straight the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality

Formally trained as a classical musician,as well as an historian, she has been a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, and was the 1991 recipient of the George Whitfield Chadwick medal.Īlthough Ms. She has been the Scholar of the Institute at the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, Towson University, Maryland, and has taught at the university level at institutions including Brandeis University, Tufts University, and Whitworth College.

Blank has appeared on the campuses of many universities and colleges, as well as at national and regional conferences of various types and centers for adult learning. Blank's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, NYLON, Entertainment Weekly, and many other periodicals, and she has been widely interviewed on radio and television in Australia, the US, UK, and Canada, including being featured on National Public Radio, BBC 4, and on the acclaimed Canadian program SexTV. Her short fiction and essays are frequently anthologized. 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.” (Jan.Periodicals which have featured her work include Penthouse, In These Times, Southwest Art, Lilith, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, the Baltimore CityPaper, the Boston Phoenix, Santa Fean Magazine, and others.

So while homosexuality has been extensively studied and debated, heterosexuality and “straight” genes have remained “amorphous and undefined” despite carrying the “monolithic aura of inevitability and authority.” A natural or biological basis for sexual orientation is commonly claimed, because it appears to be the case, even though none of the experiments performed to find a biological or genetic cause for homosexuality have yielded any evidence. While the law remained unchanged, the taxonomy passed into popular use, and complemented by the theories of Krafft-Ebing and Freud, became “doxa,” what everyone knows (or believes they know).

The concept of heterosexuality was created (along with homosexuality) in the 19th century by German researchers protesting the criminalization of same-sex relations. Framed by a discussion of her partner’s intersex condition, Blank (Virgin) explores the invention of heterosexuality as a term and norm.

Straight the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality