[As usual, this essay grew out of a letter. Both are provided.]

Dear Sarah and Greg,

It feels a little strange to send this to an expectant couple, but I thought you'd find it interesting. One of the things I haven't worked into it yet is the paradox that it seems like breeding has a great deal of cultural prestige ("bring on those grandchildren") within narrowly defined limits (bring them on this time around), but in most structural, economic ways our system disdains children (only Hillary, it seems, realizes that it takes a village).

Anyway, these are my first musings on how the popular notion of heterosexuality, like notions of masculinity, whiteness, and other long-standing monoliths, disguises internal differences. It seems to me that the first step toward making some of those differences visible is to consider heterosexuality apart from its putative ties to biological reproduction. Being back in Springfield, the land of frat boys and platinum blondes will surely be instructive in that regard. I find myself surrounded by a bodily aesthetic that is very alienating to me, and profoundly anti-intellectual. (I'm not yet quite sure how a bodily aesthetic can be anti-intellectual, but feel that I'm on the right track).

The thing that occasioned these thoughts, however, was experiencing a brief flash of happiness and relief when I saw a black man at a grocery store. For just a second, I felt like I was back in Durham. From there I started thinking about how in some ways I'm was more comfortable around black folks in Durham than some of the white ones in Springfield.

Why would I feel more comfortable around a Nation of Islam man in a bow tie at the Durham Piggly Wiggly than around a white guy and a ball cap at Smitty's in Springfield? The one thing I `m sure of is that in Durham, most people assumed that I was not like them. In Durham, I felt my difference was apparent and my identity under scrutiny and negotiation, whereas in Springfield I'm misrecognized as something alienating that I'm anxious to distinguish myself from. But I still have a lot to think about: did my comfort in Durham have to do with my racial privileges? did it represent a genuine point of connection because of a shared marginalization? Is my discomfort in Springfield linked to the fact that white working class men were the most likely to queer-bait me in high school? memories of bigots with baseball bats as I walked home near Phelps Grove park? class guilt? all of the above?

Anyway, thinking about race got me thinking about white bodies, and then about gender roles, and then about heterosexuality, which led me to fiddle briefly with this document.

Heterosexuality as Culture

What if, instead of asking of a particular person, "is he gay or she a lesbian?" we ask "are they heterosexual?"--keeping in mind that the answer to both questions may be "no." For heterosexuality is a culture that some people may find profoundly alienating regardless of the gender of who they sleep with. What possibilities open up when we begin to consider heterosexuality not as orientation, but as culture? Not as sexuality, but as institution?

Heterosexuality is a culture naturalized by an "orientation," and especially the capacity to breed. But although it is a culture naturalized by these things, it has little necessary relationship to them. The notions of male and female it codifies, the connections it forms between advertising, gender, and self-presentation, the male homophobia that so often accompanies it, what has this to do with breeding per se? In a post-contraceptive age, certainly very little to do with reproduction. Or, the truth be told, with an historically accurate notion of "traditional" mores or kinship structures. To the contrary, heterosexual institutions seem to rely on the cultural prestige accorded to reproduction only at key instances to rationalize an array of activities and identities that have little to do with it. It presents itself as a package erected on a foundation (reproduction) that may or may not be present.

Additionally, reproduction itself, the linchpin of the definition, is a tiny component of the lives of most people identified as "heterosexual" who also reproduce, especially when we acknowledge the variety of family arrangements involved with childrearing: divorced and single parents; extended families; adoptions, including ones by gay people; artificial insemination, etc. All the more powerfully, as many second wave feminists pointed out, what necessary relationship is there between child birth and child rearing? This is not to dismiss the profound connections many biological parents feel with their children, but to question the culture's tendency to venerate these links at the expense of all others--to venerate biological parentage by casting all other child rearing (and sexual) arrangements as "attacks" upon "the" family.

These narrow public definitions of heterosexual and family leave several people at something of a loss to define themselves and their practices. Heterosexual privilege can maintain itself only by assuming an equivalency between people attracted to the opposite gender. To some extent it is an equivalency enforced by homophobia. In fact, the very notion that the only alternative to the official rites of heterosexuality is homosexuality serves to narrow the range of acceptable straight behavior. (It also treats homosexuality as a monolithic entity, and closing off other alternatives such as the productive ambiguity of a label like "bisexual," and the non-essentializing rubric of queerness).

This is not to say that people married to, living with, or out about their attractions to the opposite gender do not benefit from heterosexual privileges and institutions. Being with a woman benefits me in ways similar to structural privileges I receive (and can not avoid receiving) from speaking English and having a white penis. But these structural privileges may come at the cost of a bad fit between how I am perceived and my identity and desires. It seems to me that the best thing I can do is combat the exclusive natures of the privileges, historicize (i.e. denaturalize) the privileges, and deconstruct the identities they reify, exploiting internal differences to the point that the identities fall apart.