13 Constructing Normative Sexuality: Homosexuality/Heterosexuality

Ketki Ranade

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Conversations about sex and sexuality are invariably intercepted with questions such as what is the need to talk about such (read „dirty‟, „immoral‟) things…

Sex is something that happens naturally between men and women after marriage in the darkness of the night and in the privacy of their bedrooms. What is the need then to discuss something that is „natural‟? – will happen anyway and in the same way for everyone in a universal manner… so why talk about it?

 

The current module will critically evaluate some of these claims related to sexuality – a) sex as natural and universal b) sex as a private matter c) sex as compulsorily heterosexual and linked with heterosexual marriage d) notions of „normal‟ and „abnormal‟/‟deviant‟ sex

 

The term sex has been used within sociology in two different contexts. One context is where sex is used to refer to biological differences between male and female i.e. referring to visible differences in external genitalia and associated procreative functions. In this context sex is viewed as stable and a universal given binary category. This kind of reference to sex is made often to point to the variable nature of gender, wherein sex is seen as a biological given and gender seen as a socially constructed, culturally influenced dynamic idea. Several theorists have challenged this kind of sex-gender distinction, for instance West and Zimmerman (1987), suggest that sex is a „socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males‟ (p.127). Queer theorists have questioned the binary description of sex and gender. Butler (1990) suggests that both sex and gender are constructed and in this sense we are not born with a sex, but are „assigned‟ a sex at birth. Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) in her article, „Five Sexes Revisited‟ states ‘in an ideal, biological world, human beings are divided into two kinds of perfectly dimorphic species – males with the XY chromosome, penis, testes and appropriate internal plumbing for delivering urine and semen and females with XX chromosomes, ovaries and all internal plumbing to deliver urine and ova to the world (p. 20)’. However outside of this ideal world, in reality the story is often different. Absolute dimorphism disintegrates even at the level of basic biology. Chromosomes, hormones, the internal sex structures, gonads, external genitalia vary much more in human beings than we realize or than we care to talk about. So in reality, there are many women with facial hair and there are men with none. There are women with a deep voice and men with squeaky ones. Persons born outside of the absolute dimorphism are referred to as persons with Intersex Variations. Fausto-Sterling (2000) suggests based on research data that the number of intersex births might be as many as 1.7%. Yet we know of such few people or collectives that talk about Intersex Rights. The primary reason for this seems to lie in the gender binarism firmly established in medical practice and in social realities. Thus when an intersex infant is born, it is treated as a pediatric emergency and most infants are operated upon through what are termed as „corrective surgeries‟ to alter their biological make up / external genitals to match that of a male or female child1. As a result most individuals with intersex variations grow up with the gender assigned to them at birth. Some may have the knowledge that they underwent a minor surgery soon after birth. Whether these children grow up with a sense of comfort and alignment between their inner sense of gender/felt gender and the one assigned to them at birth or do they feel lack of alignment between their felt gender and assigned gender is clearly not the concern of their parents or the doctors performing these surgeries.

 

In this module however I will focus on the other meaning of sex implying sexuality. I will use examples and suggest small group exercises to discuss how not only sex and gender are socially constructed into binaries of male and female, but ideas of normal and abnormal sexuality i.e. heterosexuality and homosexuality are constructed from this very idea of binary nature of sex and gender. Normative heterosexuality can be argued to be a social structure that is upheld by institutions of marriage, family, science/medicine, law/state, religion and that marginalizes persons who do not prescribe to this normative/ideal sexuality.

 

Rubin (1984), in her essay, „Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality‟ suggests several propositions regarding the political nature of sexuality and builds a compelling argument for social construction of normative sexuality. One of the first propositions that Rubin (1984) discusses is that of Sexual Essentialism. Sexual essentialism refers to the idea that sex is a natural, biological force that exists prior to social life and that shapes institutions. Sex is thus viewed as unchanging, asocial and transhistorical. This idea of sexual essentialism has been reproduced in disciplines of psychiatry, medicine and psychology, which have been some of the dominating disciplines in sex research. These disciplines view sex as a property of individuals that resides within individual hormones and psyches without historical and social determinants. This proposition of a biological/psychic origin of sexuality that is uninfluenced by the social milieu and remains static across centuries implies that sexuality is universal and our ideas of „acceptable‟, „normal‟ sexuality are frozen in time. However if we look at the history of sexuality, we witness that across different historical contexts and at the same time period in different communities, ideas of normative sex differ widely. Walkowitz (1982) argues that the interplay of social forces such as ideology, fear, political agitation, legal reform, and medical practice can change the structure of sexual behaviour and alter its consequences. Here I take the illustrative example of medicalisation of homosexuality in the late 19th and early 20th century to discuss the role of social beliefs and political ideology that shape „scientific ideas‟ of normality and abnormality.

