‘Unintentionally Heteronormative’!

Posted on | April 1, 2014 | 110 Comments

Readers will please pardon my long silence this evening, but I was doing deep research on (yet another) long post about feminism, the completion of which will have to wait because . . . this:

Emily Nagoski is a Ph.D. “college health educator in Massachusetts.” Both an atheist and a progressive, Nagoski has “worked for well over a decade in the field of sexuality education and has grown into an impassioned advocate for social justice through sexual fulfillment.”

All of which is to say, no one could accuse Professor Nagoski of being a homophobic right-wing Christofascist. (Like us.)

So, in the fall semester of 2010, Professor Nagoski was eight weeks into teaching an entry-level course in Women’s Sexuality when she gave her lecture on the subject of “gender”:

After it, I received an email that, among a great deal else, described my curriculum — the entire curriculum, mark you — as “unintentionally heteronormative.”
Which made me stare, with one eyelid twitching, at my computer, because it means that for the last 8 weeks I have been failing, for two hours each week, over and over again, to make the most fundamental point of the class.
Because my class is neither unintentional nor heteronormative.

What’s the problem? In a word, science:

I’m, like, SO active in not assuming that anyone has any particular sexual orientation or gender identity and in teaching students not to make assumptions, to think critically about the science and the politics that live in the science. And of course I have an entire lecture on gender variation and another entire lecture on sexual orientation and identity (that’s next week).
But I AM teaching that humans are a sexually reproducing species wherein some have sperm (males) and some have eggs (females).

(Oops. Is it still legal to say that in Massachusetts?)

I suppose I’ve been relying on students to find their own way to embracing biology as a valuable way to think about sex. But this point of view is so foreign to many of them, many of them Sociology or Women’s Studies majors who have never thought about sex in terms of biology or reproduction, many politically active around these issues without ever having studied them academically. And I suppose it was too much to ask that they get there on their own.
I wanted them to find their way to the notion that it’s not “heteronormative” to recognize that sex is an evolutionarily adaptive reproduction strategy that, in humans, involves males and females; it’s just our biology, and there’s a complex, mutually interacting relationship between the biological and the social. I’ve been working toward that all semester. But they have not gotten there.

You see where the advocates of Progress and Equality have led us: The basic biology of sex is now politically incorrect, so that even an avowed progressive cannot escape condemnation for the unforgivable Thought Crime of preferring facts to theory.

Professor Nagoski might want to invite me up as a Women’s Sexuality guest lecturer. My daughters have been instructed in the subjects of “Boys Have Cooties” and “Keep Your Britches On,” which I would argue are the most valuable lessons of all.

“Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
— Matthew 19:4-6 (KJV)

Category: Education, Feminism, Gays, Science, Sex

Comments

110 Responses to “‘Unintentionally Heteronormative’!”

Jerry Beckett
April 2nd, 2014 @ 9:48 am

We’re so lucky to have you here to constantly correct us.
Dana
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:00 am

What makes you think that she’s crazy? She is expressing an opinion which is, at least in a larger sense, still part of the debate: is homosexuality something that is part of a person’s genetic makeup, something natural which cannot be changed, or does it have a child-rearing component, and is something which can be caused by environmental factors . . . and therefore is something which could possibly be cured?

The left want us to believe that it is something innate, something which cannot be changed, and therefore must be accepted, the way any birth defect — phraseology intentionally chosen — should be accepted, and have even gotten a couple of states to outlaw therapies which some hope will cure homosexuality.

But that’s driven by politics, not by science: we do not know what causes homosexuality, or even if it is just one thing or a combination of circumstances.
Randy_Rager
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:06 am

That you are a crashing bore is well established, you’ve been banned for it before as we all know, but must you project your failings on the rest of us?

Have you no decency?
Rob Crawford
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:07 am

“Social” is a prefix that means “contains none of”. Thus, “social science” contains no science, and “social justice” contains no justice.
Anamika
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:10 am

The above comment just goes to reflect how ignorance and crazy ideas about homosexuality have become so normal in the mainstream right.

