In a patriarchal society that encourages heteronormative behaviours, we are persuaded to believe that human sexuality is trapped not only within the dichotomy of male and female genders, but within the subtext of heteronormality. The appropriation of conventional male or female behaviours, for the queer community, becomes essential in a society where a nuance of homophobia produces anxiety through being branded a dyke or fag. However, this appropriation occurs within the heterosexual community as well, in response to the fear of being exiled from the heterosexual in-crowd. For both these groups, the assumption is that one’s behaviour, and gender, is pre-determined by one’s genitals. In other words, one’s genitals determine the ways in which one performs sex. In other words, there is no gender outside of sex. In light of this, the deconstruction of the sex/gender binary is crucial. In this essay, I plan to dismantle the naturalization of heterosexuality (and ultimately the sex/gender binary) by creating three new sexual orientations that are variations of heterosexuality while focusing primarily on gender identities: the lesbian-heterosexual, the gay-heterosexual, and the bi-heterosexual. What happens to heterosexuality when we think outside of two genders? That’s a question I aim to investigate in this paper. In doing so; however, I do not intend to take any form of homosexuality out of queer; I am taking a constructively pro-gay stance to scrutinize the binaries surrounding sex and gender, but am also attempting to create more options around gender and sexuality for both women and men.
In this paper, I use the didactic essays of Adrienne Rich and Judith Butler to assist my deconstruction of heterosexual hegemony and the sex/gender binary, and to also demonstrate the relevancy of my three new sexual orientations. In Rich’s article, Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence, she focuses primarily on the lesbian response to heteronormativity. Her ideas; however, are applicable to the deconstruction of the sex/gender binary in regards to heteronormativity, seeing that she is “examin[ing] heterosexuality as a political institution which disempowers women [although I argue men as well]” (227). Rich argues against the obligation of heterosexuality stating that women do not need to depend on men as social and economic supports and further calls for a greater understanding of lesbian experiences. In her article, Rich identifies her concept of the lesbian continuum as a “range—through each woman’s life and throughout history—of woman-identified experience, not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman” (239). She also focuses on lesbian existence as a breaking down of taboos and “the rejection of a compulsory way of life” (ibid).
Judith Butler’s article Imitation and Gender Insubordination focuses more broadly on gender—as opposed to Rich’s article which deals with lesbians exclusively—and the limitations one faces using “identity categories [which] tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes” (Butler 308). Butler uses the concept of drag to critique gender. She argues; however, that drag is not a “putting on of a gender that belongs properly to some other group….[since] there is no ‘proper’ gender” (312). What she means by there is no proper gender, is that gender is not a ‘being’ but a way of ‘doing’. In other words, gender is something one does rather than something one is. Butler argues that sexuality can never be fully expressed, meaning that it is never constant; it is constantly changing. Similarly, she claims that gender “is a performance that produces the illusion of an inner sex or essence or psychic gender core” (317) which demonstrates how difficult it is to separate sex and gender seeing that many people constitute gender as the result of sex and vice versa. Ultimately, Butler attempts to destabilize heterosexuality in a similar way that I aim to, and that is to “invert and displace” (318) the ways gender and sexuality are intertwined saying that we should work “sexuality against identity” (ibid). Compulsory heterosexuality, the lesbian continuum, and gender performativity are concepts from Rich’s and Butler’s articles that I plan to take up and explore in order to deconstruct and destabilize heteronormativity and the gender/sex binary.
The influence of the sex/gender dichotomy on sexuality can be depleted through the isolation of gender as an independent factor unrelated to sex. By “working sexuality against identity” (Butler 318) gender becomes its own construct and not the result of sex. By saying that gender can be isolated from sex, I am really saying that we are separating the anatomical aspect of sexuality from gender identity. This suggests that heterosexuality describes the anatomical way, and not the gendered way, one performs sex. In relation to Butler’s argument, heterosexuality, in this case, becomes something ones does and not how one is or identifies. In the naturalization of heterosexuality, to identify as a heterosexual means to appropriate the norms and expected behaviours associated with being ‘straight’. In a deconstructionist view, when isolating gender from sex, one can still identify as a heterosexual (penis-vagina copulation; anatomy), but one’s behavioural identity or gender is unrelated to the way one prefers to perform sex. By doing so, we are making room for an infinite amount of genders seeing that we are breaking down the binary and creating opportunities for multiplicity. Ultimately, the existence of more than two primary genders, as compared to the two primary sexes considered normative, becomes established. When trying to deconstruct the sex/gender binary, with new combinations being created, such as lesbian-, gay-, and bi-heterosexuality, there becomes the possibility of six genders. By promoting plurality we are further destabilizing the sex/gender binary created from heteronormativity. Since “heterosexuality naturalizes itself through setting up certain illusions of continuity between sex [and] gender” (Butler 317), by depleting this continuity we are making room for variation and creating space for fluidity.
