Dibujar bocetos ordenados de piezas

He was a boy, she was a girl… can I make it any more obvious? – Avril Lavigne, Sk8er Boi

41 Much as we have seen that the idea of gender, and sex, as natural – an idea deeply embedded in culture – has been destabilised and troubled by theory, so has the concept of heterosexuality as natural and desirable been destabilised in recent

decades by queer theorists. The normative status of heterosexuality, a status which is historically contingent (Weeks 1985; Katz 1995), serves both to other and regulate behaviour of those who can be positioned outside it, and to regulate gender and sexuality for those within it. Defining sexuality is as impossible as defining gender; all that is connected with sexual relations, all that relates to the erotic; sexual preferences, relationships, desires, pleasures, fantasies, expectations, actions. Its influence extends far beyond simply considering sexual acts themselves (whatever they are) and has deep connections with gender.

As a system of categorisation and an organisation of social relations, gender is ordered around and closely linked to the reproductive arena. Connell defines gender thus: “Gender is the structure of social relations that centres on the reproductive arena, and the set of practices that bring reproductive distinctions between bodies into social processes” (2009: 11). Of course, this assertion can be easily qualified: those who lack reproductive capabilities, such as children, infertile people and post- menopausal women, are not considered without gender; and, of course, increasingly effective means of contraception also trouble the connection. But the basic

distinction between men and women would be considered by most to be centred around reproduction, and thus around sex. It is tied closely in with sexual relations between men and women, with heterosexuality (two categories which might or might not be considered synonymous); but there is much debate over how closely they are tied, and in what ways.

Feminist theorists have frequently posited the embedding of gender within a

heterosexual framework: one of the early and most influential being Adrienne Rich’s critique of the power of “compulsory heterosexuality” as a political institution (1980). Monique Wittig examines the construction of women and men in opposition to each other and in the framework of assumed heterosexual desire between both sexes; for her, sex is constructed and “woman” is by definition one who desires men

42 (1992). Rich and Wittig both in different ways present lesbianism as the appropriate reaction to and escape from the oppression of institutionalised heterosexuality. Central to Butler’s previously discussed theories of the performativity of gender, and the norms and constraints guiding what performances are acceptable, is what she terms the “heterosexual matrix”. This matrix provides a structure in which

performances of masculinity (by men) and femininity (by women) are (or should be) enacted in opposition to and interaction with each other. Being a man necessarily involves being sexually attracted to women, and vice versa. Given the precariousness of the gender order, the boundaries between appropriately heterosexual genders require constant policing. This policing can be witnessed in the othering of those who exhibit gender identities, sexualities and/or gender behaviours which fall outside the norms of heterosexual masculinity/femininity. Ingraham, who similarly sees heterosexuality as essential to gender (1994, 2005) coins the term

“heterogender” to emphasise the relationship between and essential dependence of gender upon heterosexuality. She argues that heterosexuality is taken for granted as ‘natural’ and that this “conceals the operation of heterosexuality in structuring gender and closes off any critical analysis of heterosexuality as an organizing institution” (1994, p. 203).

The heterosexual matrix, then, provides a frame for how women and men are to be women and men, always in relation to the other. Although masculinit(y/ies) and femininit(y/ies) are not entirely reducible to their desire for the other, as Schippers puts it, “the construction of hetero-desire as the ontological essence of gender difference establishes the meaning of the relationship between masculinity and femininity” (2007, p. 90: 90). The framework can, though, be criticised. Atkinson and DePalma, while acknowledging the usefulness of the heterosexual matrix as a concept for analysis, worry about the reification of the existing order through continued use of the term in research. They agree with Butler’s own misgivings about the metaphor of the “matrix”, which suggests an inescapability and totality and prefer to use her rethought concept of “heterosexual hegemony” (1993a) (as does Renold (2005)). The matrix does not exist beyond our reinscription of it. Their misgivings about reinscription are useful, and the exhortation to pay attention to

43 rupture and transgression as well as norms and regulation is particularly pertinent (cf. also Renold and Ringrose 2008). Despite this, though, we might not want to overemphasise the power of academia. The power of regulatory norms still requires acknowledgement, and their analysis requires naming; much as one cannot (?) analyse gender without perpetuating it. Although naming can be a means of reinscribing norms, it can also bring things previously unsaid into the realm of the sayable, and make visible previously hidden workings of power. Much of the power of heterosexuality, after all, lies in what is not said or acknowledged, but merely assumed.

The heterosexual matrix, then, implies a structuring relation for practice of all gender, making it highly difficult to do gender without reference to it – perhaps particularly so for those who consider themselves heterosexual and negotiate heterosexual relationships. Gender is not always performed in accordance with heterosexual norms; they can be subverted and reworked, and indeed the existence of subversive or non-normative gender expressions is necessary for the normative to maintain its influence. But as Butler puts it, “if the norm renders the social field intelligible and normalizes that field for us, then being outside the norm is in some sense being defined still in relation to it” (2004, p. 42: 42).

