{"product_id":"straight-isbn-9780807044599","title":"Straight","description":"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, \u003ci\u003eStraight\u003c\/i\u003e tells the eye-opening story of a complex and often contradictory man-made creation that turns out to be anything but straight or narrow.\u003cp\u003eTable of Contents\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIntroduction:\u003c\/b\u003e Sexual Disorientation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter One:\u003c\/b\u003e The Love That Could Not Speak Its Name \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter Two: \u003c\/b\u003eCarnal Knowledge\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter Three:\u003c\/b\u003e Straight Science\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter Four:\u003c\/b\u003e The Marrying Type\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter Five: \u003c\/b\u003eWhat’s Love Got to Do with It?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter Six:\u003c\/b\u003e The Pleasure Principle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter Seven:\u003c\/b\u003e Here There Be Dragons\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eBibliography\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e“Fascinating.”—\u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[An] amusing, readable synthesis . . . Blank darts from one intriguing, thought-provoking point to another. . . . [And she] offers the provocative solution that soon we will move on from our present fixation on the binary to a more fluid understanding.”—Abigail Zuger, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Using  wit and wisdom, Blank substantiates her argument that love and passion are not  defined by biology.”—\u003ci\u003eEDGE\u003c\/i\u003e Publications\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A lively, accessible synthesis of decades of scholarship on the history and sociology of sexuality.”—\u003ci\u003eCHOICE \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eWry, witty and thoroughly researched.”—\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eLavender Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Blank has produced a challenging, clear, and interesting study of how Western views of what it means to be ‘straight’ have changed over the past two centuries and continue to change.”—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Blank’s work reaches further and deeper into the history of heterosexuality…highly accessible.”—\u003ci\u003eLambda Lit\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eStraight\u003c\/i\u003e …is accessible and engaging,  often witty and penetrating in its insights.”—\u003ci\u003eNew  York Journal of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Blank’s tenacious research and insightful arguments make clear how malleable the attitudes of the world we live in really are.”—Michelle Kehm, \u003ci\u003eBust\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Blank writes with  great erudition and humor, so that, even a skeptical (or anxious) reader will be  hard-pressed not to find it enjoyable and thought provoking.\"—\u003ci\u003eHaaretz\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hanne Blank has rendered a  meticulously researched romp through the history of ‘heterosexuality’—that pesky  orthodoxy still looming over Western culture like smog. Her sweeping synthesis  takes on everything from Freud to Larry Craig, expertly weaving this untold  history with insight and a refreshing dose of irreverence.”—Lisa M.  Diamond, author of \u003ci\u003eSexual Fluidity:  Understanding Women’s Love and  Desire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The author  uses wisdom and wit to substantiate her contention that love and passion are not  definable by biology.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“From its thorough but brisk explorations of sexual orientation’s intersections with sex, gender, and romance, this illuminating study examines our presuppositions and makes a powerful, provocative argument that heterosexuality—mazy, unscientific, and new—may be merely “a particular configuration of sex and power in a particular historical moment.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“With impeccable research and detail, Hanne Blank  uncovers the fascinating, often hidden, history of heterosexuality. Straight is  a marvelous cultural history that is as entertaining as it is profoundly  enlightening and necessary for understanding the world in which we live.”—Michael Bronski, author of \u003ci\u003eA Queer History  of the United States\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What would it  mean to dispense with our current categories of sexual identity? Writing with  grace and wit, Hanne Blank demonstrates that what sounds like a radical  proposition is also historically inevitable. This is a book that really shakes  up an assumption or two!”