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Assignment 07

In the article, “Are women are human? It’s not an academic question” by V.Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi; they believe we should question the connection between human rights and heterosexism, instead of putting an emphasis, as some feminists, on the centralization of men on human rights. Throughout the article, the authors talk about heterosexism being a more accurate approach to examine the relationship between gender difference and human rights. Peterson and Parisi start off the article by saying that references to the non-gender-differentiated human are in fact references to men, such as their bodies, experiences, and stereotypes. Men are considered to be the norm and universal. While on the other hand women are not in the universal category, and their bodies, experiences, and stereotypes are seen to be as particular or partial. This shows the obvious that men are deemed the human while women are thought to be the other, one is in the category, and the other is in the subcategory (132). Plainly put, heterosexism is the set notion of heterosexuality being the only normal and natural type of a sexual identity, practice or relation (133). This also leads to the hierarchy of males and females, or male identities and female identities, based on biophysical features. Heterosexism is therefore clearly reflected in the discourse and practice of human rights by gender inequalities being held, the distinction between public and private spheres (men and women), and the focus only on states as the protector and violator of these individual rights (134). The two authors then start to draw connections with the history of heterosexism. It technically originated from two ‘great’ men, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. While Freud talked more about the psychological view of sexual differentiation and the need for controlling instinctual desires, Marx was more concerned with the social structure, and the establishment of such hierarchies.  First, they believe that the psychoanalytic perspectives led to the constituting of gender identities and sexual practices, starting as early on as from when an infant begins to mature and what happens in its surroundings, especially the language used to them. Second, Peterson and Parisi point out that the prominence of the language and psychoanalysis are what embellish the social structures (135).