The close link between heterosexuality and gender, institutionalised in the structure of the family and normative relationalities between men and women and/or

masculinities and femininities, continues to exert a powerful influence. Men who fail to embody masculinity are often disparaged for being like women and

simultaneously for being gay, and gay men considered to be feminine; and vice versa in the case of women. But as Katz (1995) details, this link is historically constructed and heterosexuality as we currently conceive of it has been around for not much longer than 100 years; and changing in that time. And as noted above, bringing all performances back to their relation to the norm can obscure the power of

transgressive performances and emphasise continuity at the expense of seeing change. With gender norms in flux, influenced by the feminist movement and by changing global economic and social contexts, and non-heterosexualities similarly

44 becoming more visible, the link between heterosexuality and gender might no longer be so rigidly fixed.

We have seen already the possibilities for (and limitations of) doing gender beyond the limits of the body. Although in Female Masculinity Halberstam restricts her analysis to masculine women through history who display same-sex desire, she recognises that female masculinity need not correspond with lesbianism, as a modern construction, nor even with “gender variant ” women who have practised same-sex sexual relations (or expressed such desires) in various temporally and socially contingent forms, but that it can also encompass women who lead heterosexual lifestyles and/or have heterosexual desires (1998, pp. 57-59). While she sees queer female masculinities, where the strictures of heterosexuality as well as the strictures of gender are transgressed, as more threatening to the established and protected status of male masculinity and gender normativity, there is also surely room for subverting gender relationality and thus gender/sexual norms through

heterosexuality/ies. Non-normative sexualities, too, can be done in variantly

transgressive, and variantly queer, ways. Indeed much of the struggle for civil rights for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender4 people is to some extent rooted in the premise and desire for normativity, or at least normality. My own research focusses on heterosexualities, and within that broad umbrella I attempt to unveil the diversities of gender relations as well as the similarities.

Heterosexuality, significantly more so than other sexualities, is “not only sexual” (Jackson 2006, p. 117: 117); indeed, heterosexuality, as the unmarked category, is so embedded in social practice that it can be discussed and referred to extensively without consideration of the sexual, while non-normative sexualities are inevitably sexualised. We see this particularly clearly in education and discourse around childhood, where it is thought not quite right to have to “explain” gay people to children (Curran et al. 2009): this is bound up with discourses of “childhood innocence”, that I discuss further below. But heterosexuality, as heteronormativity,

4

The interests of the groups/individuals covered by this amalgamation may not always or even often coincide, but the acronym is useful when discussing certain social movements.

45 spreads into a wide variety of social practices and institutions. Stevi Jackson (1996) distinguishes between the institutionalisation of heterosexuality within society and culture, associated social/political identities, the practices involved; and their

experience. Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson similarly distinguish between layers or levels of “heterosexual power”: as language; agency and action; structured, institutionalised power relations between sexual partners; embodied practices, sexual experiences and their meanings; and they emphasise its nature as historically specific and subject to change (Holland et al. 2004[1998], pp. 22-23).

These categories are, of course, not entirely separable – the layers are closely interconnected and entwined. Embodied practices and sexual experiences, for instance, affect and are affected by institutionalised power relations, but they do not exist in a causal relationship, whereby one can simply infer that gendered power is expressed through a particular sex act. But there may be disconnects and tensions between these layers, as well as continuities. I explore further in the next chapter the layers and levels of heterosexuality that I try and analyse, and the methodological complications of excavating and interpreting these. In paying close attention to the interactions and negotiations of heterosexuality, I take the view that heterosexual sex and heterosexual relationships are not merely an illustration or reproduction of heterosexuality as the norm, but function as another site – like that of education, or work, or the household – in which gender and heterosexuality are performed. This is counter to the views of some feminist writers (e.g. Dworkin 1987; Mackinnon 1989; Jeffreys 1996), whereby heterosexuality is at heart an eroticisation of power

difference, central to an oppressive system in which men are dominant over women, and that at least at the present moment it is difficult if not impossible to do

heterosexuality without becoming part of this system. It is also, if less explicitly, counter to a tendency in some queer writing to see heterosexuality as something of a monolith, the boring and conventional norm to which queer is opposed. As Smart points out, heterosexuality is often “presented as a unitary concept” (1996), in contrast to the acceptance and celebration of different queer sexualities (cf. also Richardson 1996; Ingraham 2005). We ought instead to speak of heterosexualities,

46 allowing for a similar exploration of and focus on diverse ways of doing

heterosex(uality), while retaining a conception of the power of heteronormativity as a still highly influential institution.