Book Review: The Invention of Heterosexuality

[osprey_archer]

I found Jonathan Ned Katz’s The Invention of Heterosexualityharder going than his Love Stories: Sex Between Men before Homosexuality; the latter is basically a series of case studies in 19th century male-male love affairs, while the former is much more an intellectual history charting theories of heterosexuality in Havelock Ellis, Freud, Friedan, etc. (What would you even use as a case study for the development of heterosexual identity? Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, maybe.)

However, I think it will be useful to me, particularly in the way it charts the evolution from the 19th century True Love ideal to the 20th century conception of heterosexuality. The True Love ideal presents True Love as chiefly a spiritual/emotional connection, of which sexuality is a subsidiary expression, which is beautiful in marriage (True Love and marriage are both, in the nineteenth century context, implicitly male-female connections) but mere animal sensuality outside of it.

(Not everyone bought into this! In Love Stories, Katz mentions the culture of “sporting men” - this has nothing to do with sports in the 20th century sense; think “sport” as in “disporting” - and quotes extensively from a sporting newspaper, which argued that young men’s contacts with female prostitutes where natural and healthy and pleasurable. Apparently in order to protect itself from accusations of total libertinism, that newspaper furiously condemned sodomy, and also condemned sexual relations between black men and white women as “worse than sodomy.”)

In the 20th century conception of heterosexuality, sexuality is not subsidiary. Sexuality is integral (it’s right there in the word!), and sexual fulfillment is the keystone of a happy life and a happy marriage. Hence the proliferation of twentieth century romantic plotlines (in films, books etc.) in which the characters don’t actually seem to like each other but get together because of their passionate sexual attraction.

And, of course, the hetero part which was implicit in true love is now explicit. It’s held up as natural and inevitable, but simultaneously a hard-won achievement of maturity, and also (but this part in not explicit) forever unstable: heterosexuals must be exclusively attracted to members of the opposite sex. God help you if you catch yourself admiring Rita Hayworth in Gilda just a little too much.

I found the elucidation of these different ideals useful, but upon reflection I’m not sure I agree with Katz that there was an evolution - or rather, I think the evolution was mostly in the area of psychosexual theory, but on the ground the ideal of True Love persisted, and coexisted somewhat uneasily with heterosexuality. Nowadays True Love is probably strongest in a conservative Christian context, but it was really the operative understanding of human sexuality among my generally non-religious friend group when I was in high school in the early 2000s.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

What would you even use as a case study for the development of heterosexual identity? Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, maybe.

Oof.

[osprey_archer]

Hemingway would also be a good one, because you can so clearly see him constructing a particular archetype of strong, stoic, manly heterosexuality (with deep inner pain and maybe gay urges). But Scott and Zelda definitely hit the "obsessed with each other! filled with animal passion for each other! pretty sure they don't actually like each other" heterosexuality thing.

*

[minoanmiss]

*makes a note of this interesting book* Thank you for this book rec.

Re: *

[osprey_archer]

I've read a number of books about the Historical Construction of Queer Identities, so it was super interesting to read a book that approached heterosexual identity the same way.

[sovay]

heterosexuals must be exclusively attracted to members of the opposite sex. God help you if you catch yourself admiring Rita Hayworth in Gilda just a little too much.

I take your point, but also I think if you watch Gilda and are not even a little queer about it, you're doing that particular noir wrong.

Have you read Boyd McDonald's Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies on TV (1985/2015)? Highly recommended for many reasons, but partly for the deconstruction of what McDonald calls the presentation of "compulsory heterosexuality" in Hollywood films.

[osprey_archer]

Frankly Gilda was MADE to break heterosexuality and probably caused a lot of mid-twentieth century women at least brief Doubts about their lives and sexual identities.

I have not read Cruising the Movies! Maybe someday.

[copperfyre]

This sounds fascinating!

[osprey_archer]

It really is!

[anna_wing]

One thing I did notice about US and UK culture when I was studying and working there (now at least 20 years ago, so possibly things have changed), was the emphasis on sexual preference categories as an essential component of identity, rather than something that one does, or not, as circumstances or opportunity allow. The discovery that some societies think 'asexual', for instance, can be applied to people as well as bdelloid rotifers was mildly mind-boggling, one of those 'sudden chasm of cultural incomprehension opening up before my feet' moments.

[osprey_archer]

That's definitely still around, and possibly it has only grown more prevalent, in fact.

I've gotten a bit tired of fantasy worldbuilding that shares this assumption, as in, "in THIS world, the word for gay is lavender!" If the author can't come up with something that makes me go "what the FUCK are you even ON about" at least as much as nineteenth-century understandings of sexuality and gender, what even is the point?

[anna_wing]

And authors don't even have to read history! They could just look around at the real world and different real countries and societies.

But the assumption that a fantasy world, or a far future, should be exactly like the author's present milieu, and that there is no other way for a society to be, is a very longstanding one...