Heteronormativity can be understood as the assumed normalcy of heterosexuality where social norms presume that all people fit neatly into two complementary genders. This presumption is such that all other expressions of sexuality and gender are reduced to mere ‘others’ of heterosexuality rather than sexualities and genders in their own right. The power of this othering is made clear in the way we talk about LGBTQ+ people in our everyday language.
In a ‘liberal’ university, the dominant discourse say that we should be “tolerant” of others’ identities – the insinuation being of course that they have deviated from our accepted norm – and the vast majority of us do exactly that. We tolerate others, we would never dislike someone for simply being gay or trans because ‘to each their own.’ But it is this type of thinking that allows us to remain complicit in the oppression of LGBTQ+ people whilst claiming progressivism. We continue to “other” this portion of the LSE community in our everyday discussions about them or without them.
The othering of LGBTQ+ people through heteronormativity is especially clear through the functioning of our various societies at LSE. There of course is no deliberate exclusion of them, however, an assumption of being cisgender and heterosexual is implicit. Take the LSESU Athletics Union, for example, it has a social culture very much focused on sex, sexuality and gender. The Men’s Rugby and Football clubs are well known as sites of cis-heterosexual masculinity expressed through pints, obnoxious boisterousness and ‘getting laid.’
Meanwhile, the Women’s Rugby club can be regularly heard derogatively described in terms of their masculinity as strong women and assumed lesbians, their strangely strong nature meaning they are ruled out as the counterparts to the Men’s Rugby club due to not being suitable sexual partners. The Netball club exists, however, as a highly sexualised site of (largely white) cis-heterosexual femininity as the natural counterpart to Men’s Rugby. In fact, Netball girls were just recently told they’d be rewarded for sleeping with the member of Men’s Rugby whom they’d been paired with at a pre-Zoo event.
Clearly, much of what constitutes the sociality of the “AU for all” is cis-heteronormativity and thus exclusive to LGBTQ+ students at the LSE, particularly those of colour. It becomes an uncomfortable experience in which one must decide between accepting their ostracisation by rejecting participation in this social life or performing heterosexuality for the sake of not being left out. Even I, as a cis-heterosexual Black woman and member of Netball, find myself uncomfortable in such an environment that emphasises white men and women belonging together as the natural order of things. LGBTQ+ students are not taken into consideration by the AU or many other societies – the Afro-Caribbean Society, for example, recently held a ‘Take Me Out’ event mirroring the popular British heterosexual dating. They are an after-thought. They are allowed their own society or own Pride week but cannot be considered part of the mainstream culture of LSE because that would involve us challenging our own assumptions.
In assuming heterosexuality, we reify a hierarchy of sexuality in which all things that aren’t cis-heterosexual are inferior due to not being the norm or natural. At the same time, we reinforce that cis-heterosexuality is natural and normal because we position everything else as a deviation or mimicry of it. The ‘lesbian’ Women’s Rugby, for example are considered lesbians because they perform what we consider a masculine trait under heteronormativity (strength) but are women so must obviously be creating their own version of heterosexuality (lesbianism). Heteronormativity violently pushes out all identities that do not conform to it and we see this in the ostracisation of LGBTQ+ from participation in LSESU societies.
Beyond societies, this implicit bias against LGBTQ+ students persists in our everyday language. The ‘don’t assume my gender’ joke seems to still be favoured by those who’d like to call themselves socially liberal but fiscally conservative. It wasn’t too long ago that the Conservative society ran a stall asking people to debate them, with one of the topics being ‘there are only 2 genders.’ ‘Gay’ as a pejorative to describe quite literally anything is apparently still acceptable terminology as long as nobody gay is there and you went to a boy’s school where it was normal. And you can hate someone gay as long as it’s just because they’re too obnoxious about it.
Overall, being LGBTQ+ is stigmatised as something that both cis-heterosexual and LGBTQ+ people should avoid appearing so as to be accepted into dominant culture at the LSE. We get away with it by clinging to liberal politics of tolerance, but this very term shows us just how LGBTQ+ students are treated. Tolerance implies undesirability of the thing we must learn to accept, LGBTQ+ people are understood as the nagging in our ear that we put up with so as to not upset them or look bad.
One is considered straight until proven guilty, and I use guilty here because of the stigma we attach to a lack of conformity. We let them into our clubs, societies and friendship groups so long as they don’t make us uncomfortable with their non-conformity. As a result, they are othered and excluded even in their inclusion, they are not allowed to be themselves around us.
Cisgender and heterosexual people ought to question our own implicit biases against LGBTQ+ people which do in fact constitute homophobia and transphobia. It is not enough to claim we are progressive if all of our behaviour reflects otherwise through the exclusion of LGBTQ+ students from the LSE community.
Heterosexuality must be decentred from our societal organisations so as to not just tolerate but recognise and validate the existence of LGBTQ+ people. Claiming that most people actually are straight and cisgender at LSE is not good enough because it is, firstly, an assumption made within the confines of heteronormativity and, secondly, it serves to reproduce the exclusion and self-exclusion of LGBTQ+ people who are not afforded the opportunity to belong at LSE due to the assumptions we make. The status of being LGBTQ+ at LSE is one of having to constantly adapt to or avoid environments that are unwelcoming, this can even be the case for LGBTQ+ people of colour within the community itself.
This LSESU Pride Week I implore you all to challenge the homophobia and transphobia we see around us, whether explicit or implicit, and hope that all of our societies can use this critique positively and substantially. This does not necessarily mean we all ought to make sure we have a gay friend or trans member of our societies but rather that we should make our communities more open to these possibilities through the decentring of heterosexuality and, thus, destigmatising of LGBTQ+ students.
