Queer: A Graphic History

People wouldn’t have to come out if heterosexuality wasn’t the assumed norm.

Heterosexism generally refers to bias or discrimination in favour of “opposite-sex” relationships and sexual attractions and in favour of heterosexual-identified people.

drawing on Rubin’s sex hierarchy and Rich’s compulsory heterosexuality.

Thus, people are assumed heterosexual unless proven otherwise.

both seen as an essential, fixed, vital part of our identity (who we are).
• Are intrinsically linked, because our sexuality is defined by our gender and the gender of who we are attracted to, and people often read sexuality off someone’s gender expression (camp or butch, for example).
• Come to feel real, stable, and static through our internalizing of the available discourses, and repeated performance of them.

can do something different in how we repeat. We can create gender trouble and subversive confusion through parody, or other performances of gender, which challenge expectations

can never step outside the existing power relations and discourses completely.

within existing power relations, then there cannot be any gender or sexuality before, outside, or beyond these: no “authentic” gender or sexuality to compare others against.

there’s no real, authentic performance of gender. All gender is imitative performance

We operate within strong cultural discourses of what it is to be “a man” or “a woman” (which are produced by, and produce, certain power relations). We take these on and repeat them over and over so they feel very “real”, as if these discourses were who we actually are. And in repeating them we also sustain the gender norms.