The Invention of HeterosexualityThis boldly original work reexamines our society's basic heterosexual/homosexual distinction - focusing on the evolution of the term heterosexual, which, as this study demonstrates, only entered our language a little more than a hundred years ago, ushering in a new way of dividing up and judging sexuality and people. Exploring the startling history of the heterosexual concept, Jonathan Ned Katz reveals that as late as the 1920s, heterosexuality was still defined in a major American dictionary as "morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex". It was only through a slow process that heterosexuality became this society's dominant norm. Analyzing the work of such pioneering students of sexuality as Sigmund Freud and Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Katz considers the effects of their ideas about the sacred primacy of heterosexuality on both scientific literature and popular culture. He also examines the varied commentaries on heterosexuality by such contemporary writers as James Baldwin, Betty Friedan, Adrienne Rich, Kate Millett, and Michel Foucault. |
Contents
THE GENEALOGY OF A SEX CONCEPT | 1 |
THE DEBUT OF THE HETEROSEXUAL | 19 |
BEFORE HETEROSEXUALITY | 33 |
Copyright | |
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American analysis ancient Greece Anne Koedt Atkinson Baldwin biological bisexual concept critical culture D'Emilio and Freedman desire different-sex erotic discourse distinction dominant Dora Dora's early erosexuality eroticism essay feeling female Feminine Mystique Feminism Fragment Frau Freud Friedan gay and lesbian gender Gore Vidal hetero hetero and homo hetero/homo heterosexual and homosexual heterosexual history heterosexuality's historian History of Sexuality homosexual human idea ideology intercourse Journal Katz Kiernan Krafft-Ebing Krafft-Ebing's liberation lust Lystra male marriage masculine men's Michel Foucault middle-class Millett modern mosexual Myron and Bunch nineteenth nineteenth-century nonprocreative norm normal numbers perversion pleasure problematic procreative psychological Psychopathia Sexualis Radical Feminism radical feminist Radicalesbians Rapone refers reprinted reproductive Review Routledge Rubin same-sex says sensual sex-love Sexual Inversion Sigmund Freud social society sodomy straight suggests talk term heterosexual Theory tion twentieth century uality University Press Victorian Wittig woman women word heterosexual York