Non-heterosexual
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Sexual orientation Template:LGBTQ sidebar Non-heterosexual is a word for a sexual orientation or sexual identity that is not heterosexual.<ref name="Queer Man on Campus">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Working Out: New">Template:Cite book</ref> The term helps define the "concept of what is the norm and how a particular group is different from that norm".<ref name="Journal of College St">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Non-heterosexual is used in feminist and gender studies fields as well as general academic literature to help differentiate between sexual identities chosen, prescribed and simply assumed, with varying understanding of implications of those sexual identities.<ref name="Living with Contradictions">Template:Cite bookTemplate:Dead link</ref><ref name="Butch/femme: Inside">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Big Brother Intern">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Dot.Cons: Crime">Template:Cite book</ref> The term is similar to queer, though less politically charged and more clinical; queer generally refers to being non-normative and non-heterosexual.<ref name="Same Sex Intimacies">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Encyclopedia of Postmodernism">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Gender & Sexuality: Critica">Template:Cite book</ref> Some view the term as being contentious and pejorative as it "labels people against the perceived norm of heterosexuality, thus reinforcing heteronormativity".<ref name="Queering Religious Txts">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}; PDF version Template:Webarchive</ref><ref name="Negotiations and Fieldworkings">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}; </ref> Still, others say non-heterosexual is the only term useful to maintaining coherence in researchTemplate:Clarify and suggest it "highlights a shortcoming in our language around sexual identity"; for instance, its use can enable bisexual erasure.<ref name="Queer Theory Goe">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} "He includes interviews of some men who have a behaviorally bisexual pattern, but none of men who self-identify as bisexual. Therefore, the term non-heterosexual was inherently problematic to me, given that I am sensitive to issues of bisexual exclusion."</ref>
BackgroundEdit
Many gay, lesbian and bisexual people were born into different cultures and religions that stigmatized, repressed or negatively judged any sexuality that differed from a heterosexual identity and orientation.<ref name="Liberation Theology">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="The Subcultures Reader"/> Additionally the majority of heterosexuals still view non-heterosexual acts as taboo and non-conventional sexual desires are generally hidden entirely or masked in various ways.<ref name="Big Brother Intern"/> Non-heterosexual is more fully inclusive of people who not only identify as other than heterosexual but also as other than gay, lesbian and bisexual.<ref name="A Bioethical Analysis">Template:Cite book</ref> Some common examples include same gender loving, men who have sex with men (MSM), women who have sex with women (WSW), bi-curious and questioning.<ref name="Dot.Cons: Crime"/><ref name="Social Work Practice">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Encyclopedia of Primar">Template:Cite book</ref> Non-heterosexual is considered a better general term than homosexual, lesbian and gay, LGBT or queer for being more neutral and without the baggage or gender discrimination that comes with many of the alternatives.<ref name="Same Sex Intimacies"/> For instance, until 1973, the American Psychological Association listed homosexual as a mental illness, and it still has negative connotations.<ref name="Spectrum trains members">Template:Cite book</ref>
UsageEdit
Non-heterosexual is found predominantly in research and scholarly environments possibly as a means to avoid terms deemed politically incorrect like lesbian, dyke, gay, bisexual, etc. that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people use as self descriptors.<ref name="The Subcultures Reader">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Social Services f">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Social Policy Revi">Template:Cite book</ref> When used by those who do not identify as LGB or when used by LGB people disparagingly, the terms are generally considered pejorative, so non-heterosexual is a default and innocuous term unlikely to offend readers.<ref name="The Spectre of Promiscuity">Template:Cite book</ref> For example, the Kinsey scale can be divided between those exclusively heterosexual and everyone else.<ref name="Sexuality Repositioned">Template:Cite book</ref> The term has come into more prominence in the academic field starting in the 1980s and more prominently in the 1990s with major studies of identities of non-heterosexual youth and a smaller number of studies specifically looking at non-heterosexual college students.<ref name="JOHE">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Non-heterosexual is also used to encompass transgender and intersex people, because although these are gender identities rather than sexual identities, they are within the LGBT and queer umbrella communities.<ref name="The Subcultures Reader"/><ref name="Transforming Gender: T"/> Additionally, non-heterosexual encompasses a wide variety of terms used by different cultures whose own terms might never neatly translate to a homosexual or bisexual identity; for researching and extrapolating data it is a practical and accepted term.<ref name="Anthropologica">Template:Cite journal</ref>
In a 2004 book that integrates "the academic disciplines of cinema studies, sociology, cultural and critical studies" regarding the Big Brother phenomena, non-heterosexual was used as a universal term to help compare information from over thirty countries.<ref name="Big Brother Intern"/> In exploring and studying the emerging field of gay, lesbian and bisexual seniors, non-heterosexual is a default term to demonstrate that the "vast majority" of literature assumes that older people are heterosexual and makes "no effort" to explore the experiences and attitudes of those who are not.<ref name="Sexuality, Sexual Hea">Template:Cite book</ref> In Welfare and the State, the authors describe the perceived advantages of lesbians in the workplace as they, in theory, would not have children so would be advantageous to the labor force.<ref name="Welfare and the State">Template:Cite book</ref> The authors point out, however, that not only do many lesbians have children but they routinely identify as heterosexual through much of their lives or at least until their children are old enough that a non-heterosexual identity would not greatly impact their families negatively.<ref name="Welfare and the State"/>
Non-heterosexual is also used when studying lesbian and gay families and family structures.<ref name="Transforming Gender: T"/><ref name="Living difference">Template:Cite book</ref> It came into wider use in this context when the AIDS pandemic's impact on gay male communities was being explored as many gay men created families out of extended networks of friends and these became their support systems.<ref name="Transforming Gender: T">Template:Cite book</ref>
CritiqueEdit
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The use of the term 'non-heterosexual' to refer to LGBTQ people as a blanket term could perpetuate heteronormativity.