[ ‘inaccurate portions of Laurel’s presentation, including “the suggestion that homosexuality occurs mainly as a result of a parent’s shortcomings, masturbation or pornography.” ]
Rob Crawford
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:11 am

“Bend over and act like you enjoy it.”

Same thing “Obamacare is here to stay” means.
Rob Crawford
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:12 am

“My goodness, Ms. Yakamoto, youre beautiful!”

Who knew the old guy was oppressing her?
Rob Crawford
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:14 am

Given the focus on applying condoms to bananas, the how-tos on oral and anal, and the absolute imperative of accepting all the kinks as just part of the great tapestry of man existence, there wasn’t time to cover that.
Rob Crawford
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:17 am

The left wants it to be BOTH, at the same time, for the same person. That way they can have their butch camps to “teach lesbianism” and then screech they were “born that way”.
Rob Crawford
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:18 am

How do you know she’s wrong?
Daniel O'Brien
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:22 am

Testing 1.2.3.
Jerry Beckett
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:25 am

The nun in the HuffPost piece is part of the “mainstream right”?

News to me.
Anamika
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:26 am

I was talking about commenter Dana.
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:28 am

I was in San Dog in July 2011 for a conference and stayed at the Holiday Inn a bit north of the old NTC. What we called the “USS Neversail” at Orlando was still there and the Boot Camp barracks were still standing, but with a lot of the windows broken out. I haven’t been able to get back since Lex was killed.
Jerry Beckett
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:29 am

Please point out the “ignorance and crazy ideas” put forth in Dana’s post.
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:34 am

I’m having trouble with Disqus not working with Chrome. Started Monday. Not having any trouble with Firefox, though.

When using Chrome, the comments are showing at all at NRO or American Thinker. I see some of them here, but not all, and I can’t post anything, including replies. NO problem with Firefox.

Things were working OK with Chrome yesterday after I reinstalled Chrome, but not today.
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:39 am

She can’t. Anamika is nuts.
JeffWeimer
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:40 am

I miss Lex, even 2 years on. Good people, taken too soon.
Dana
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:41 am

Sorry, but my comment was dead on target. We do not know what causes some people to become homosexual, regardless of what political correctness — a disease from which I do not suffer — says, and it is quite possible that environmental and child-rearing factors are at play.
Anamika
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:44 am

He says the nun is not crazy, her ideas are not crazy, IOW he is trying to rationalize her crazy ideas as mainstream. This isn’t uncommon in the right wing afaict.
Dana
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:47 am

Anamika wrote:

Those whose gender identity matches the way the body is perceived are more comfortable in some ways

This statement shows the silliness of the left. It isn’t “the way the body is perceived,” but the way the body is. With a very few birth defects, all humans are born either male or female, and are male or female, regardless of what the individual might wish was the case or says is the case. If you have XY chromosomes, a penis and testicles, you are a male, period; if you have XX chromosomes, a uterus and vagina, you are female, period.
Dana
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:48 am

Yes, that is exactly what he says. The sister could possibly be wrong, but neither she nor her ideas are crazy.

It wasn’t all that long ago, before political correctness infected so much, that the American Psychiatric Association was saying the same things.
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 10:49 am

We’ve known for a long time what can cause a person to become a homosexual. During my lifetime the Kweer movement has tried to tell us it’s a matter of birth, but they can’t point to anything. Kweers thought they had found the “Gay Gene” back in the 90s, then it all quietly went away when they could not produce anything. We’ve now mapped the human genome, and guess what? They found nothing either.

There is now a theory that something happens in the womb that damages the fetus causing the person to be kweer. If that’s true, and I’ve seen no evidence produced for that, then kweerness becomes a birth defect and if it can be tested for, guess what happens? Abortions of kweer babies happens. Kweers aren’t able to win either way.

