ABSTRACT

This book explores heterosexualities in their complex and everyday expressions. It engages with theories about the intersection of sexuality with other markers of difference, and gender in particular. The outcome will productively upset equations of heterosexuality with heteronormativity and accounts that cast heterosexuality in "sex critical, sex as danger" terms. Queer/feminist ‘pro-sex’ perspectives have become prevalent in analyses of sexuality, but in these approaches queer becomes the site of subversive, transgressive, exciting and pleasurable sex, while heterosex, if mentioned at all, continues to be seen as objectionable or dowdy. It challenges heterosexuality’s comparative absence in gender/sexuality debates and the common constitution of heterosexuality as nasty, boring and normative. The authors develop an innovative analysis showing the limits of the sharply bifurcated perspectives of the "sex wars". This is not a revisionist account of heterosexuality as merely one option in a fluid smorgasbord, nor does it dismiss the weight of feminist/pro-feminist critiques of heterosexuality. This book establishes that if relations of domination do not constitute the analytical sum of heterosexuality, then identifying its range of potentialities is clearly important for understanding and helping to undo its "nastier" elements.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part |43 pages

Unpacking the Monolith

chapter |13 pages

Nasty, Boring, and Normative?

Heterosexuality within the Conceptual Map of Gender and Sexuality Studies

chapter |14 pages

Hetero-doxy

Conjugality and the Measure of Marriage

chapter |14 pages

Unknown Paths

Theorising Changes in Heterosexual Intimacy

part |49 pages

Fields of Practice and Possible Adventures

chapter |16 pages

(Not) Everyday Sexual Intimacy

On Quiet Subversions

chapter |17 pages

Thrills and Spills

Heterosex, ‘Transgressive' Adventures, and Social Change

chapter |2 pages

Conclusion

Theorising Social Change from the Realm of the Dominant