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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... gay history now breaks new ground in uncovering the origins of heterosexuality. . . . This book is funny ... gay and lesbian studies in years.” mark thompson, The Advocate “ jonathan ned katz has received the Publishing Triangle's Bill ...
... Lesbian and Gay Literature, and Yale University's Brudner Prize for a leading scholar in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies. He is the author of Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A., the first ...
... homosexual” to the affirmatively “gay” and “lesbian,” making the power of those words one focus of our political agitating. Fifteen years earlier, with a new and dawning horror, I had first consciously applied the word homosexual to my ...
... gay movement I affirmed my affectionate and erotic feelings for men, the particular emotions for which my society ... lesbian life and liberation. This would employ American historical and literary materials to evoke dramatically our changing ...
... gay and lesbian feelings. That book's goal, immodestly proclaimed by me in the militant manner of the day, was nothing less than “to revolutionize the traditional concept of homosexuality.” Because that “concept is so profoundly ...
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 |