What is heteronormativity - DYKKA.com

You buy a women's magazine and you find an article in it about 10 tips on how to pick up a man on vacation . You buy a men's magazine and you find pictures of scantily clad and provocatively made-up women. But... Have you ever read an article in a women's magazine about 10 tips on how to pick up a woman on vacation ? And have you ever seen a half-naked model in a men's magazine? If so, it was probably a queer magazine. Welcome to the world of heteronormativity .

WTF, what the hell is this?!

Heteronormativity is the technical name for the state where we as a society behave and pretend that heterosexuality is the only correct or even existing sexual orientation .

It manifests itself in many ways. One of them is the aforementioned lifestyle magazines, which do not take into account that their readership is homo-, bi- or even pansexual . Another example of heteronormativity is people who ask others: “So, when are you getting married? When are you going to show us the bride/groom?” without considering that marriage for all has not yet been approved in the Czech Republic.

But heteronormativity can also be found in education and healthcare . Sex education teaches sex primarily from the perspective of heterosexual people. Psychotherapists may not know anything about asexuality and may therefore consider asexual people to be traumatized.

From the above, we can probably deduce why heteronormativity is bad :

1. It ignores the fact that there are millions of people in the world who are not heterosexual .
2. It creates a feeling in people that a non-heterosexual orientation is strange, weird, and perhaps even unacceptable.
3. It prevents heterosexual people (and of course not only them) from learning more about other sexual orientations.
4. It creates a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy in people with homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual and other orientations.

So, if we know that heteronormativity is bad, how can we defend ourselves against it ?

1. By not assuming that others are cis and heterosexual, or at least until they come out. That is, we will not assume that the person we are talking to is sexually oriented towards the "opposite" sex.
2. We support the visibility of sexual orientations other than heterosexuality. So we don't say pansexual women who are in a relationship with a man are heterosexual, nor do we say asexual people just haven't experienced true love.
3. When we see an example of heteronormativity somewhere, we point it out.