num_pages: 228
description: Like the typewriter and the light bulb the heterosexual was invented in the 1860s and swiftly transformed Western culture. The idea of the heterosexual was unprecedented. After all men and women had been having sex marrying building families and sometimes even falling in love for millennia without having any special name for their emotions or acts. Yet within half a century heterosexual had become a byword for normal enshrined in law medicine psychiatry and the media as a new gold standard for human experience. With an eclectic scope and fascinating detail Straight tells the eye-opening story of a complex and often contradictory man-made creation that turns out to be anything but straight or narrow.
language: English
title: Straight: The Surprisingly Short History Of Heterosexuality
publisher: Beacon Press