In order to deconstruct the normalcy of heterosexuality as the primary sexuality, I introduce three new sexual orientations—lesbian-heterosexuality, gay-heterosexuality, and bi-heterosexuality—which denote the separation between gender identity and sexual performance. Rich’s concept of the lesbian continuum influenced the construction of these new identities. Borrowing the idea of a range or spectrum of woman-identified experience (Rich 239), I decided to focus mainly on the scale of gendered-experience and the variance between gender at one end of the spectrum (extreme performance of masculinity) and at the other (extreme performance of femininity). Through this, gender becomes a fluctuation as it loses all sense of rigidity seeing that masculinity and femininity can become transfixed within each other. The isolation of gender from sex, evident in these three sexual orientations, deconstructs heteronormative sexuality by illustrating that one’s sexual orientation is not determinative of gender; they are separate. The three sexual orientations are literal representations of the gendered-experience spectrum with gay-heterosexuality demonstrative of the extreme performance of masculinity, lesbian-heterosexuality representative of the extreme performance of femininity, and bi-heterosexuality signifying any and all space in between the two.
The lesbian-heterosexual is a biological woman who has sex with biological men but is attracted to femme-men, or men who associate with feminine-gendered behaviour. In other words, she is anatomically heterosexual, but her attraction to the female gender establishes her, behaviourally, as a lesbian. Similar to what Rich argues, by associating the homosexual (gender) with the heterosexual (sex), we are “challeng[ing] the erasure of lesbian existence….[while also challenging the] distort[ion of] the experience of heterosexual women” (227). This exemplifies that the sex/gender binary is not only being deconstructed, but by intermixing homosexuality and heterosexuality, the homo/hetero dichotomy is being challenged as well. Ultimately, meaning that the lesbian, or homosexual, experience is not being dominated or expunged by heteronormativity. The production of the lesbian-heterosexual also subverts the notion that “women are ‘innately’ sexually oriented only to men” and that the “lesbian is simply acting out of her bitterness toward men” (229). Subverting women’s vocation as ‘for men only’ challenges the idea of compulsory heterosexuality. Furthermore, by combining lesbian experience with heterosexual desire, heteronormative opposition to homosexuality is being dismantled. Also, by choosing to be heterosexual but with a man who encompasses feminine values, women are opposing the belief that “heterosexuality is…the ‘sexual preference’ of ‘most women’” (ibid). Compulsory heterosexuality suggests that women have an inclination to prefer heterosexual relations with men because of “a mystical/biological heterosexual inclination” (232); however, by creating the lesbian-heterosexual, I am able to deconstruct the naturalization of heterosexuality by suggesting that gender plays an intrical part in appeasing women’s impulses. In other words, although heterosexuality may be a “‘preference’ or ‘choice’ for women” (239), these women are given autonomy in the sense that they are able to ‘choose’ the gender identity of their male partner.
In comparison to the lesbian-heterosexual, the gay-heterosexual is a biological male who has sex with biological females but is attracted to butch-women, or women who associate with masculine-gendered traits. He is anatomically a heterosexual but his attraction to the masculine establishes him as gay, performatively. When Butler says “[t]here is no ‘proper’ gender, a gender proper to one sex rather than another” (Butler 312) she is arguing that heteronormativity has inscribed masculinity as belonging to male and femininity as belonging to female. This idea is taken apart with the gendered-experience scale seeing that ‘gender’ can be performed by either sex at any location on the spectrum. Gender becomes malleable and unidentifiable seeing that “there will be passive and butchy femmes, femmy and aggressive butches, and both of those, and more” (315). What this means is that with the isolation of gender, there is a breaking down of stereotypes so that classification of a dyke or fag becomes impossible, especially since there can be soft-core dykes and masculine fags. When “[t]here is no breakage, no discontinuity between ‘sex’ as biological facticity and essence, or between gender and sexuality” (317) then not only are binaries inseparable, but heterosexual values becomes normative and naturalized, and anything in opposition to heteronormativity becomes the inferior other. When gender is separated from sex, gendered behaviour can determine a man/woman’s preference for his/her partner (of the same sex)’s gender. In other words, when a heterosexual man prefers butch behaviours in his female partner, his ‘gay’ gender determines how masculine a woman must be in order for him to be attracted to her.
