Posted on April 8th, 2005 by shonk in Politics, Ramblings | permalink | 6 comments »
A week or so ago, Petya quoted the following definition of “heteronormativity” (March 29th entry):
Heteronormativity means, quite simply, that heterosexuality is the norm– in culture, in society, in politics. Heteronormativity points out the expectation of heterosexuality as it is written into our world. It does not, of course, mean that everyone is straight. More significantly, heteronormativity is not part of a conspiracy theory that would suggest that everyone must become straight or be made so. The importance of the concept is that it centers on the operation of the norm. Heteronormativity emphasizes the extent to which everyone, straight or queer, will be judged, measured, probed, and evaluated from the perspective of the heterosexual norm. It means that everyone and everything is judged from the perspective of straight. [Samuel A. Chambers: The Telepistemology of the Closet; or, The Queer Politics of Six Feet Under. The Journal of American Culture, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2003]
Around 5:00 AM on Sunday, I sent her a short response which she quoted and dissected (April 4th entry). In essence, I had two points, which may or may not be self-contradictory: (1) there’s no qualitative difference between “heteronormativity” and any other cultural norm; (2) “social norms” are basically a bullshit construct to begin with. Of course, given that I wrote the email very early on Sunday morning, I didn’t state either of these points particularly well (or, one might argue at least in the case of the second, at all).
I should say that the above-quoted definition/exposition of heteronormativity is basically correct; in a society in which the majority of people are (or, according to Kinsey et. al., merely identify as) straight, it’s inevitable that, e.g., most people will, in the absence of additional information, assume people they’ve never met before are probably straight. This observation verges on the tautological. Of course, to extend the meeting-someone-new example, most people also assume that people they meet aren’t cannibals and watch a fair amount of television, so it’s not at all clear that there’s anything particularly special about heteronormativity as opposed to non-cannibal-normativity or telenormativity.
At this point, I realize that someone whose brain works differently than mine might think I’m trivializing the whole heteronormativity thing with my examples; after all, cannibals are a damned sight rarer than homosexuals and it’s probably not a good idea to worry to much about whatever psychic damage the non-cannibal norm is doing to them, and people who don’t watch television are unlikely to suffer anything worse than occasional social awkwardness when someone mistakenly assumes that any sentient American will identify and be amused by the phrase “I’m Rick James, bitch!” In contrast, it’s clear that people whose sexual proclivities/identities differ from the heterosexual norm (not just homosexuals) will, at the very least, have to deal with consistent low-grade and occasional acute psychological trauma, precisely because psychological health, self-perception and identity are so intimately related with sex and sexual preferences. In this context, however, please note my careful use of the word “qualitatively” in the opening paragraph. The hetero-norm is no different in kind from other cultural norms, but, because sexual identity tends to be so important to our lives, the deleterious effects of such a norm tend to be felt more intensely than those of many other norms and, hence the difference is quantitative rather than qualitative.
By now, I hope, it’s clear that the statement “[t]he problem with heteronormativity is that it is hardly ever recognized as a norm” is entirely wrong. There are dozens of norms that are hardly ever recognized as norms; I mentioned two above, but other examples include the “bathing regularly” norm, the “education is good” norm, the “democracy is good” norm (intimately tied in with the “voting is good” norm), the “wearing clothes is good” norm, etc. Of course, all of these norms have been pointed out and dissected at by various social critics, academics, etc., but, for practical purposes, they’re not “recognized as norms”. No, the problem (or, perhaps, importance) of heteronormativity derives not from its purported lack of recognition as a norm, but from the relatively greater importance people ascribe to their identity as sexual beings than to their identities as television viewers, bathers, students or voters.
In fact, the notion that “[t]he problem with heteronormativity is that it is hardly ever recognized as a norm” seems to be an expression (presumably unintentional) of the rather pernicious but increasingly popular assumption that norms qua norms are bad. Ironically, this is (or at least has the potential to be) itself a norm. Anyway, norms, in and of themselves, are value-neutral. Certainly anyone who finds him/herself on the wrong side of a norm isn’t going to think much of it, but this isn’t the whole story. For example, although there are people who legitimately suffer from the bathing-regularly-is-good norm (people allergic to soap, people without access to bathing facilities, etc.), I think even they would agree that, in general, it’s better if people aren’t going around smelling like mildew and passing along tinea to all their friends. Even more obvious examples of “good” norms are the one that says killing is bad or the one that tells a woman walking alone late at night in a bad part of town that young males in dark alleys should probably be avoided. The point is, norms in and of themselves aren’t necessarily bad; the ones that are are so because they do damage to those who violate the norm (and, one might reasonably argue, everybody else as well, but this is a bit to psychological for me to deal with right now) without having any (or at least not enough) countervailing benefits.
Looking at the clock, I realize that I really should be going to bed and I haven’t even gotten to my second point, the fact that the two points may well be contradictory, the possibility that I may not even believe some of what I’ve written above, and my issues with Petya’s implicit dismissal of me as someone who does “not want to be bothered with conversations about exclusion, oppression, and -isms of all sorts.” All those will have to be left for another day; in the meantime, I’m curious to hear if anybody thinks the above is at all coherent.