Heteronormativity is a social and cultural framework that prescribes specific gender roles and expectations. In a heteronormative context, gender identities are often expected to align with traditional gender roles and be by one's sex means that if one is assigned male at birth, then they are expected to identify as a man and conform to stereotypical male behaviours and likewise for those assigned female at birth. Heteronormativity tends to simplify these complexities by adhering to traditional and normative expectations, regardless of biological differences. Heteronormativity enforces specific gender roles and expectations on individuals beyond mere biological differences. Such as it dictates that men should exhibit certain behaviours and traits traditionally associated with masculinity while women should conform to those associated with femininity. These roles are often socially constructed and not solely tied to biology.
Sherry B. Ortner’s writing shows that the secondary status of women in society is one of the true universals, a pan-cultural fact that specific cultural conceptions and symbolisation of women are extraordinarily diverse and even mutually contradictory. Women's treatment, relative power, and contribution vary enormously from culture to culture and over different periods in the history of particular cultural traditions.
The universality of female subordination, the fact that it exists within every social and economic arrangement and in societies of every degree of complexity, indicates that we are up against something very profound, very stubborn, something we cannot rout out simply by rearranging a few tasks and roles in the social system, or even by reordering the whole economic structure. In any particular system, though, they need not necessarily be. Further, any of them is usually sufficient to indicate female inferiority in a given culture. Female exclusion from the most sacred rite or the highest political council is sufficient evidence, and explicit cultural ideology devaluing women is sufficient evidence (Ortner 1974).
There is something genetically inherent in the male of the species, so the biological determinists would argue, that makes them the naturally dominant sex; that "something" is lacking in females, and as a result, women are not only naturally subordinate but in general, quite satisfied with their position since it affords them protection and the opportunity to maximise maternal pleasures, which to them are the most satisfying experiences of life.
Without going into a detailed refutation of this position, it has failed to establish to the satisfaction of almost anyone in academic anthropology. This is to say, not that biological facts are irrelevant or that men and women are not different, but that these facts and differences only take on the significance of superior/inferior within the framework of culturally defined value systems.
The only way to proceed is if we are unwilling to rest the case on genetic determinism. We must attempt to interpret female subordination in light of other universals, factors built into the structure of the most generalised situation in which all human beings, in whatever culture, find themselves (Ortner 1974).
Every human has a physical body and a sense of nonphysical mind, is part of a society of other individuals and an inheritor of a cultural tradition, and must engage in some relationship, however mediated, with "nature" or the nonhuman realm to survive.
Every human being is born. It ultimately dies; all are assumed to be interested in personal survival, and society/culture is interested in continuity and survival, transcending particular individuals' lives and deaths. In the realm of such universals of the human condition, we must seek an explanation for the universal fact of female devaluation (Ortner 1974).
A woman's consciousness, her membership, as it were, in culture is evident by the fact that she accepts her devaluation and takes culture's point of view; the issue of women their pan-cultural second-class status could be accounted for, quite simply, by postulating that women are being identified or symbolically associated with nature, as opposed to men, who are identified with culture's project to subsume and transcend nature, if women were considered part of nature, then culture would find it "natural" to subordinate, not to say oppress, them. Culture recognises that women are active participants in its unique processes but also sees them as being more rooted in or having a more direct affinity with nature. The revised argument would still account for the pan-cultural devaluation of women, for even if women are not equated with nature, they are nonetheless seen as representing a lower order of being, as being less transcendental of nature than men (Ortner 1974).
The body and its natural procreative functions, particularly for women, place them closer to nature than men. This physiological fact allows women to engage more with species life, allowing them to take on cultural projects more freely. Women's bodies and functions also place them in social roles, which are considered lower order of the cultural process than men's. These traditional social roles, imposed due to their body and functions, give women a different psychic structure, which, like their physiological nature and social roles, is seen as closer to nature (Ortner 1974).
A woman's body seems to doom her to mere reproduction of life; the male, lacking natural creative functions, must assert his creativity externally, "artificially," through technology and symbols and create relatively lasting, eternal, transcendent objects. In contrast, the woman creates only perishables – human beings. This formulation opens up several important insights. It speaks, for example, to the great puzzle of why male activities involving the destruction of life are often given more prestige than the female's ability to give birth to create life. We realise it is not the killing that is the relevant and valued aspect of hunting and warfare; instead, it is the transcendental nature of these activities, as opposed to the naturalness of the process of birth: For it is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. (Ortner 1974).
Thus, if a male is, as suggested, everywhere associated with culture and a female seems closer to nature, the rationale for these associations is relatively easy to grasp, merely from considering the implications of the physiological contrast between males and females. At the same time, however, a woman cannot be consigned entirely to the nature category, for it is self-evident that she is full-fledged (Ortner 1974).
The logic of cultural reasoning aligning women with a lower order of culture than men is straightforward and, on the surface, quite compelling. At the same time, a woman cannot be entirely consigned to nature, for some aspects of her situation, even within the domestic context, undeniably demonstrate her participation in the cultural process. Except for nursing newborn infants, there is no reason it has to be the mother – as opposed to the father or anyone else – who remains identified with child care. However, even assuming that other practical and emotional reasons conspire to keep women in this sphere, it is possible to show that her activities in the domestic context could as logically put her squarely in the category of culture (Ortner 1974).
“First, one must point out that a woman not only feeds and cleans up after children in a simple caretaker operation; she is the primary agent of their early socialisation. She transforms newborn infants from mere organisms into cultured humans, teaching them manners and the proper ways to behave to become full-fledged members of the culture. Based on her socialising functions alone, she could not be more of a representative of culture. Nevertheless, in virtually every society, there is a point at which the socialisation of boys is transferred to the hands of men. In one set of terms or another, the boys are considered not yet "really" socialised; their entree into fully human (social, cultural) status can be accomplished only by men. We still see this in our schools, where there is a gradual inversion in the proportion of female to male teachers up through the grades: most kindergarten teachers are female; most university professors are male” (Ortner 1974, 79 – 80).
Of course, it answers the primary question of why a woman is seen as lower than a man, for even if she is not seen as pure and simple, she is still seen as achieving less transcendence of nature than man (Ortner 1974).
“Harmony within the system is ensured by interacting with what is already known, what has to be learned, and those who must grasp it. However, they also maintain the harmony of illusions, which is safe within a specific way of thinking. In the end, facts of biology are quintessential terms shown with no logic and engraved with stereotypes. Ultimately, it must be stressed again that the whole scheme is a construct of culture rather than a fact of nature. Woman is not "in reality" any closer to (or further from) nature than man – both have consciousness, both are mortal” (Ortner 1974, 87).
Even with discoveries, the general idea of heteronormative gender identities is biological and not a social construct. Therefore, in the end, the schema of women being secondary to men is all social, and there is nothing social to it; hence heteronormative gender understandings are not purely based on biological differences.
Reference:
Ortner, Sherry B. 1974. “Is female to male as nature is to culture?” In M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds), Woman, culture, and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 68–87.
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