Hanne Blank follows up Virgin: The Untouched History with Straight, a compact and engaging look at not just the history, but the construction of heterosexuality. Yes, that's right: the construction: Blank argues that heterosexuality is a concept "coined for a world in which the ideal of economically and socially viable adulthood meant marriage, children, and middle-class domestic responsibility"--in other words, "heterosexuality" is just a stamp invented to legitimize sexual desire and activity between men and women.
That claim may raise even the most progressive eyebrows, but Blank's surprisingly short history is also surprisingly convincing. She traces the development of heterosexuality from the word's first appearance in 19th-century Germany to its current status as "emblematic of an inherent physical and psychological normalcy." While displaying this impressive scholarship, Blank makes Straight personal as well as academic, using her not-quite-hetero relationship with an intersex partner as a powerful frame for her argument. "To lay claim to heterosexuality, it seems to me, after all my explorations into its history and nature," Blank writes, "is to pledge allegiance to a particular configuration of sex and power in a particular historical moment. There isn't much in that configuration, or its heritage of classicism and misogyny, that I find appealing enough to want to claim as my own." However, skeptics (even those quite attached to this "particular configuration") will find plenty to learn from in Straight about sexuality, gender, history and the messy intersection of all three. --Hannah Calkins, Unpunished Vice