 

History of Medicalisation of Homosexuality:

 

In the second half of the nineteenth century, homosexuality, which until then had been a theme in religious and moral discourses, became a subject of enquiry in science and medicine. This led to a large body of work wherein sexologists, psychiatrists and psychologists classified and created a range of sexual perversions and abnormalities in contrast to heterosexuality. Thus a range of pervert sexualities were labelled and described in order to be able to define the „normal‟ form of sexuality (Weeks, 1981). Interestingly, historically the term „homosexual‟ was coined and officially used much before the term „heterosexual‟ came into existence; this was to define that which is abnormal before describing the normal and the normative (Katz, 1990). Krafft-Ebing (1922) was the first one to use the term homosexual as a medical condition that implied deviance and abnormality in his work “Psychopathia Sexualis” which viewed human sexual behaviour as a collection of terrible diseases. Beiber, (1962) after a study of 100 homosexuals and 100 heterosexuals, concluded that homosexual orientation was a result of a pathogenic family with a domineering mother and a detached or absent father. George Henry, a psychiatrist and his Committee for the Study of Sex Variants scrutinized homosexuals’ bodies in an effort to document the sex-atypicality of their genitals and secondary sex characteristics (cited in http://www.aglp.org/gap/1_history/). Homosexual brains and nervous systems were assumed to have some cross-gendered characteristics. Simon LeVay (cited in http://www.aglp.org/gap/1_history/) argued that an area of homosexual men’s hypothalamus was closer in size to that of women than heterosexual men. Some of the treatment methods that have been historically used to treat homosexuals have included lobotomy, hypothalamotomies, implantation of testicular tissue of heterosexual men into homosexual men, induced seizures, electric shock and behavioural methods such as masturbatory reconditioning, aversion therapy and so on (Haldeman, 1994; Silverstein, 1996).

 

The influence of this thinking is reflected in homosexuality being classified as a form of mental illness in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) (APA, 1952). In the first edition of the DSM in 1952, homosexuality was classified under „sociopathic personality disturbance‟. This later changed to classification under the category „sexual deviance‟ in DSM-II, which was published in 1968. However before the publication of DSM III, the idea of homosexuality as a deviance was being challenged widely. The African-Amercian Civil Rights movement, the Feminist Movements and then the Gay Liberation Movements between 1950s-70s played a significant role in challenging this medical view, which led to the declassification of homosexuality as a form of mental illness in 1973.

 

In 1973 the board of the APA recommended the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

 

“Fifty-eight percent of the ten thousand psychiatrists who voted on the issue supported the board‟s action while thirty seven percent voted against it. To calm opponents, the board didn‟t actually remove “Homosexuality” at first, but rather changed the wording in the DSM to “Sexual Orientation Disturbance.” It took two more changes—one in 1980 and another in 1994—until homosexuality was completely removed from the DSM”

 

Current position of the American Psychological Association is,

 

“Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals agree that homosexuality is not an illness, a mental disorder, or an emotional problem. Homosexuality was once thought to be a mental illness because mental health professionals and society had biased information”

 

[Source: http://archive.adl.org/unheard-voices/pdf/background/silverstein.pdf]

 

The nature of social movements is such that these often draw attention to plight of certain marginalised sections and make visible the lived realities of people that had been hitherto silenced and invisibilised. In the case of homosexuality too, the gay rights movements visibilised lives of gay persons and particularly in this context the inhumane treatment meted out to them in mental health clinics. Thus they not only influenced opinions of medical experts but also influenced and were influenced by research studies related to sexuality. For instance, two significant research studies that were carried out in late 1950s and 60s played an important role in challenging the view of homosexuality as deviance from „normal‟. The Kinsey study and subsequent reports in 1948 and 1953 were a major departure from the studies that viewed homosexuality as a perversion. Kinsey merely studied sexual behaviors of men and women using a survey method with 10,000 men and women and concluded that about 37% of post pubertal men and 20% of post pubertal women had had same-sex sexual experiences and that 13% of men and 7% of women had had more same sex sexual experiences than cross-sex ones. For conducting these studies, Alfred Kinsey and his Institute for Sex Research were attacked and they were termed as weakening the moral fiber of America. Kinsey‟s Rockefeller grant was terminated in 1954 (Gebhard, 1976). Another study was by a psychologist, Evelyn Hooker (1957) who compared results of projective tests of 30 non-patient homosexuals and 30 non-patient heterosexuals. The study found that experienced psychologists, unaware of whose test results they were interpreting, could not distinguish between the two groups.

