Heteronormativity

Jump to navigation Jump to search

That is confusing the question of what is normal with some people's opinions about what ought to be normal. Now, as far as sexual orientation goes, if I recall correctly about 97% of the population is straight, so it can safely be concluded that heterosexuality is the norm. By contrast, your fundamentalists who speak the loudest against homosexuality make up a small minority of the population and it can safely be concluded that they are not normal as far as religion goes; yet they believe that they should be normal and others not.

Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX18:58, 1 December 2011

But listner, you will concede that in the world outside of statistics, "norm" and "normal" are not nor are ever the same thing. Normal is necessarily a value judgement, norm is just numbers and can apply to types of crackers as well as sexuality.

Pink mowse.pngGodotAround, around, around, around, over, and under and through19:05, 1 December 2011

In vernacular usage, "normal" can mean either "usual" or "by the rules." However, the people who kick up a dust-storm when one points out that certain traits or behaviors are unusual do not appear to make that distinction.

Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX19:13, 1 December 2011

Yeah, it's also used in the vernacular sense to more-than-imply that "abnormal" people are deficient. Spare me your butthurt over the PC police -- tell me when "straight" is listed as a mental disorder in the DSM and ICD.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)19:31, 1 December 2011

People who get all offended over factual statements need a good kick in the pants, as do people who define their idea of "immorality" as "mental illness." They are both doing the same thing: not letting the truth get in the way of a good story.

Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX19:41, 1 December 2011

Not all of those 97% are totally "straight", so your "truth" or "fact" changes with different definitions.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)20:39, 1 December 2011
Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX20:47, 1 December 2011

Totally missing the forest for the trees -- the specific numbers aren't important, but understanding that gay/straight are not two separate boxes that you can easily cram people into. But, whatever, continue hair splitting.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)21:17, 1 December 2011

I think that the point is that you couldn't call it "statistically normal", regardless of whether the numbers were 3%, 10% or on a sliding scale. But that word "normal" still has the hidden connotations of "good" and "bad" whether you choose to express them or not. Separating those and stopping people thinking of those connotations is almost impossible no matter what 'definition' you claim to actually be using.

There seems to be a massive confusion over that sort of thing. The part in the article attacking the Pioneer Plaque for being "heteronormative" was ridiculous - wait, so they're saying that instead of sending a potential extra-terrestrial contact some biologically meaningful image of two sexes, we should have sent them everything Judith Butler ever wrote on gender performativity and then some? It seems to be taking the connotations of "normal" being "good" and applying them to, as LX points out, a statistical fact. Therefore it's not just people's attitudes but reality itself that must be coming across as offensively heteronormative. And it's all because no one seems to be using "normal" in the same way.

Scarlet A.pngmoral21:34, 1 December 2011

I don't think the part about the plaque was saying anything about what should be sent, much less Judith Butler. The point is to look at the assumptions behind what image was chosen to represent humanity on the plaque.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)22:59, 1 December 2011

I always just assumed it was biological and not somehow normative.

Incidentally, what gender is the Ageless-Faceless-Gender-Neutral-Culturally-Ambiguous-Adventure-Person in the Arecibo message? I think what someone's automatic presumptions that that represents is far better than the plaque. Because if it's about anything it's about the automatic assumptions we make when faced with that sort of ambiguity.

Scarlet A.pngpathetic23:05, 1 December 2011

"The element on the left (in the image) indicates the average height of an adult male: 1764 mm."

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)23:16, 1 December 2011