Jonathan Ned Katz argues that historically, the term was used to force people into one of two distinct identities; the "normalization of a sex that was 'hetero' proclaimed a new heterosexual separatism — an erotic apartheid that forcefully segregated the sex normals from the sex perverts."<ref name="Katz">Template:Cite journal</ref> He argues that it enforces the idea of "compulsory heterosexuality" and that anyone who does not fit into that category is going against the norm.<ref name="Katz"/> He states that heterosexuality, as a categorization and as a term, was not created until the late nineteenth century, that prior to this relations between the sexes were not believed to be overtly sexual, and that in the Victorian era sex was seen as an act between "manly men and womanly women, [as] procreators, not specifically as erotic beings or heterosexuals."<ref name="Katz"/> He further argues that the division between the heterosexual and the non-heterosexual came in the 1860s after the "growth of the consumer economy also fostered a new pleasure ethic,"<ref name="Katz"/> and the erotic became a commodity to be bought and sold; at the same time the "rise in power and prestige of medical doctors allowed those upwardly mobile professionals to prescribe a healthy new sexuality."<ref name="Katz"/> He states that men and women were now meant to enjoy sex; relations between those of the 'opposite sexes' was seen as healthy and encouraged by medical professionals; and this creation and celebration of the 'Normal Sexual' ultimately resulted in its counterpart: the 'Sexual Pervert,' anyone who fell outside the heterosexual ideal. He states, "In its earliest version, the twentieth-century heterosexual imperative usually continued to associate heterosexuality with a supposed human 'need,' 'drive,' or 'instinct' for propagation, a procreant urge linked inexorably with carnal lust... giving praise to vent to heteroerotic emotions was thus praised as enhancing baby-making capacity, marital intimacy and family stability."<ref name="Katz"/> The basic oppositeness of the sexes was seen as the basis for normal, healthy sexual attraction. Katz concludes that the term heterosexuality was created as a way to subjugate and other anyone who did not confirm to mainstream ideals of sexuality. It was a term that created a sense of validation that heterosexuality was the normal, healthy version of human sexuality.<ref name="Katz"/>
Margaret Denike and Patrick Hopkins have argued that "heterosexism and homophobia are founded on and sustained by binary gender categories, specifically the assumption that there are distinct and proper masculine and feminine gender roles and identities against which deviation is measured."<ref name="Denike">Template:Cite journal</ref> According to Erika Feigenbaum, the use of the term non-heterosexual indicates a departure from what is acceptable in society while highlighting the juxtaposition between the ideal heterosexual and unideal non-heterosexual, stating, "Heterosexism is about dominance, and the practices that support it are often replicated, reinforced, and reflected by the attitudes, behaviors, and practices of even [the] best-intentioned allies."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Although "non-heterosexuality" is considered a blanket term for all LGBTQ identities, it is often interpreted as another word for homosexual which contributes to the continuation of systematic bisexual erasure. Bisexuality has a long history of being overshadowed and ignored in favour of the belief in monosexuality, it "[represents] a blind spot in sex research."<ref name="A History of Bisexuality">Template:Cite book</ref> The term non-heterosexual suggests a division between heterosexual and homosexual, the heterosexual-homosexual dichotomy, rather than the heterosexual-homosexual continuum, which accounts for identities that are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. By separating identities into either/or, bisexual identities are left in a place of ambiguity, "bisexuals transgress boundaries of sexually identified communities and thus are always both inside and outside a diversity of conflicting communities."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The implied homosexual-heterosexual dichotomy that the term puts in place negates its use as a truly inclusive term; "[the] categories are constructed in such a way as to allow everyone access to one and only one, and to insist that anyone who is not already neatly situated in one category or the other had best be on the way to one."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This focus on either/or logic, heterosexuality or non-heterosexuality, where non-heterosexuality is closely associated with homosexuality rather than general queerness, slights those that the term attempts to describe; "where bisexuality does rate a mention, it is almost always rendered an epistemological and incidental by-product, aftereffect, or definitional outcome of the opposition of hetero/homosexuality."<ref name="A History of Bisexuality"/>
Non-heterosexuality is often used to describe those in the LGBT+ community with non-cisgender identities. This is seen as problematic as sexual orientation and gender identity are different. However the distinction between the two is relatively modern. Historically "[transgender people] were classified as homosexuals by everyone, including the physicians who specialized in their treatment, and it is only in the past fifty years or so that transgender has been theorized as different in kind from homosexuality."<ref name="GLvBT"/> Many people still fail to understand or make the distinction between gender minorities and sexual minorities.<ref name="GLvBT">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Queer people "are often expected to account for [their] sexual identifications by either proving [their] normality (that is, [they] are inside the sphere of heteronormativity), or by accepting that [their] difference from the heterosexual norm constitutes some form of essence."<ref name="ReferenceA">Template:Cite journal</ref> The term non-heterosexual is used to highlight the absolute difference between heterosexual and queer identities. The language needs to change to describe LGBTQ people as autonomous beings "rather than considering [them] solely as sexual beings constituted within a heterosexual logic of sameness or difference."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> The implied binary that the term non-heterosexual perpetuates erases those whose identities fall in the spectrum between heterosexuality and homosexuality. The hetero/homosexual dichotomy continues the systematic erasure of bisexual identities by emphasizing an assumed oppositeness with nothing allowed in between.<ref name="GLvBT"/> It ignores those who identify as non-binary, as the term non-heterosexuality has been interpreted as categorizing those who are sexually attracted to people of the 'same sex' as opposed to those who are attracted to those of the 'opposite sex.'<ref name="GLvBT"/>