 

This shift in understanding of homosexuality as a social and sexual deviance to a normal variant of human sexuality indicates that as social attitudes and taboos undergo change through emergence of social movements, collectivisation of the marginalised / termed as „sexual deviants‟ in this case, these influence research, knowledge gathering activities and these come together to shift scientific and medical notions of „acceptable‟, „normative‟ sexuality. Thus the case of history of medicalisation of homosexuality that outlines the shifts from „abnormal‟ to „normal‟ is a classic example to indicate that sex and sexuality are centrally influenced by prevailing social attitudes.

 

The following small group exercise, again using the case example of homosexual and heterosexual enables us to understand various aspects of social construction of sexuality.

Exercise 1: A group simulation exercise called ‘Imagine This Scenario’

 

Imagine a time 1000 years ago/in future. You live in a country of 10 million people. 95% people here are homosexual. Most of them marry people of the same sex and the average age of marriage is 22-28 and most families have 1 or 2 children. The state insurance covers use of medical technology for child bearing. Parents raise their children on story books of love between Cinderella and Snow white and bring them up to become normal, healthy homosexual adults. Religious leaders promote homosexuality and condemn any heterosexual behaviors as sinful. There are laws punishing any kind of heterosexual conduct. Medical foundations are putting in millions of dollars to promote research aimed at finding and eliminating of a „straight gene‟ and to find cure for “heterosexuality.

 

You are a 32-year-old woman/man, who has always been attracted to people of the opposite sex and despite several attempts at getting rid of these feelings, you have intense/incurable inclination towards persons of the opposite sex. You work in an educational institution that has a policy against hiring of such “perverts”. In this institution most people are married to people of the same-sex or some have steady relationships. The institution gives insurance cover and all partner benefits to homosexuals (married/partnerships)…

 

You have heard about reports on the internet that there are as many as 5% people in the country, who are straight, but you personally haven‟t met anyone like you. You suspect that there would be others, but they all have to be in the closet due to the fear of being „found out‟ just like you. The only place where you see heterosexuals is sometimes in movies, where they are used for comic relief…

 

Questions for reflection:

 

§   In a country and a society like this,

 

–  Would you be at a disadvantage? If yes, in what areas of life

–  What would be the challenges you face?

 

(Discuss family, education, occupation, forced homosexual marriage/how to find heterosexual partner?, religious beliefs, conflict with law, rights as citizen and so on. Impact on health/mental health)

 

– Which social institutions would perpetuate this disadvantaged position?

 

(Discuss role of state, law, religion, science/medicine, education, media, family in maintaining normative structure of society in the above scenario)

 

– How would you see yourself (self image) in this society?

 

(Discuss sense of social alienation and isolation, citizenship rights, right to dignity, ability of the person to mobilize for collective action and change)

 

Finally discuss the following questions:

    Are ideas of normative sexuality socially constructed or only biologically determined?

Is Sexuality about sexual acts only?

Is Sexuality a Private Matter?

 

Sexual Hierarchies and Sexual Value System – charmed circle and outer limit

 

“Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value. Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are alone at the top erotic pyramid. Clamoring below are unmarried monogamous heterosexuals in couples, followed by most other heterosexuals. Solitary sex floats ambiguously…”

 

[Gayle Rubin, Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality, 1984, pp. 151]

 

This statement about modern western societies made in 1980s when applied to the Indian society in the 2000s would equally ring true, while it would be tweaked in places and detailed for more culturally informed nuance. In the Indian context, marriage (read heterosexual) is seen as both compulsory for all and as a duty (Kakkar, 1978). Marriage and procreation are necessary to establish one‟s social status within one‟s family and larger clan/community. Kinship, family ties and filial duties are significant aspects of a person‟s identity. The Indian family severely limits experimentation in the choice of partners by adhering to the practice of arranged marriage (Beteille, 1993). Thus endogamous marriage is the „normative‟ marriage in the Indian context. Even with respect to inter-caste marriage, often the structural distance between members of the two castes that intermarry is not too much in terms of the local or regional caste ranking (Kolenda, 2003). The compulsory nature of marriage and rules about who can marry whom are quite rigidly defined. When we apply this to Rubin‟s idea of „marital, reproductive heterosexuals‟ being on the top of the erotic pyramid, we would qualify this marriage further as between two people of the same-caste and same-class. There would be other variables particularly in the urban contexts such as age, physical body type, education, income of the bride and groom, with the groom being older, taller, more masculine, more educated, earning more than the bride, who would preferably be smaller, more submissive, educated but always lesser than the groom, independent but earning much less than the groom and so on. Apart from the feminine and masculine prototype of the body, able bodied would be another qualifier in a normative marriage. Disabled bodies that are sexual are beyond the pale of imagination in the context of normative sexuality. They certainly cannot be accorded the same status of respectability, legality, social and physical mobility, institutional support, material benefits, certificate of good mental health that can be accorded to normative marriages.

