Sex, gender and sexuality

Feminist writers have long employed the term patriarchy to refer to male-dominated societies, but the modern inception of Western heteronormative orders forged a particular unity between norms and practices directed towards sex, gender and sexuality. This chapter analyzes the continued viability of conventional heteronormative conceptions of sex, gender and sexuality. It explores the emergence of the 'two-sex' system in the eighteenth century whereby men and women were first viewed and treated as biological and cultural opposites yet sexual compatibles. The chapter details how the imperial ambitions of modern nation states consolidated this organization of men and women during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century and examines whether scientific advances and the globalization of neo-liberal capitalism have destabilized this systemic arrangement. It argues that heteronormative identities are no longer supported institutionally in the affluent West as they once were: contemporary markets encourage identities to be constructed on the basis of production and consumption rather than through purely ascribed categories.