—Laura Kipnis,  author of \u003ci\u003eHow To Become a Scandal\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAgainst  Love\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Challenging  our culture’s deeply entrenched, stubborn assumption of heterosexuality,  \u003ci\u003eStraight\u003c\/i\u003e helps us to think newly  and critically. Starting from her own experience, Hanne Blank creatively  analyses the unexamined idea that heterosexuality is given, unchanging,  ahistorical.”—Jonathan Ned  Katz, author of \u003ci\u003eThe  Invention of Heterosexuality\u003c\/i\u003e and co-director  OutHistory.org\u003cp\u003eWriter and historian \u003cb\u003eHanne Blank\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eVirgin:The Untouched History\u003c\/i\u003e and seven other books that explore the intersections of sexuality, gender, the body, and culture. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the Introduction: Sexual Disorientation\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Every time I go to the doctor, I end up questioning my sexual  orientation. On some of its forms, the clinic I visit includes five  little boxes, a small matter of demographic bookkeeping. next to the  boxes are the options “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “transgender,” or  “heterosexual.” You’re supposed to check one.\u003cbr\u003e       You might not think this would pose a difficulty. I am a fairly  garden-variety female human being, after all, and I am in a long-term  monogamous relationship, well into our second decade together, with  someone who has male genitalia. but does this make us, or our  relationship, straight? This turns out to be a good question, because  there is more to my relationship—and much, much more to  heterosexuality—than easily meets the eye.\u003cbr\u003e      There’s biology, for one thing. My partner was diagnosed male at  birth because he was born with, and indeed still has, a fully  functioning penis. but, as the ancient romans used to say, \u003ci\u003ebarba non facit philosophum\u003c\/i\u003e—a  beard does not make one a philosopher. neither does having a genital  outie necessarily make one male. indeed, of the two sex  chromosomes—XY—which would be found in the genes of a typical male, and  XX, which is the hallmark of the genetically typical female—my partner’s  DNA has all three: XXY, a pattern that is simultaneously male, female,  and neither.\u003cbr\u003e      This particular genetic pattern, XXY, is the signature of  kleinfelter syndrome, one of the most common sex-chromosome anomalies.  XXY often goes undiagnosed because the people who have it often look  perfectly normal from the outside. in many cases, XXY individuals do not  find out about their chromosomal anomaly unless they try to have  children and end up seeing a fertility doctor, who ultimately orders an  image called a karyotype, essentially a photo of the person’s  chromosomes made with a very powerful microscope. in a karyotype, the  trisomy, or three-chromosome grouping, is instantly revealed. as genetic  anomalies go, this particular trisomy is not a cause for major alarm  (aside from infertility, it causes few significant problems), which is a  good thing, since it is fairly common. The estimates vary, in part  because diagnosis is so haphazard, but it is believed that as many as  one in every two thousand people who are declared male at birth may in  fact be XXY. at minimum, there are about half a million americans whose  genetics are this way, most of whom will never know it.\u003cbr\u003e      What does an unusual sexual biology mean for sexual orientation? is it even \u003ci\u003epossible \u003c\/i\u003efor  XXY people to have a sexual orientation in the way we usually think  about sexual orientation? What about their lovers, partners, and  spouses? “heterosexual,” “homosexual,” and “bisexual” are all dependent  on the idea that there are two, and only two, biological sexes. What  happens when biology refuses to fit neatly into this scheme? if I’m  attracted to, and in love with, someone who is technically speaking  neither male nor female, does that make me heterosexual, homosexual,  bisexual, or something else altogether? Who gets to decide? and, more to  the point, on what grounds?\u003cbr\u003e      Some would argue that genetics aren’t as important as anatomy and  bodily functions. after all, you can’t see chromosomes with the naked  eye. but here, too, I run into problems. Part of what makes a man, as we  are all taught from childhood, is that he has a penis and testicles  that produce sperm, which in turn are necessary to fertilize a female’s  egg cells and conceive a fetus. The ability to sire a child has been  considered proof of masculinity for thousands of years. This is  something my partner cannot do. his external plumbing looks and acts  pretty much like any genetically typical male’s, but, in the words of  one of my partner’s vasectomied coworkers, “he shoots blanks.” in my  partner’s case, no vasectomy was required. his testicles  do not produce viable sperm. They never have and never will. This is  part of the territory for most people who have XXY sex chromosomes.