Hetero-Normative Culture Essay

Regarding the notion of comfort, Ahmed describes hetero-normative ideals as “investments” (Ahmed 146) that the human body and the human psyche adopt in order to contribute to the cushioning that is universal hetero-normativity. Ahmed proposes that to live as a queer individual is to live in a way that is primarily dictated by what one “[fails] to reproduce” (Ahmed 152)– that is, hetero-normative ideals. Hetero-normativity acts as a “form of public comfort by allowing bodies to extend into spaces that have already taken their shape” (Ahmed 148). In other words, individuals who prescribe to hetero-normative ideals are entering a space that their bodies are already allowed to comfortably exist within, as the “surfaces of social space are already

Stryker outlines the term “transgender” as “the movement across a socially imposed boundary away from an unchosen starting place” (Stryker 1), making “transgender”, by definition, as equal or more of a refusal of an ideal as “queer”. Spade echoes and expands upon Stryker’s analysis throughout his piece “Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender”, stating that transgender individuals infringe the rules of hetero-normativity “by trying to work in a field not designated for their gender, or by refusing to dress according to the expectations of the gender category they have been assigned” (Spade 32). Transgender practices, which deviate from hetero-normative ones rooted in the sustainability of systematic gender roles, are viewed as so conflicting with normative culture that many view such practices as “basis for illness” (Spade 24). In order to qualify for gender reassignment surgery, one must “perform a desire for gender normativity” (Spade 23), a facet of hetero-normative culture, to persuade medical professionals to diagnose such individuals with gender dysphoria, which is deemed a mental condition. To declare a desire to be transgender as an illness is to convey the belief that there are only “two discrete gender categories that normally contain everyone but occasionally are wrongly assigned” (Spade 26), implicitly depicting transgender individuals as walking mistakes that must be corrected in order “to reestablish the norm” (Spade