Task One:
After reading the Pascoe essay, write a post (you can bullet point if you like) that summarizes the article's:
topic and focus
it's main points
it's methods
it's conclusions.
Include page numbers and quotes to support your points.
Connect an ideas in Pascoe's essay to the Due essay and one other reading you did for this module.
This response should be at least a full paragraph long and include quotes from both sources.
In reference to the Rich reading, explainhow compulsive heterosexuality is connected to the following terms:
surveillance(and quote from at least one source to support your claim)
silence(and quote from at least one source to support your claim)
Task Two:
Response to 2 classmates
Response 1:
Katz Summary:
Homosexuality and heterosexuality were terms from English writers, not anyone in the medical field.
“Kertbeny first publicly used the term "homosexual" in 1869, in a petition against the German law criminalizing "unnatural fornication”” (Katz, pg. 177).
“The label homosexual was then appropriated by late nineteenth century medical men as a way of naming, condemning, and asserting their own proprietary rights over a group then parading into sight in the bars, dance halls, and streets of Europe's and America's larger cities” (Katz, pg. 177).
“At the same time, the label heterosexual was also appropriated by doctors as a word for the erotic intercourse of men with women”(Katz, pg. 177).
“But since such intercourse was not necessarily reproductive, the word "heterosexual" well into the twentieth century, continued to signify a bad, immoral relation”(Katz, pg. 177).
Up until the 1920’s heterosexuals were viewed as “abnormal”.
Heterosexuals were later moved above homosexuals and that is homosexuality became to be viewed as “abnormal”.
The doctors' heterosexual category proclaimed a new erotic -'separatism, a novel sex orthodoxy, that forcefully segregated the sex "normals" from sex "perverts," and set "hetero" over "homo" in a hierarchy of superior and inferior eroticisms” (Katz, pg. 178).
The terms homosexual and heterosexual actually have to do with the identities of individuals.
Individuals now create their own sense of identity based off of history and alter it as they please. Those who identify as homosexual take into consideration the history of homosexuality and chose to either disclose that information or keep it to themselves. Same goes with heterosexuals.
Connecting Katz' ideas:
Individuals base the way they want to identify on how society has portrayed their sexuality. “To paraphrase Karl Marx, women and men make their own sexual and affectional history. But they do not make this history just as they please. They make it under circumstances given by the past and altered by their political activity and organization, and their vision of a valued future”(Katz, pg XXXXXXXXXXIt is easier for someone to identify as heterosexual because society has made heterosexual the norm. Individuals who identify as homosexual may be hesitant or unsure of how they want to express their identify because homosexuality has been criticized in society. This relates to Due’s essay, because Due discusses what it was like to grow up “hidden” due to all of the backlash she would receive for being attracted to women. Society has tried to make individuals who are homosexual seem as though they are abnormal or wrong for doing this. Therefore Due had to pretend to be interested in boys so she would not be judged by those in her family and society. Due states “I decided to shut up--not because I changed my mind, but it was easier than trying to explain to people who’d never met a girl like me” (pg XXXXXXXXXXDue explains how not expressing herself would be easier for because she would not to defend herself or justify herself when people would judge her. Even those in her family would tell her that she would never have a wife, that she would have a husband. Society makes individuals feel as though they cannot be true to themselves if they are homosexual, society wants individuals who are homosexual to be ashamed of themselves when they should not be.
Rich’s reading:
In Rich’s reading, compulsive heterosexuality is essentially society’s way of encouraging heterosexuality because that is considered “normal” in our society. “Biologically men have only one innate orientation-a sexual one that draws them to women” (Rich, pg XXXXXXXXXXIn terms of desire, what has been shown in society is that men desire women and women desire men. Rich also includes the desires of women are also typically related to having children as well. In terms of identity, as developing a sense of who they are through their own personal experiences. “Given the importance placed on the male sex drive in the socialization of girls as well as boys, early adolescence is probably the first significant phase of male identification in a girl's life and development” (Rich, pg XXXXXXXXXXRich is explaining how adolescence is the time-frame where identities are created and developed in terms of relationships. Girls tend to fall back on their friendships with females and begin to have relationships with boys.
Response 2:
Compulsoryheterosexualityis the idea that heterosexuality is the norm for society. Society sets rules for what is normal and what is not. When it is assumed that the common sexuality of people is heterosexuality then we are saying that anything outside of that is uncommon. For instance, since society says that usually women are drawn more towards men than other women. Then, some people feel the need to conform to society and not feel free to be who they really are. There is already an assumption made about women that can be untrue for some women."The assumption made by Rossi, that women are "innately sexually oriented" toward men" (Rich 637).
"This heterosexual preference and taboos on homosexuality, in addition to objective economic dependence on men, make the option of primary sexual bonds with other women unlikely-though more prevalent in recent years" (Rich 636). It is hard to come out and be who you are when society is saying you should be a certain way.
"Rather than being "educated," girls' bodies are suppressed under surveillance and silenced in the schools" (Tolman348). Even in schools we are taught to be lady-like and suppressour sexuality. How can one ever begin to learn and explore our sexuality if we are under a constant microscope on how to be. The schools need to teach us how we do not have to be the way society tells us.
"I have always been, I told myself, 100% heterosexual" (Messner401). Sometimes people even try to convince themselves that they are a certain way because that is what they think society and everyone else wants them to be. But that should not happen and we should be able to express ourself and be whoever we want to be without having to hide.
"But it is more than these, although we may first begin to perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act of resistance" (Rich 649). Being who you are and liking a women when you are a women, will start to break down the patriarchy. We will have less men as the head of the householdand more equality for women. Women will be able to express them selfmore and have a more maternal home.
"...that the male need to control women sexually results from some primal male "fear of women" and of women's sexual insatiability" (Rich 643). Men always feel the need to control women and they have a fear sometimes when women are not attracted to them. It makes a man feel good when he can attract a woman but when he can not, he will feel defeated and not manly enough.