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FORUM: How (or why) do you teach students about the construction of heterosexuality?
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Journal Article
FORUM: How (or why) do you teach students about the construction of heterosexuality?
2002
Overview
Heterosexuality comes up in different classes in different ways. In my class on the history of same-sex sexuality in the western world, we address directly the issue of social constructionism through the reading of theoretical articles such as John Boswell's \"Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories,\" Robert Padgug's \"Sexual Matters: Rethinking Sexuality in History\" (both in Hidden From History), Carole Vance's \"Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality\" (in Homosexuality, Which Homosexuality?) and Donna Penn's \"Queer: Theorizing Politics and History\" (in the 1995 volume of Radical History Review). A student in one class suggested as well J.D. Weinrich's \"Reality or Social Construction?\" (in his book Sexual Landscapes), which makes the point about essentialism and social constructionism through a humorous discussion of \"petual preference,\" that essential or socially constructed preference for dogs over cats (or vice versa). Now I use it regularly, hoping that it allows students whose eyes glaze over reading the heavier pieces to see what they are saying. That, of course, brings up the issue of the social construction of heterosexuality indirectly, because in Gilbert Herdt's Guardians of the Flutes we confront Sambia boys in the highlands of New Guinea routinely fellating older men so that they can ingest semen and grow into what we would consider heterosexual manhood. Or, closer to home, we encounter in George Chauncey's Gay New York masculine heterosexual men having sex with \"fairies\" on the streets of New York at the turn of the nineteenth century without thinking it means anything about their identities. If this is a somewhat subtle way of getting across the point that sexual identities in the past (as well as in the present) do not necessarily conform to participation in particular sexual acts, Jonathan Ned Katz's exploration of The Invention of Heterosexuality makes clear that heterosexuality, too, has a history. I try to make this point in a very different way in my women's history and U.S. history classes. Eschewing theoretical articles on social constructionism, I emphasize such things as the rise of dating and the acceptance of romantic friendships to show that sexuality changes over time. Describing the world of young urban working-class women at the turn of the nineteenth century, I show the shift from group activities under community supervision in rural and small-town life to pairing off and \"going out\" on a more casual basis in the city. I especially emphasize the origins of dating in the phenomenon of \"treating,\" the exchange of access to commercial entertainments, paid for by men who earned higher wages, for a variety of kinds of sexual favors from women. This shows that the lines between such things as \"respectable\" sexual behavior, a \"trashy\" reputation, and prostitution are shifting and negotiated over time. From a different angle, I discuss the latitude of physical affection and emotional commitment afforded both female and male romantic friends in the nineteenth century, pointing out that kissing, hugging, sleeping in bed together, and vowing undying love to a friend of the same sex did not make one \"homosexual\" in that context. My students are not alone in this obsessive drive to mark and categorize people. Whether we identify as \"lesbian,\" \"gay, \"heterosexual,\" \"bisexual,\" \"transgendered,\" or \"queer,\" we have all been trained to evaluate ourselves and each other according to existing identity categories. However, when we automatically label people by sexuality (or color or gender or religion or any other politically-charged characteristics and/or assumed differences, for that matter), we build walls and isolate ourselves from those we've labeled \"different.\" These categories distort our perceptions, creating arbitrary divisions among us and an oppositional \"us against them\" mentality that prevents us from recognizing potential commonalities and working together for social change. Identity categories based on rigid labels establish and police boundaries -- boundaries that shut us in with those we've deemed \"like\" \"us\" and boundaries that shut us out from those whom we assume to be different.
