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Key points
- Gender and sexuality exist on a spectrum.
- Heteronormative standards can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression for LGBTQ individuals.
- Heteronormativity perpetuates the closet and feelings of shame.
I sort of joke that I wrote myself into graduate school because halfway through working on my book, Raising LGBTQ Allies, I applied to grad school to become an LGBTQ-affirming therapist.
At graduate school, I often shared about my book’s message in classroom discussions because many of my childhood-development classes were taught through a heteronormative lens.
Heteronormativity—the belief, conscious or unconscious, that being heterosexual is the only natural or “normal” sexual expression—often shows up in the conversations we don’t have about the communities we don’t include.
Heteronormativity is in everything from the songs we hear on the radio to the greeting cards we shop for at our local Target and the images we see in the articles we read on the internet.
For an LGBTQ person, heteronormativity is like humidity: It’s not always something we consciously register, but it’s something we can feel.
Heteronormativity is especially prevalent in the textbooks that young people read in school and in the examples their teachers may unknowingly use in every day classroom conversations.
Heteronormativity Hurts in the Classroom
Once, while at an educational event, I spoke on a panel with an elementary-school teacher who had two decades’ worth of experience.
She shared a personal revelation she had about heteronormativity in the classroom: Even though she was a supportive and affirming mother of an LGBTQ child, it had never occurred to her that the questions she asked her students and the examples she used in the classroom always put forth a heteronormative perspective. It wasn’t until she ran into one of her former students—then in high school and openly gay—that she realized how important it is to not make assumptions when teaching children.
Not everyone is heterosexual or cisgender. Yet, we live in a heteronormative world, and many students spend their days in classrooms that are extensions of that world. Through everything from pop culture to K-12 educational materials, the messages children receive inside and outside the classroom often put forth a heteronormative worldview.
Activist Adrienne Rich writes, “When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.”
If we don’t make space for LGBTQ youth in the classroom or at home and only wear heteronormative glasses, where can LGBTQ youth see themselves? Relying only on pop culture to teach our children about people who are LGBTQ isn’t responsible. That’s like feeding kids fast food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and expecting them to get their daily nutritional requirements.
Heteronormativity Hurts as a Social Norm
Another example of heteronormativity is when we unconsciously make assumptions about identities, like when a waitress recently asked me if I was “in the market for a girlfriend.”
Even though I’ve dedicated nearly half my life to LGBTQ-advocacy and specialize in gay men’s identity, questions like that still sting because, as a gay man, I have to negotiate whether or not I feel like coming out to a stranger. There’s also part of me that wonders whether I’d disappoint someone's heteronormative assumption if I did—a byproduct of heteronormativity’s forceful pervasiveness.
While the majority of the population is heterosexual and cisgender, statistically speaking, there is still much to be said about the spectrum of gender and sexuality.
When we consider the possibility that we could have an LGBTQ child, it helps disrupt heteronormative thinking and prevents the negative effects of sexual and gender minority shame from taking root within a young person’s belief system.
We also help raise LGBTQ allies when we keep inclusivity at the forefront of our consciousness, whether what we teach is in the classroom or in our homes.
Normalize Differences, Not Harmful Norms
A friend of mine contacted me after a conversation we had about heteronormativity. He said our conversation reminded him of when his son was about five years old and asked him, “Daddy, why do some people have darker skin?”
My friend and his son were standing in line at a department store and his son, like kids often do, unexpectedly asked the question based on something he observed. It’s a perfect example of the messages that children internalize as a result of being socialized in a dominant culture. It’s also an example of why it’s important to have proactive conversations with youth about differences, because it’s okay to recognize differences in ourselves and others. Raising children to understand differences rather than to see others as “different” is a more unifying parenting approach.
This isn’t about making youth hypervigilant about differences; it’s about instilling in them a sense of awareness and helping all kids feel affirmed for who they are.
There’s a fine line between awareness and hypervigilance. Helping raise allies and creating affirming classrooms for all children happens when we acknowledge differences without treating each other as different.
With regard to gender, it’s helpful to pay attention to the ways in which we may unknowingly perpetuate gender stereotypes. Just today, I received an email from a mindfulness group that I’m a part of about an upcoming class. The subject heading of their email read, “How to Start Attracting Masculine Men.”
Although unintentionally, the organization sent an email to a gay man that emphasizes society’s appeal for “masculine” men. One of the biggest problems facing the gay community today comes from societal pressures that force us to consciously and unconsciously rank one another according to how masculine we appear—a powerful and toxic force seared into the psyches of many gay men and another byproduct of heteronormativity.
When we make space for gender and sexual differences, we help raise a new generation of allies and help young people challenge heteronormativity. We also instill a sense of autonomy in how a young person wants to express themselves naturally, and not because of how they think they should based on the overwhelmingly heteronormative messages they receive every day.
