The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy was acquired as part of The Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-281) and index.
Contents
The genealogy of a sex concept -- The debut of the heterosexual -- Before heterosexuality -- Making the heterosexual mystique -- The heterosexual comes out -- Questioning the heterosexual mystique -- The lesbian menace strikes back -- Toward a new pleasure system.
Summary
"This boldly original work reexamines our society's basic heterosexual/homosexual distinction - focusing on the evolution of the term heterosexual, which, as this study demonstrates, only entered our language a little more than a hundred years ago, ushering in a new way of dividing up and judging sexuality and people." "Exploring the startling history of the heterosexual concept, Jonathan Ned Katz reveals that as late as the 1920s, heterosexuality was still defined in a major American dictionary as "morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex." It was only through a slow process that heterosexuality became this society's dominant norm. Analyzing the work of such pioneering students of sexuality as Sigmund Freud and Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Katz considers the effects of their ideas about the sacred primacy of heterosexuality on both scientific literature and popular culture. He also examines the varied commentaries on heterosexuality by such contemporary writers as James Baldwin, Betty Friedan, Adrienne Rich, Kate Millett, and Michel Foucault."--Jacket.