Before that point, Western culture did not include the concept we now call “sexual orientation” or “sexual identity.” Sexual desires were things anyone could experience, whether they were appropriate or inappropriate, sinful or virtuous. Prior to the invention of the term “heterosexual” in the late 1860s, she wouldn’t have had to worry about it. This difficulty set Blank on the path of uncovering the history of “heterosexual,” hoping to find evidence along the way that would make it clearer how a relationship between a cisgendered woman and a person who is genetically neither male nor female might be defined. Straight opens by revealing how the female author’s long-term relationship with a genetically intersex partner made it hard for her to accurately indicate her sexual orientation to others, for instance on the forms used by her doctor’s office. Who, and what, is “heterosexual”? How did we come to think about ourselves, and our sexualities, in terms of something called “heterosexuality” and what does it mean that we do? These questions are at the core of Hanne Blank’s Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, a look at how Western culture came to devise and adopt the idea of “heterosexuality” as well as how the idea has changed over time. Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality.
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