\u003cbr\u003e      So if heterosexuality is by definition, as some of our right-wing  brothers and sisters like to claim, about the making of babies, then  there is no possible way for my partner and me to be construed as  heterosexual. but even the bible recognizes that infertility exists. The  notoriously procreation-fixated Catholic Church permits marriage, and  marital sex, between people known to be infertile. Curiously, whether or  not reproduction is a cornerstone of heterosexuality seems to depend on  whom you ask, and in what circumstances.\u003cbr\u003e      Not that it really matters in practice. at this point in time  contraception is more the rule than the exception for sexual activity  between different-sex partners throughout the first world. Many people,  including members of committed male\/female couples, don’t have children  or plan to have them, yet somehow this doesn’t stop them from feeling  quite certain that they know what their sexual orientations are. They  consider sexual orientation as being rooted in a calculus of subjective  attraction and biological sameness. The greek “hetero” means “other” or  “different,” after all, and biological men and women do differ from one  another. We make use of these biological differences every day without  thinking every time we look at people and identify them as either male  or female, ask whether a baby or a dog is a boy or a girl, or determine  the sexes of the members of a couple we spot on the street and assign  them sexual orientations in our minds.\u003cbr\u003e      Surely such informal, man-in-the-street diagnostics ought to apply  just as well to my partner and me. Or perhaps not. as an XXY individual  who has chosen not to take hormone supplements, my partner’s naturally  occurring sex hormones take a middle path. his estrogen levels hang out a  little lower than mine, his testosterone levels a little higher. as a  result, my partner, like other XXY people who don’t take exogenous  hormones, has an androgynous appearance, with little to no facial and  body hair, a fine smooth complexion, and a tendency to develop small  breasts and slightly rounded hips if he puts on a little weight.1 When  we lived in a lgbt-heavy neighborhood in boston, my partner and I were  often identified by others as lesbians. We were regularly referred to as  “ladies” by shopkeepers, door-todoor Mormons, and parents trying to  prevent their kids from crowding us at the zoo. lesbian couples  we encountered in passing often shot us little conspiratorial smiles of  recognition. (We always smiled back. still do.) but it wasn’t all  pleasantries. Once while walking together we had bottles thrown at us  from a car, its occupants screaming “Fuckin’ dykes!” out the windows as  they sped away. assumptions of sexual orientation are never merely  innocent perceptions, because these perceptions shape behavior.\u003cbr\u003e      Assumptions about biology and gender are complicated, fraught, and  by no means clear or unambiguous. The ways people have identified my  partner’s biological sex, and therefore not only the nature of our  relationship to one another but also our respective sexual orientations,  have run an extraordinary gamut that might be distressing if we hadn’t  long ago learned to laugh at it all. My partner’s physical androgyny—the  minimal facial hair, refined complexion, and elegant, long-limbed build  that are common side effects of his genetic anomaly—has led some people  to assume that he is a female-to-male transsexual who is early in the  transition process, still more hormonally female than male. I have heard  him identified as a “passing butch.” Once, at a party, I overheard a  woman stating with assurance that my partner was a very feminine gay man  who had “made an exception” for me. at other times I have been assumed  to be the one making the exception, a “hasbian” who turned from dating  women to seeing a gentle, feminine straight man. by the same token,  these reactions have changed as we’ve aged and our styles of dress and  grooming have changed. For the past several years, with my partner  usually dressing in corporate-office menswear and sporting a dashing  haircut modeled on the young Cole Porter’s, we have typically, though  not always, been read as heterosexual. if the range of responses we’ve  had can tell me anything about what my sexual orientation is supposed to  be, it’s that other people don’t necessarily know what box I should be  checking off on those clinic forms either.\u003cbr\u003e      My own sense of sexual identity is, incidentally, no help. I have  no deep personal attachment to labeling myself in terms of sexual  orientation, nor do I have the sensation of “being” heterosexual or  homosexual or anything but a human being who loves and desires other  human beings. I have been romantically and sexually involved with people  of a variety of biological sexes and social genders over the course of  my adult life. When pressed, I am most likely to declare my “sexual  identity” as “taken.” This option, however much it might be the best  fit, is not available to me on most forms that ask this sort of  question.