 

The idea that certain kinds of sexualities would enjoy social acceptance and would be upheld by social institutions such as the state, law, religion, science, education and so on and certain other sexualities would be deemed as sinful, impure, abnormal, illegal indicates that sexuality is socially constructed and that there are social/sexual hierarchies based on sexual values in every society. The most acceptable/valued form of sexuality has been said to fall within a „charmed circle‟ as described by Rubin (1984) and then there are a range of sexualities based on various ideologies of gender binarism, heterosexism, patriarchy, abelism, casteism and so on that fall on the „outer limits‟ of the charmed circle.

 

In fact sexualities that lie within the charmed circle and therefore fall within the definition of normative sexuality include a very restricted range of marital sexuality. We know that while being outside the charmed circle and therefore outside the limits of legitimized sexuality, there exists a range of sexualities and sexual behaviours, which exist on the fringes and are often invisibilised. The outer most among the outer limits would include transsexuals, transvestites, transgender persons, gay, lesbian persons, fetishists, sadomasochists, sex workers, porn models, dance bar performers and so on. Even among these there would be hierarchies. For instance, a monogamous lesbian or gay couple, who are well-educated professionals and „good‟ tax paying citizens of the country maybe higher on the sexual hierarchy than a poor transgender sex worker. Similarly, heterosexual married couples, who are in inter caste, inter religious marriages (certain kinds of inter religious marriages such as Hindu-Muslim are far more taboo than Hindu-Sikh marriage), who have chosen to not have children or cannot have biological children would also be outside the charmed circle in some ways but would still be closer to the charmed circle and far higher on the sexual hierarchy. Able bodied, single people, who are heterosexual but unmarried, would also be higher on the sexual hierarchy, but not part of the charmed circle. Similarly sexual acts such as masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, sex with use of toys are stigmatized even when done by heterosexually married couples.

 

Sexualities that are part of margins/outer limits depending on how far out they are from the center, are subjected to a range of sexual controls; these include silencing and invisibalising certain sexualities, stigma, exclusion and discrimination, violence at the hands of family, educational institutions, medical establishments, media as well as punishments through being termed illegal under the state laws. Another aspect of damned sexualities that Rubin describes is that these sexualities are often described as these monolithic, singular realities devoid of any complexities and diversity. Normative sex on the other hand is accorded all the complexities of human experience. For instance, homosexuals are described only in terms of sexual acts they engage in and these are not only flat and thin descriptions of their lives and desires, but they are also homogenous descriptions of the whole community of homosexuals. This is another process of „othering‟ and rendering invisible the complexities of the lives of the marginalized sexualities.

 

Jeffry Weeks (1981) uses the term „Moral Panics‟ to refer to a „political moment of sex‟, during which diffuse attitudes and fears are channeled into political action against some sexual activity or population. Political groups affiliated to the right wing and other culture protectionists may swing into action, the media enters the frenzy, public behaves like rabid mobs, police and legal mechanisms are activated during a typical moral panic. Some examples of this in Maharashtra include the ban on bar dancers imposed by the state government in 2005. The infamous Mangalore Pub Attack in 2009, wherein girls at a bar in Mangalore were attacked for wearing jeans and spending time with boys sitting at a bar, which was termed as being against „Indian Cultural Values‟. Moral panics thrive through evoking ideas of „bharatiya sabhyata‟ (Indian culture) and notions of nationhood and national pride, which need protection through control of women‟s sexuality. In addition there are other usual suspects such as protection of childhoods/children‟s innocence that underlie banning sex education in schools. Similarly homonegative portrayals of homosexuals as child sexual abusers or as recruiters and converters of young children (read innocent and sexless) into homosexuals are other examples of social justification for exclusion of certain groups based on their sexual identities and orientations.

