10.7 Conclusion
In this chapter, we introduced concepts related to sexuality and sexual orientation, before going into more depth on sexual attitudes and practices. Much of our lives is structured through the lens of heteronormativity. This structure of compulsory heterosexuality influences the way sexuality is experienced in the United States. Our sexual identity cannot be isolated or separated from our other identities. Multiple parts of our identities come together to build our experiences in the social world. Identities related to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality intersect to shape our experiences, but they are also subject to broader power structures that are pervasive in our lives.
This chapter opened with a discussion of the Parental Rights in Education Act, often referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law from Florida. We use this example to illustrate the connection between institutional inequalities and policies. These types of policies affect people based on their sexual identity. The impact of inequalities at the interactional level can lead to bullying and violence, while the structural arrangements of our social institutions create spaces where we see harassment and discrimination in marriage, healthcare, and workplaces.
Our sexual attitudes and behaviors shape the way we think about sexuality and participate in sexual scripts. Sex education can frame one’s ideas about what sex should and shouldn’t be, and it has a long history rooted in debates of abstinence and excludes LGBTQIA+ populations. In learning about the rules of sexuality, you saw that they are highly gender-based double standards, which align with the norms of the United States. They result in significant differences across gender lines regarding what is acceptable or unacceptable and how someone is perceived. Some interactions may lead to an increased risk of violence based on one’s sexual identity or gender presentation. Finally, you learned that social institutions are shaped by policies that perpetuate social inequalities. In Chapter 11, you will learn more about prejudice and discrimination as we examine race and ethnicity. After examining theories related to race, you will learn how race is connected to people’s identities, influences group interactions, and is embedded in institutions and structures.
Review of Learning Objectives
Key Terms
- Heteronormativity: an ideology and a set of institutional practices that privileges heterosexuality over other sexual orientations.
- Heterosexism: discrimination or prejudice against gay people on the assumption that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation.
- Homophobia: an extreme or irrational aversion to gay, lesbian, bisexual, or all LGBTQIA+ people, which often manifests as prejudice and bias.
- Hookup culture: a culture in which casual sexual encounters, including one-night stands, sexual engagements, and so forth, are accepted and encouraged.
- LGBTQIA+: an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual. The additional “+” stands for all of the other identities not encompassed in the short acronym. An umbrella term that is often used to refer to the community as a whole.
- Male gaze: the act of depicting women from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.
- Marriage equality: the legal recognition of the rights of marriage regardless of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
- Microaggression: a term used for commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups.
- Orgasm gap: the disparity or unequal outcome in orgasms between couples, genders, and sexualities.
- Push-and-resist dynamic: the situation in which it is normal for men to press sexual activity and advances toward women in pursuit of increased sexual intimacy.
- Queer theory: a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies and women’s studies; it emphasizes the fluidity of gender and sexualities and the performative qualities of them.
- Rape culture: a society or environment that justifies, naturalizes, and may glorify sexual pressure, coercion, and violence. This type of environment is perpetuated through the presence of persistent gender inequalities and attitudes about gender and sexuality.
- Sexual identity: a social identity ascribed to individuals based on their gender and the gender of the object of sexual desire. Sexuality includes personal and interpersonal expression of sexual desire, behavior, and identity.
- Sexual orientation: enduring patterns of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of another sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender.
- Sexual script: the social rules that guide sexual interaction; these scripts are based in one’s culture.
- Sexual socialization: a process of social interaction and communication in which individuals learn and internalize the sexuality associated with their gender role and biological sex.
- Sexuality: the sexual feelings, thoughts, attractions, and behaviors individuals have toward other people. Sexuality includes desire, power, sexual bodies, sexual acts, reproduction, sexual identity, communities, and discourses.
- Social construction of sexuality: how sexuality is continuously constructed and reconstructed through both social and cultural practices. The process by which we learn, through interaction with others, the sexual knowledge, attitudes, norms, and expectations associated with sexuality, sexual behaviors, and sexual identities.
Discussion Questions
- Visit the linked website and complete the Heterosexual Questionnaire [Website]. After you’ve answered the questions, consider: how does heteronormativity shape the world you live in?
- As you reflect on discussions of queer theory, take a moment to answer the following questions:
- Think of some ways that you have experienced, seen, or interpreted some of the differences discussed in this chapter and how that connects to your development of your own sexuality.
- What would our society look like through the lens of queer theory if we embraced the ideals discussed in this chapter? How would our interactions and social institutions be arranged differently?
- What is the orgasm gap? Why does it persist?
- Discuss debates around sex education in schools.
- List and describe three ways people may experience inequalities related to their sexual orientation.
Licenses and Attributions for Conclusion
Open Content, Original
“Conclusion” by Jennifer Puentes licensed under CC BY 4.0.
“Sexuality Question Set” was created by ChatGPT and is not subject to copyright. Edits for relevance, alignment, and meaningful answer feedback by Colleen Sanders are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
the sexual feelings, thoughts, attractions and behaviors individuals have toward other people.
enduring patterns of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender.
an ideology and a set of institutional practices that privileges heterosexuality over other sexual orientations.
a social identity ascribed to individuals based on their gender and the gender of the object of sexual desire. Sexuality includes personal and interpersonal expression of sexual desire, behavior, and identity.
a category of identity that ascribes social, cultural, and political meaning and consequence to physical characteristics.
categories of difference organized around shared language, culture and faith tradition.
a term that refers to the behaviors, personal traits, and social positions that society attributes to being female or male
mechanisms or patterns of social order focused on meeting social needs, such as government, the economy, education, family, healthcare, and religion.
actions against a group of people. Discrimination can be based on race, ethnicity, age, religion, health, and other categories.
physical or physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and secondary characteristics such as height and muscularity.
an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual. The additional “+” stands for all of the other identities not encompassed in the short acronym. An umbrella term that is often used to refer to the community as a whole.
the social expectations of how to behave in a situation.
the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group. A prejudice is not based on personal experience; instead, it is a prejudgment, originating outside actual experience.
any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share some sense of aligned identity.