The intention of this article is to challenge orthodoxies regarding heterosexuality, which have tended to constitute it as a static monolith and queer as the only potential site for a less oppressive sexuality. By contrast, we consider heterodox possibilities for pleasure and change within the realm of the dominant. We examine three examples -divergence, transgression and subversion -and then consider some terminologies that might flesh out experiential aspects of these examples of social change in heterosexuality. This conjunction offers a means to acknowledge heterosexuality's coercive aspects while attending to its more egalitarian, less orthodox forms.The intention of this article is to challenge certain orthodoxies regarding heterosexuality -orthodoxies that have tended, in critical literatures, to constitute heterosexuality as a static monolith, an unvarying, commanding mass, and queer theories, identities and practices as the only potential source for a less oppressive sexuality. By contrast, we wish to consider heterodoxy within heterosexuality by exploring possibilities for non-normative pleasure and change within the realm of the dominant.
This article argues that although marriage has been a historically productive and important site of feminist inquiry, feminist theorizations of the institution of marriage have reached something of a stalemate. Moreover, contemporary debates on the merits of same-sex marriage risk disarming feminist marriage critiques while simultaneously replicating their limitations. This does not mean, however, that marriage should be evacuated as an arena of feminist concern; rather, new ways of thinking about politics, subjectivities, sexualities and gender should be brought to bear against our understandings of what contemporary marriage is and does.
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