Straight: The Surprisingly Short History Of Heterosexuality
Like the typewriter and the light bulb, the heterosexual was invented in the 1860s and swiftly transformed Western culture. The idea of “the heterosexual” was unprecedented. After all, men and women had been having sex, marrying, building families, and sometimes even falling in love for millennia...
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Like the typewriter and the light bulb, the heterosexual was invented in the 1860s and swiftly transformed Western culture. The idea of “the heterosexual” was unprecedented. After all, men and women had been having sex, marrying, building families, and sometimes even falling in love for millennia without having any special name for their emotions or acts. Yet, within half a century, “heterosexual” had become a byword for “normal,” enshrined in law, medicine, psychiatry, and the media as a new gold standard for human experience. With an eclectic scope and fascinating detail, Straight tells the eye-opening story of a complex and often contradictory man-made creation that turns out to be anything but straight or narrow.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780807044438 (0807044431)
Publish date: January 31st 2012
Publisher: Beacon Press
Pages no: 228
Edition language: English
“We don't just want what we want because we want it; we want what we want because that's what we've learned to want.”The GoodI like books that teach me more about what I think I already know. Take the blunt force “common knowledge” (doxa) and pull it apart until you have a finer, more nuanced unders...
This isn't a "bad" book per se, but it's curiously pointless. While Blank sets out to limn the history of heterosexuality as a concept, what she really ends up doing at great length and to little new effect, is to write about the legal and social concepts of marriage (companionate and otherwise) and...
Whaaat? This 228-page book of nonfiction thought-provoking accessibly-written goodness ends on page 166? With the remaining pages all being annotations and bibliography and index? Ok, that gets the obligatory Darth Vader 'nooooooooo' out of the way, and we can safely continue without the danger of t...
I found this book fascinating, and eye-opening. The author starts from a unique perspective: her partner is intersex (XXY) and appears androgynous. Is her partner male, female, or both? Is the author heterosexual or homosexual? Blank challenges the reader to re-examine his/her/hir attitudes about...
An interesting, though brief, overview of the concept of heterosexuality. Said concept is amazingly recent; prior to the 18th century, people didn't define themselves by who they were attracted to. In the West, most sex acts were considered sinful anyway if they didn't lead to procreation, and there...
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