What is the Heterosexual Matrix? How can Western Imperialism explain the adoption of the gender binary around the world?
Understand the West’s social construction of sex, gender, and sexuality; how this construction spread the heterosexual matrix across the globe; and how this has had systematic repercussions across multiple cultures’ relationships with each category. Patil serves as the theoretical basis to understand the heterosexual matrix as a form of colonial power, with each section after breaking down how sex, gender, sexuality, and intersexuality—respectively—were turned into false dichotomies to erase the often more diverse experiences of pre-colonial, indigenous communities.
Patil, V. (2018). The heterosexual matrix as imperial effect. Sociological Theory, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275118759382
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