User:Austingreitz/sandbox

The following is a proposed edit for the heteronormativity page's section on homonormativity: The reassertion of homonormativity can be seen in the structure of the family across societies. Families of origin play a large role in this socialization because they are the first force to condition an individual to the society in which they live. LGBTQ individuals raised in families that are accepting of their non-normative sexual or gender identity are conditioned into forming their own families in manners similar to the family which they were raised in, reasserting the normativity of heterosexual family units and thus enacting a certain form of homonormativity. When families of origin are not accepting of non-normative sexual orientation and gender identities, members often search for acceptance within LGBTQ communities on the basis of a homogenously shared experience of rejection. This recreates the homonormative expectation that the LGBTQ experience must include some sort of familial rejection and that identification with a larger community is imperative to self-identification. However, many researchers claim that families of origin can subvert the homonormative expectation of monogamy, marriage, and children on the basis of the growing non-normativity of family units. Homonormative standards can be found in the concept of marriage in the United States and can be inferred from the formation of an individual’s family. Marriage itself is a function of homonormativity, as marriage in the United States is the same for both different-sex and same-sex couples and always excludes polyamorous relationships. Queerness is then legally and socially recognized in a limited scope and in the same manner as monogamous heterosexuality. Critics have also pointed to the contrary, however, stating that the legalization of same-sex marriage radicalized American concepts of marriage and thus broke away from both heteronormative and homonormative molds. Marriage has also enforced homonormativity in its exclusion of bisexual identities. As marriage is expected to be long-term and is only legally recognized between two partners, critics such as Alison Moss claim that “marrying, for bisexuals, necessarily means letting go of half of their sexual identity.” Adoption is another site within the family structure in which homonormativity is reasserted. Some theorists claim that LGBT adoption is a radical reimagining of what it means to be a family because it redefines who can be considered a parent. Popular biographies like Dan Savage’s The Kid: What Happened after My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant demonstrate this point of view with a personal approach. Others claim that adoption by LGBTQ parents acts to reinstate LGBTQ individuals as sites of capitalist production, inviting them into a for-profit industry and a capitalist notion of parenthood. Media portrayals of LGBTQ families have contributed to homonormativity at the same time that the law has. Mainstream depictions of queer families are often homonormative in their portrayal of such families as white, cisgender, two-partnered, and middle class. LGBTQ media also plays into these tropes, as evidenced by the rapid normalizing and mainstreaming of the gay television channel Logo TV. 1950s-era lesbian pulp fiction has also been critiqued for reasserting homonormativity, using characters who embody that era’s cultural expectations for white women and the concept of gay marriage to normalize lesbian characters. Julian Carter claims that within lesbian pulp fiction, “whiteness, conventional gender presentation, and bourgeois status effectively protect people from…the difficult and painful aspects of queer existence.”