The Invention of Heterosexuality“Heterosexuality,” assumed to denote a universal sexual and cultural norm, has been largely exempt from critical scrutiny. In this boldly original work, Jonathan Ned Katz challenges the common notion that the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality has been a timeless one. Building on the history of medical terminology, he reveals that as late as 1923, the term “heterosexuality” referred to a "morbid sexual passion," and that its current usage emerged to legitimate men and women having sex for pleasure. Drawing on the works of Sigmund Freud, James Baldwin, Betty Friedan, and Michel Foucault, The Invention of Heterosexuality considers the effects of heterosexuality’s recently forged primacy on both scientific literature and popular culture. “Lively and provocative.”—Carol Tavris, New York Times Book Review “A valuable primer . . . misses no significant twists in sexual politics.”—Gary Indiana, Village Voice Literary Supplement “One of the most important—if not outright subversive—works to emerge from gay and lesbian studies in years.”—Mark Thompson, The Advocate |
From inside the book
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Jonathan Ned Katz. CONTENTS Preface, 2006 vi | THE GENEALOGY OF A SEX CONCEPT From Homosexual History to Heterosexual History 2 THE DEBUT OF THE HETEROSEXUAL Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the Mind Doctors | 9 3 BEFORE HETEROSEXUALITY ...
... concept, created a different-sex erotic.” In the early twentieth century, I explain, the word “heterosexual” and the associated idea were appropriated by medical professionals to newly and publicly legitimate the previously existing ...
... and shaping of those means is key to the future of heterosexuality, the other existing sexualities, and the new sexualities to come. Jonathan Ned Katz 1 THE GENEALOGY OF A SEX CONCEPT From Homosexual History PREFACE ix.
... and dawning horror, I had first consciously applied the word homosexual to my feelings for men—the morning after I first slept with one. He was a high school friend, it was June 1956, and I 1. The Genealogy of a Sex Concept.
... live with it; because I think there is no resolution for this pain in our lifetime, only, for the overwhelming majority of homosexuals, more pain and various degrees of exacerbating adjustment, and THE GENEALOGY OF A SEX CONCEPT 3.
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
3 Before Heterosexuality
| 33 |
4 Making the Heterosexual Mystique
| 57 |
5 The Heterosexual Comes Out
| 83 |
6 Questioning the Heterosexual Mystique
| 113 |
7 The Lesbian Menace Strikes Back
| 139 |
8 Toward a New Pleasure System
| 167 |
Afterword
| 193 |
Acknowledgements
| 197 |
Notes
| 201 |
Bibliography
| 247 |
Index
| 283 |