Everyone living has a tendency towards sin because Adam’s original sin. Normal guys have temptations to stray from their wives and commit adultery. Teens with hormones raging have the same problem before they get married. All temptations to sin have to be resisted if you are a Christian. Homosexuals may have such predilections as well, but they are faced with the same sort of proscriptions as heteros. God says that He would rather you turn and live, but most will not and will go to the lake of fire. Kweers and heteros are in the same boat as God did not make any difference between heteros doing their thing outside of the covenental relationship of marriage betwee one man and one woman, or Kweers doing outside of that same relationship between one man and one woman. God said both would die.

Anamika and her ilk are simply nuts. Liberalism/progressivism is a mental illness and is nothing more than another form of man’s rebellion against God.
Anamika
April 2nd, 2014 @ 11:16 am

The eastern religions have it too but the most efficient instigators and propagators of our current patriarchal mess have been the so-called great monotheistic religions based on the scurrilous Holy Bible. When that Unworthy Scripture is quoted again and again to demean women and gays, it is simply a method, usually unconsciously adopted, of reinforcing hate.

And when you get down to it, the language of those like Rush Limbaugh and other gay-and-fem-bashers is a true abomination unto the lord.
RKae
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

“…the scurrilous Holy Bible.”

That’s it.

I’m done with you.
RKae
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:10 pm

Better check up on Irving Bieber. He’ll tell you everything that went on to get homosexuality removed from the diagnostic manual.

In the end, he says that nothing has changed: everything that they discovered is still true – absent, distant or abusive father; overwhelming mother. The only reason it was removed from the manual was because it “didn’t cause distress,” so they decided not to call it a mental illness. And, of course, because they were being browbeaten by gay activists.

Again: all their data about the origins of homosexuality still stand.

No need for links. Just look up Irving Bieber and homosexuality. (Don’t jus type in “Bieber” and “homosexuality,” or you’ll be busy all day long.)
AnamikaHasNoSpine
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:10 pm

Ad hominems and blowing off steam definitely have their place but there should be more than that. Randy, you’ve shown yourself capable of some good self-appraisal. It’s not a requirement here, but certainly a redeeming value. Other possibilities might include some substance, ie meaning, not just name-calling and bluster.

Compared with Anamika, you are way more mature and self-aware, but the devices you think are so valuable should be used sparingly. When they are not, the group quickly becomes a function of who is the loudest, and soon thereafter a crashing bore, since other values leave without contesting the coarse brutishness. I want more than that.
DummyCon
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:18 pm

Deplorable. Amazing that a grown adult needs an invisible parent figure in the sky to tell him how to behave, and lives in fear that if he doesn’t obey he’ll be sent to his room. Religion is truly mental illness. And, before you start frothing at the mouth, I don’t live by the dictates of a liberal movement, or government.

God is nothing more than a superstition left over from more primitive times.
Brother Cavil
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:26 pm

Go home, academia, you’re drunk…
Julie Pascal
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:37 pm

Exactly… the sister could be *wrong* but she’s not crazy. We’ve gone from the love that can not be named, to the questions that must not be asked… ever… or else.

(I maintain that humans are, by nature, non-discriminating opportunists.)
Jerry Beckett
April 2nd, 2014 @ 12:49 pm

To quote a great theologian, “Hey, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
Anamika
April 2nd, 2014 @ 2:05 pm

“He’ll tell you everything that went on to get homosexuality removed from the diagnostic manual.”

“In the end, he says that nothing has changed: everything that they discovered is still true -“

The dude is dead for more than two decades. He published his work more than 50 years ago. You need to update your science. You can’t just cherry pick, just because he is the only one who supported your view. Science doesn’t work that way.

None of the other studies before or after Bieber’s book support it, rather a lot many repudiate it:

“Several of the central claims made by Homosexuality (Irving Bieber) were
repudiated ten years after its publication by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, and in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders.”
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 2:21 pm

I don’t have the faith to accept your superstition. But, you go right ahead and hold onto your security blanket. God is waiting for you to step in front of him for your final judgment, and then he’ll ask what you think then. The outcome will not be pretty.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Romans 1:20-25

So, yeah, go ahead and be a fool. God will let you. He doesn’t like it because he knows what will come of it. You will know to, and regret it for your entire eternal existence.
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 2:26 pm

Girl, when you blaspheme the Bible you’ve gone over the edge.