\u003cbr\u003e       I could, I suppose, resort to legal documents to sort out the  question of what my orientation is, and what the orientation of my  relationship with my partner might be. here at last it is uncomplicated.  based on our birth certificates, my partner and I and our relationship  could be defined as uncomplicatedly heterosexual. but there’s a caveat,  and it’s a big one: our sexes were diagnosed at birth on the basis of a  visual check of our genitals, on the assumption that external genitals  are an infallible indicator of biological sex. This is the assumption  behind every “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl,” not just historically but  every day around the world. Thanks to the publicity given to cases like  that of intersex south african athlete Caster semenya in 2009, and  indeed to the ink I am spilling here, however, mainstream culture is  gradually becoming aware that this assumption is not necessarily  warranted. Many biologists, including brown University biologist anne  Faustosterling, have eloquently testified that humans have at least five  major sexes—of which typical male and typical female are merely the  most numerous—and that furthermore, human chromosomes, gonads, internal  sexual organs, external genitals, sex hormones, and secondary sexual  characteristics can appear in many different guises.\u003cbr\u003e      The law, however, still acknowledges only two sexes. it does not  always or necessarily acknowledge sexual orientation at all. On the  occasions when it does recognize sexual orientation, it typically  acknowledges only two of them as well, heterosexual and homosexual.  (Once in a while bisexuality is included, but often not.) all of these  sexual orientations are wholly dependent upon—and could not be  conceptualized without—the general consensus that there are two and only  two human biological sexes. but as we now know, and as is demonstrated  so charmingly in the person of my very own beloved, this is not  necessarily so. rather, the convenient sorting of human beings into two  biological sexes and a correspondingly limited number of sexual  orientations is an artifact of a historical system that was formed at a  time when medicine, biology, and social theory were capable of far less  than they are now. We are still using a very limited nineteenth-century  set of ideas and terminology to talk about a decidedly more expansive  twenty-first-century landscape of biology, medicine, law, social theory,  and human behavior.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ---\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It has, in point of actual fact, only been possible to be a heterosexual  since 1869.2 Prior to that time, men and women got married, had sex,  had children, formed families, and sometimes even fell in love, but they  were categorically not heterosexuals. They didn’t identify themselves  as “being” something called “heterosexual.” They didn’t think of  themselves as having a “straight” sexual identity, or indeed have any  awareness that something called a “sexual identity” even existed. They  couldn’t have. neither the terms nor the ideas that they express existed  yet.\u003cbr\u003e “Heterosexual” and “heterosexuality” are creations of a particular,  distinct, well-documented time and place. They are words, and ideas,  developed by people whose names are known to us and whose handwritten  letters we can still read. Their adoption and integration into Western  culture was a remarkable process that historian Jonathan ned katz, the  first to chronicle it, has aptly called “the invention of  heterosexuality.”\u003cbr\u003e      It was an invention whose time had clearly come, for it took less  than a century for “heterosexual” and “heterosexuality” to leap out of  the honestly rather obscure medical and legal backwaters where they were  born and become part of a vast and opaque umbrella sheltering an  enormous amount of social, economic, scientific, legal, political, and  cultural activity. exactly how this happened is a complicated, diffuse  story that takes place on many different stages at roughly the same  time, over a span of time measured in decades.\u003cbr\u003e      We need not, however, labor under the delusion that “heterosexual”  became such a culture-transforming success because it represented the  long-awaited discovery of a vital and inescapable scientific truth. it  wasn’t. as we shall see, the original creation of “heterosexual” and  “homosexual” had nothing to do with scientists or science at all. nor  did it have anything to do with biology or medicine. “heterosexual” (and  “homosexual”) originated in a quasi-legal context, a term of art  designed to argue a philosophical point of legislature.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300366471397,"sku":"NP9780807044599","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807044599.jpg?v=1767737390","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/straight-isbn-9780807044599","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}