What is this word you keep throwing around, "heteronormativity"?

Non-heterosexuality—that is, sexuality that falls outside the heterosexual norm or does not conform to the male-female binary--is perhaps the most potent source of fear and condemnation by dominant social structures and their enforcers. While this oppressive discourse envelops our social universe, it is important to recognize the alternative lives that several people choose, of their own volition and the battles that they must fight to live those lives. Heteronormativity is that structure which dictates that any “normal” sexual relationship can exist only between a man and a woman, and that with that relationship come the implications of marriage, monogamy and children. The ideas and values that bind ‘homes’ and ‘families’ are often rooted in heteronormativity and do not allow for individuals or families that deviate from these structures to live in society as a “normal” unit. Heteronormativity is a condition for living in society that situates any individual deviation from the “norm” (same-sex desire, a non-monogamous lifestyle, a transgendered identity, or merely being a heterosexual married couple that refuses to have children) as a deviation from required social prescriptions, rather than a variation within a wide spectrum of desires and choices. Heteronormativity encompasses both gender-based and sexual violence, and while the content of what constitutes its identifying markers changes over cultural contexts, it retains its ability as an organizing social structure to render any difference from its laws invalid, taboo, and pathology.

Negotiating the power and class dynamics within the mutable spaces of gender and sexual identities is a complex and problematic process. It is important to recognize the ambivalence and conflicts that exist within these realms and remember that clinging to Cartesian classifications and binaries will do little to help us understand or explore sexual identities.

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