Heteronormative

According to Dictioionary.com, the term “heteronormative” is an ideal “noting or relating to behavior or attitudes consistent with traditional male or female gender roles and the assumption of heterosexuality as the norm.” So essentially heteronormativity is a socially derived construct that defines how gender and sexuality are currently defined in our society.

The Gender and Education Association claims that “theorists have argued that a discourse or technique of heteronormativity has been set up, and subsequently dominates, social institutions such as the family, the state and education.” This means that heteronormativity is not only idealized but it is practiced and taught from an early age as the normal definition of a male to female relationship in society. Heteronormativity doesn’t only reference how relationships are defined in our society but is a general ideal that has influenced the way we look at things in our society from education to our children’s play toys. For instance the model of the Barbie and Ken dolls represents at a young age to children of how relationships are supposed to work when they get older. The concept of heteronormativity works to categorize identity “into hierarchical binaries”, placing man above woman and heterosexual as the accepted sexuality above homosexual.

The subsequent result of this way of looking at gender and sexuality is that people of other genders and sexualities have been marginalized socially. As aforementioned heteronormativity is not only idealized but it is practiced and in institutions such as educational ones, children are not taught to practice these things and so in spaces like these being of a different gender or sexuality causes people to retreat and conform to heteronormativity. Ultimately this idea of gender and sexuality needs to be thought of in a different way because of the somewhat changing ideals of our society. In a time when “today's children are more likely to see two men or two women holding hands, more likely to have a friend or relative who is openly gay and more likely to have a schoolmate who has two moms or two dads” we need to look at gender and sexuality for "what they mean and what they are and what they can be.”

Works Cited

Heteronormative." Dictionary.com. N.p.: Random, n.d. N. pag. Print. 

Gray, Emily. "What Is Heteronormativity?" GEA - Gender and Education 

     Association. Gender and Education Association, n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.

Day, Lori. "How Highly Gendered Toys Present an Exclusively Heterosexual 

     Worldview to Children." The Blog. Huffington Post, n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.