 

Exercise 2: Drawing Up the ‘Charmed Circle’ in our society

 

Small Group Exercise (10 to 15 students)

Discuss what is considered to be normative sex/sexuality in our society?

Draw a circle and put down notions of normative sex within the circle. Start mapping the range of sexualities that fall outside the circle.

 

Probes for normative sex:

  • Sex within marriage (discuss who can marry whom in a normative sense, discuss endogamous marriage with implications of caste/gotra, between persons of same class, same generation, similar educational background or rather man more educated than woman, gendered expectations from the couple with woman being feminine in her gender expression, a bit shorter, a bit younger, a bit less educated, earning less than the man; Man being macho, masculine, taller, more educated, earning more, protector and provider and so on)
  • Sex within marriage for procreation (sex for pleasure can still be a taboo to talk about, social contexts talking about marital sex is most permissible within the context of child bearing)
  • Nature of the sexual acts between husband and wife (peno-vaginal sex, consent not essential, contraception use being responsibility of women)

 

It may be seen that many different forms of sex that may occur between married couples such as non peno-vaginal sex, non-genital sex, oral sex, anal sex, sex for pleasure and not procreation also fall outside the „charmed circle‟ or the normative ideas of sex.

 

List down the range of sexual acts and sexualities that fall outside the charmed circle.

 

[Ensure that sexual acts that are taboo and considered non-normative such as fetishes, sado-masochistic sexual acts, pornography, use of sex toys, commercial sex, masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, tribadism, extra marital sex, pre marital sex are included. Also groups of people/identities such as homosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender persons, sex workers, disabled persons are included]

 

Note that while discussing sexualities within and outside the charmed circle, the discussion is about sex that is consensual in nature. In fact for the sexuality that lies within the charmed circle i.e. married heterosexuality, consent may not be necessary for acceptability/normativity.

 

Questions/Points for discussion:

  • What are some of the social institutions that uphold normative sexuality?
  • Are all the sexualities that fall outside the charmed circle on an equal plane of non-normativity/non-acceptability? Are there hierarchies among these in terms of levels of acceptability and extent of punishments/negative consequences? [For instance in the context of commercial sex, is buying sex and selling sex on the same level as far as consequences of these are concerned? In other words, do people who buy sex experience the same levels of social stigma, discrimination and exclusion as those who sell sex/commercial sex workers?]
  • Do the sexual hierarchies change with context? [Would it be the same for a group of middle aged men in a metropolitan city of India, group of young college going students in urban areas, group of young girls from a rural area and so on?]

 

Conclusion:

 

This module focuses on the role of social institutions and social attitudes that shape notions of normative sexuality. Since the idea of normative sexuality is socially constructed, it changes with social contexts. For instance, a few decades ago, the idea of a live-in relationship between a man and a woman without marriage was taboo. While social stigma still persists, today we see that legislations such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 extends to live-in couples/households as well. This implies that the state is willing to take cognizance of such couples and hence assertion of some rights becomes possible, while other struggles such as family and social disapproval may continue.

 

One of the central ideas related to normative sexuality is that there is a single way to have sex and that everyone should have it in the same way. This idea I have attempted to challenge in this module and have made a case for variation in sex and sexuality. As Rubin (1984) states, “Most people find it difficult to grasp that whatever they like to do sexually will be thoroughly repulsive to someone else, and that whatever repels them sexually will be the most treasured delight of someone, somewhere”.

you can view video on Constructing Normative Sexuality: Homosexuality/Heterosexuality

 

References:

  • American Psychiatric Association, (1952). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (1st ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
  • Beiber,  I.  (1962).  Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic  Study.  In  Bayer,  R.  (1981).  Homosexuality  and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. New York: Basic Books , p. 46.
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  • Kakar, S. (1978). The Inner World: A Psycho-analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India, India: Oxford University Press.
  • Katz, J.N. (1990). The Invention of Heterosexuality, Socialist Review , Vol. 20, n. 1 (Jan-Feb)
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  • Kolenda, P. (2003). Caste, Marriage and Inequality – Studies from North and South India , Jaipur: Rawat Publications
  • Krafft-Ebing, R. (1922). Psychopathia Sexualis, Brooklyn: Physicians and Surgeons Book Co.
  • Rubin, G.S., Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality.  In Vance, C. S. (Ed.). (1984). Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality. Routledge & Kegan Paul Books
  • Silverstein, C., History of treatment. In Cabaj, R.P. & Stein, T.S. (Eds.) (1996)., Textbook of homosexuality and mental health , Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, pp. 3-16
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