Rush doesn’t “bash” kweers or Fembots, he ridicules them. There is a big difference. I guess it’s really painful when he uses your own idiocy to ridicule you, but you bring it on yourself.

To bad about the Bible. For you, that is. You’ve marked yourself as an abomination. The type that will be sent to perdition where you will be alone for eternity.
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 2:29 pm

Yeah. I met Lex that summer. Lex’s post was teasing about me since I was a bit early. I chuckled over it and enjoyed meeting him.

I found out the night Lex was killed. Bill Tuttle, who was over in Afghanistan, found out before I did and emailed me. I had been out late and when I went to Lex’s sight and saw the missing man formation, it hit me like a punch in the guts.
Dana
April 2nd, 2014 @ 2:42 pm

Anamika wrote:

The eastern religions have it too but the most efficient instigators and
propagators of our current patriarchal mess have been the so-called great monotheistic religions based on the scurrilous Holy Bible.

[Guffaws!] Oh, if only we actually still had our patriarchal society, because things sure worked a whole lot better then! Children were born to two-parent families, the crime rate was far lower, and almost everyone who was on some form of welfare actually could not, rather than would not, work.
Dana
April 2nd, 2014 @ 2:45 pm

Anamika wrote:

When that Unworthy Scripture is quoted again and again to demean women and gays, it is simply a method, usually unconsciously adopted, of reinforcing hate.

If someone had done something really radical like actually read the Bible, he’d know that the instructions in the very Holy Scriptures are meant for both men and women.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:00 pm

Once again, you support the watching of porn, Anamika. That causes me to wonder (yet again) just how close you are to that particular “industry”.

IYKWIMAITTYD.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:03 pm

Ah, once again, you shift from concern trolling to ad hominems!

Primarily because you have nothing else to argue with. Such a surprise there.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:07 pm

Randy could have phrased it better, but he simply offers an opinion that is not positive, and may be accurate. This does not mean it’s an ad hominem.
JeffS
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:09 pm

Robert Heinlein once noted that one man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.

Thanks for the yuks, DummyCon!
JeffWeimer
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:12 pm

And it came only a few days after Breitbart passed. March was a bad month.

I wonder how Kat is doing, we were all concerned for her.
ZZZZZZZZ
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:13 pm

Karl Marx has been dead for 13 decades, his ideology has killed hundreds of millions of people, yet you and your ilk still act like he’s the greatest thing since instant mashed potatoes.

Project much?
Quartermaster
April 2nd, 2014 @ 3:45 pm

I haven’t heard anything bad. The posts she made the fall after Lex’s death seemed positive and upbeat. Lex said that she had acquired a decent guy for a boyfriend, so I’m hoping things have worked out for her.

I’d like to see the family get out of SoCal. There are bad things in store for Kali in general, and living where they do will be no insulation from it.
Bozikek
April 2nd, 2014 @ 5:24 pm

http://youtu.be/LhrYWNAKFSY?t=2m33s

HATE CRIME!!!
Nan
April 2nd, 2014 @ 6:01 pm

The problem is, they’re trying to redefine “normal” and vilify those who identify with their biological sex and follow through with their god-given biological function.
Nan
April 2nd, 2014 @ 6:03 pm

With whoever is interested in experimenting with you.
Nan
April 2nd, 2014 @ 6:03 pm

Shhhh! That’s a secret!
The Daley Gator | What is it with Feminuts and labels?
April 2nd, 2014 @ 6:05 pm

[…] The Left loves labels, in fact, I think it is safe to say they obsess over labeling everyone. African-American, Asian-American, this community, that community, and of course, Feminists are big on their labels too, take this gem of a label that the Other McCain writes about […]
Nan
April 2nd, 2014 @ 6:06 pm

And the love that most of us wish would shut up.