7.2: Binaries? More Like BYE-naries
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Contemporary society defines sex as either male or female, as discussed in earlier chapters. However, we know intersexed people challenge this widely-held and reinforced sex myth. Sexuality, though, is also largely defined in binary terms. The word heterosexuality didn’t appear until 1890s, and it was only in response to the rise of nonprocreative sex. At the time, sex for pleasure was seen as abnormal and even perverted. The word heterosexuality was actually created in response to people engaging in sexual acts with people of the same sex, and these came to known as homosexual behaviors. 118 In other words, the word heterosexual didn’t exist until there was a need to differentiate people based on their sexual behaviors, depending on whether they were engaging sexually with people of the same sex or a different sex. However these words were created to set the standard for “normal” sexuality (heterosexuality) and “deviant” sexuality (homosexuality). This is an old tune with new lyrics, much like Whiteness, wealth, youth, and masculinity have been set as the standards and much les scrutinized than other variations in those categories, now heterosexuality has been granted the same social beneficiary status pertaining to sexuality. In other words, when sexuality is viewed from a binary perspective, homosexuality is overwhelmingly underappreciated and underrepresented in popular culture and in our collective conscious.
While sociologists have challenged the legitimacy of the binary construction of sexuality, so too have they challenged the idea of heterosexuality being the “normal” of the two. In addition to this social injustice, the binary viewpoint does even more harm. It allows for the dismissal of people who don’t identify as being either hetero- or homosexual. Bisexuals are often described as being a combination of the two mutually exclusive categories for sexuality. Nope. Bisexuality is its own sexual category as recognized by the AMA, APA, and ASA, among others.
In addition, the idea that sexuality is binary assumes that homosexual or heterosexual desires exclude one another. Sexuality is, in fact, more fluid than a binary exploration would allow. Asexuality, not having sexual attracted to either male or female, does not align with either the heterosexual or homosexual definitions, and yet there is nearly 1% of the world’s population identifying as asexual. 119 So the binary exploration of sexuality doesn’t make sense socially, biologically, or politically.
118
Katz, J. (2007). The invention of heterosexuality. CHicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
119
Anthony F. Bogaert. 2004. Asexuality: prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample, Journal of Sex Research, August, 2004.