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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... norm,” the “normal,” and the social process of “normalization,” much less consider them perplexing, fit subjects for ... norms of dress and sex have such deep, powerful internal holds on so many of us? What, after all, does our sex feel ...
... norm and deviance. , By this time, practicing heterosexuals may be nervous that a book challenging traditional assumptions about heterosexuality also questions the legitimacy of their heterosexual emotions, behaviors, relationships, and ...
... norms. In their American debut, the abnormality of heterosexuals appeared to be thrice that of homosexuals.” Though Kiernan's article employed the new terms heterosexual and homosexual, their meaning was ruled by an old, absolute ...
... norm was no longer as absolute for Krafft-Ebing as it was for Kiernan. Conspicuously absent from the Viennese doctor's large tome on all varieties of sick sex is any reference to what some other doctors called “conjugal onanism,” or ...
... norm also helps to cloud our minds to other ways of categorizing. Readers such as Dr. Kiernan might also understand Krafft-Ebing's hetero-sexuals to be perverts by association. For the word hetero-sexual, though signifying normality ...
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 |