Heterosexism

Heterosexism is a complex, binary network of assumptions that permeate administrative, institutional (e.g., law, familial, economic, educational), and cultural systems and that shape behaviors, practices, beliefs, and identities. The binary biological determinism that underlies heterosexism dictates that a person with a penis must be a man, a person with a vagina must be a woman, and a person with ambiguous genitalia must be assigned one or the other. Forced sex assignment limits who people are allowed to be and also erases the experiences and identities of people with physical characteristics that fall outside of their identity (e.g., nonbinary people, intersex people, women who have had mastectomies). The broad range of gender identities complicates heterosexist norms because heterosexism is reliant on static, assigned, binary sex categories ...