constantly reports on this kind homosexual encounters of individuals, causing the rest of the society to view homosexuality as odd and wrong when there are many other factors to consider. By only reporting these kind of scandals, where it is more odd that the person has cheated on his wife and had sex in public, it associates oddity with homosexuality other than heterosexuality. These kind of events further reinforces heteronormative beliefs, due to the amount of coverage of these public event and the overwhelming negative reaction of the community against the actions. The influence of media and religion is proven by a study conducted by Jerel P. Calzo and L. Monique Ward in 2009 on 1,761