Normative sexualisation in the public sphere

The borderline between public and private has shifted throughout history, following the broader contours of social segmentation. Examples are the crystallisation of the medical 'gender difference' model from the 18th century and the invention of gender binarism (homo/heterosexuality) in the 19th. Such, at least, is the hypothesis made by authors in the wake of gender studies, and especially of 'queer theory'. The aim here is to tease out the threads of these possible problematics by looking into gender binarism in media output, in order to outline how the public sphere is grasped from the 'queer' perspective. Adapted from the source document.