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Assignment 07

Heterosexism is to be considered institutionalization of heterosexuality as the only natural way in which people express their sexual and social order. Reading the work of V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi they believe heterosexism is a more precise way of analyzing the relationship of gender difference and human rights but why? Women weren’t treated as human beings because of the reproductive role they played in society among other factors.Human rights were actually considered to be “men’s rights” and women and their bodies weren’t included in the “universal category” because men are looked at as the norm and they are the only ones that are considered to be human. “The cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible requires that certain kinds of ‘identities’ cannot ‘exist’, that is, those in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which the practices of desire do not ‘follow’ from either sex or gender” ( Butler,1990 17 ).  Its mentioned that linguistic systems help form gender identities and sexual practices, the development of masculine and feminine which masculine is more favored is imprinted in language itself, and therefore language becomes an aspect in analyzing the construction of humans as well as philosophy, religion, and political theory.

Men being the privileged sex was also a way to separate men and women in the state, their interests and freedom are limited, forced to adhere to male needs. Male domination and women oppression is linked to discrediting women as human beings. Heterosexism gives men the upper hand and the advantage for masculine group reproduction, it promotes the inferiority between men and women and basically just accepting their subordination as a whole.Yet it is abuse and maltreatment for women because masculinity is privileged over femininity, and conquering other sexual orientations, as well as gender identifications leaving them with no sense of identity for themselves.

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