In relation to both lesbian-heterosexuality and gay-heterosexuality, the lack of constancy between extreme feminine and extreme masculine genders allows for me to construct the third sexual orientation of the bi-heterosexual. In other words, bi-heterosexuality is constructed when the idealized ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ genders shift from being fixed to ambiguous—since ‘bi’ becomes a combination of both. Bi-heterosexuality is the ultimate deconstruction of the naturalization of heterosexuality since it argues against unchanging genders stating that there is a possibility to ‘be’ either, or, or both. Arguably, “[t]he prospect of being anything….seems to be more than a simple injuction to become who or what [we] already [are]” (307). Butler suggests that ‘being’ something—straight, lesbian, gay, bi, etc—assumes or pre-determines who or what we are simply by stating it. However, the bi-heterosexual isn’t a presupposition of being attracted to both sexes. In a deconstructionist view, the bi-heterosexual is a heterosexual man or woman who is not attracted to just masculine or feminine behaviours, but a conglomeration of both sometimes of equal or lesser values for either. For example, a bi-heterosexual woman attracted to a man who encompasses both feminine and masculine behavioural traits might seek a partner who is professional dancer, but who is also a bar bouncer or doorman. This example contains two occupations that encompass both extreme ends of the spectrum, but I argue that the bi-heterosexual not only is attracted to both extreme sides of masculinity and femininity but is defined by their preference for a fluctuating combination of both genders.
In the creation of these sexual orientations I am not diminishing the very real oppressions and experiences by members of the queer community. I am merely attempting to envision a world outside of restrictive binaries in which identity is not defined by who one has sex with or how one has it. It is not my intention to deplete homosexuality through associating it, and ultimately combining it, with heterosexuality, but to argue against defining homosexuality by its location of opposition to heterosexuality. I am trying to prevent and ultimately stop the defining process of comparing sexuality, gender, etc. against its predetermined other because when we identify what something is compared to what it is not then we begin to discriminate. Through the construction of the lesbian-, gay-, and bi-heterosexual I am not only opposing compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormative responses to homosexuality, and the sex/gender binary, but I am creating a space for women and men equally where both alike are not exposed to the degradation and anti-liberationist behaviours they face from the heteronormative opposite sex. In this paper I do not speak towards the location of trans-identified persons; however, I do believe that the gender society recognizes him/her as, and the gender he/she identifies as should be coalesced. Although ultimately these sexual orientations are not one hundred percent applicable to the trans community, I do believe that when regarding the subject of their gender and sexuality that gender should be isolated from sex. Otherwise, anatomy dictates—as heteronormativity determines—the gender a trans-person identifies with. In other words, dividing gender from sexuality allows the trans-community some agency, seeing that their gender and sexuality will not be judged against each other to repress individual experience.
In this essay I have introduced three new sexual orientations which gravitate around the concept of separating gender from sexuality. In doing so, this allows for an expansion in gender identification as it is not being limited to representing and being equal to however many sexes are universally recognized. Be it two, three, four, or five sexes, or even more, there does not need to be equality between how many sexes there are and how many genders, especially since gender is constantly in a state of change. I argued that I am not attempting to de-gay queer in any way, shape, or form, or spoke towards the trans-community. By limiting my focus on the necessity of deconstructing dichotomies oppressive to all genders and sexualities, I attempt to create vagueness about what gender really is. With regards to the gendered-experience, gender can never be truly identifiable seeing that, except for at the ends of the spectrum where extreme masculinity and femininity reside, gender is one large miscellany of the feminine and masculine and there can be no capitulation of it to sex if it cannot be pinpointed or defined. The lesbian-heterosexual, gay-heterosexual, and bi-heterosexual are sexual orientations that circulate around the idea that gender can be and is separated from sex. To ‘be’ heterosexual is to copulate with male/female anatomical genitals. To ‘be’ is a way of identification which Butler argues oppresses with the very statement of the ‘I am’; in part, I agree seeing that ‘being’ straight means to comply with the requirements of heteronormativity. Separating gender from sex allows autonomy to be given to the individual experience seeing that there can never be only two genders when gender is always a creation and re-creation of itself. So what happens to heterosexuality when we think outside of two genders? It becomes ubiquitous by dismantling into nothing.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed.
Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina. Barale, and David M. Halperin. New York: Routledge,
1993. 307-20. Print.
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” The Lesbian and Gay
Studies Reader. Ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina. Barale, and David M. Halperin. New
York: Routledge, 1993. 227-54. Print.
