The models we have, and the standards we are expected to maintain, come to us via heterosexuality as a normative state. Heterosexuality--whatever the current version of that concept happens to be--is unremarkable because it is the standard by which everything else is measured. That is heterosexual privilege.
There is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women: I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.
Female heterosexuality is not a biological drive or an individual women's erotic attraction or attachment to another human animal which happens to be male. Female heterosexuality is a set of social institutions and practices... Those definitions... are about the oppression and exploitation of women by men.
It would have been convenient to be gay. Just because of the grooming, the narcissism, stuff like that. But I have this kind of roaring heterosexuality. Traditional, uncomplicated heterosexuality, an almost cliched Robin Askwith thing.
Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone. Thus, going steady is a high school diploma in heterosexuality; engagement a BA; marriage an MA; and children a Ph.D.
I have decided to give up heterosexuality. I have decided that, while the project of altering the balance of power within heterosexual relationships is still a valid one, it is no longer one I can espouse--so to speak. There is no revolutionary hope for the heterosexual, and I have therefore decided to love myself and become a lesbian.
If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?
Heterosexuality is a die-hard custom through which male-supremacist institutions insure their own perpetuity and control over us. Women are kept, maintained and contained through terror, violence, and the spray of semen...[Lesbianism is] an ideological, political and philosophical means of liberation of all women from heterosexual tyranny.
You hear things like, ‘People shouldn’t know about your life because you’re creating an illusion on-screen.’ But I don’t see other actresses going to great lengths to hide their heterosexuality. That’s an unfair double standard.
Any first-order, substantive normative theory worth its salt will require attention to the mental states of agents in a variety of quite complex ways. But realism, being a view about the status of such normative theories, insists that the truth of any firstorder normative standard is not a function of what anyone happens to think of it.
War, I thought, was the most negative aspect of male heterosexuality. If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men.
I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads — fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I'm affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there'd be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.
In my opinion, you keep the standards very high and you maintain one standard. There shouldn't be two standards for women and men, there should be a standard for this job: To do this job, you should have to do these things.
Heterosexuality is not a thing.
Heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses
When I was young there were lesbians who said "Oh, I will free myself of all norms of masculinity, all norms of heterosexuality ". And then, they ended up in very complex relationships that were maybe full of heterosexual power dynamics or full of lesbian forms of masculinity and they became very confused.
Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.