![]() The first three are dedicated to sexual terminology, psychology, and science. Straight is interdisciplinary: its six main chapters explore the institutions and intellectual buttresses of heterosexuality in the Western world. Straight surveys heterosexual self-knowledge rather than heterosexual activity. ![]() This book is short because, as Blank puts it, to have a sense of being straight is “to understand one’s self to be part of a specific, distinctive sexual culture.” Until 1868, when the word “homosexuality” was coined, there was no need for its hetero partner. ![]() ![]() “Marriage, parenthood, even romantic love, have changed enormously, thanks to the movements for women’s rights, civil rights, and gay and lesbian rights!” That’s Hanne Blank’s point exactly. This may seem a bit mysterious: sexual activity between our male and female ancestors long predates men and women heterosexual romance is celebrated in some of our oldest texts - see the Song of Songs and the institutions of heterosexuality, chief among them marriage and parenthood, are still among the pillars of our culture. Straight: the Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon, $27.95) by Hanne Blank is breezy, passionate, informative and, yes, quite short. ![]()
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