Gendered heteronormativity: Empirical illustrations in everyday life

We present a qualitative analysis of students' written narratives of gender norm violation projects-for example, women smoking cigars, repairing cars, wearing moustaches; men doing housework, carrying purses, wearing nail pol ish, crying in public - in terms relevant to theoretical literature that pr oblematizes heterosexuality. We show that routinely unquestioned heteronorm ative expectations and proscriptions that exist as background context in co ntemporary culture come to the fore when traditional gender boundaries are crossed. Further, we show that heteronormativity itself is gendered via the homosexualization of disruptive men and heterosexualization of disruptive women. This article discusses and compares how compulsory heterosexuality o perates differently for women and men. We describe and give examples of dif ferent ways in which students and others sexualize even unexplicitly sexual actions and appearances. These tactics of sexualization include homophobic disclaimers, homophobic labeling, and heterosexualization. The concept "he terogender" best captures these common ways of interpreting gender norm vio lations. We discuss findings in terms of the importance of empirical inquir y to a primarily theoretical literature, the fact that gender differences a re actively maintained, and the distinction between institutionalized and e xperienced heterosexuality. Our findings generally support radical feminist , cultural feminist, and queer theories of gender inequality, all of which focus on enforced heterosexuality.