FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
Climax As Work
Heteronormativity, Gender Labor, and the Gender Gap in Orgasms
Nicole Andrejek, Tina Fetner and Melanie Heath
Research article published in Gender & Society (2022)
Abstract: Gender scholars have addressed a variety of gender gaps between men and women, including a gender gap in orgasms. In this mixed-methods study of heterosexual Canadians, we examine how men and women engage in gender labor that limits women’s orgasms relative to men. With representative survey data, we test existing hypotheses that sexual behaviors and relationship contexts contribute to the gender gap in orgasms. We confirm previous research that sexual practices focusing on clitoral stimulation are associated with women’s orgasms. With in-depth interview data from a subsample of 40 survey participants, we extend this research to show that both men and women engage in gender labor to explain and justify the gender gap in orgasms. Relying on an essentialist view of gender, a narrow understanding of what counts as sex, and moralistic language that recalls the sexual double standard, our participants craft a narrative of women’s orgasms as work and men’s orgasms as natural. The work to produce this gendered narrative of sexuality mirrors the gender labor that takes place in the bedroom, where both women and men engage in sexual behaviors that emphasize men’s pleasure to a greater extent than women’s.
Keywords: orgasm; gender gap; gender labor; sexual behavior; heteronormativity
Do Same-sex and Straight Weddings Aspire to the Fairytale?
Women’s Conformity and Resistance to Traditional Weddings
Melanie Health & Tina Fetner
Research article published in Sociological Perspectives (2015)
Abstract: Critical heterosexuality studies demonstrate the role of the traditional, white wedding in the reproduction of heteronormativity and gender and contribute to a social order that privileges white, middle-class, heterosexual married couples over other relationships. However, social science research points to the ways that same-sex weddings offer a site of resistance to heteronormativity and traditional gender roles. We analyze in-depth interviews with women in straight and same-sex marriages. We find that women in straight marriages are more likely to embrace the traditional, white wedding than those in same-sex marriages. Women planning same- sex weddings think deeply about their wedding ceremonies as they relate to heteronormativity. Some participants reject traditional weddings as excessively costly and wasteful. We argue that although weddings are often sites for the celebration of consumerism, traditional gender, and heterosexuality, they can also be sites of resistance that challenge these same social norms.
Keywords: Same-sex marriage, weddings, marriage and family, heteronormativity, gender, consumerism, heterosexual imaginary, homonormativity
The Long Journey to Marriage:
Same-Sex Marriage, Assimilation, and Resistance in the Heartland
Melanie Heath
Book Chapter Contribution The Marrying Kind?: Debating Same-Sex Marriage within the Lesbian and Gay Movement (2013)
(Book Editors: Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor)
Abstract: Heath explores the deeply personal stories of Oklahoma couples who traveled to San Francisco to marry in 2004. She finds that rather than using marriage as a way to assimilate into dominant heterosexual culture, lesbian and gay couples viewed marrying as a political act to resist conservative backlash and discrimination in an environment that is decidedly not post-gay.
Keywords: Same sex marriage, LGBT movement, lesbian and gay couples, queer theory, post-gay identity, anti-same sex marriage initiatives, same sex marriage and the law, same sex marriage protests, San Francisco same sex wedding protest, Proposition 8