The Invention of Heterosexuality

Though I confess to some sympathy towards the "queer essentialist" side of the ledger, Katz's "Invention of Heterosexuality" is a clever, daring, and wonderfully readable account of the construction of heterosexual identity. This is a fine text for undergraduates new to the study of historical sexuality, perhaps so much so because it is both scholarly and accessible. Katz does a fine job of skewering Foucault for "his highly abstract level of discourse, his elusive prose, and his unwillingness to clarify his meaning with sufficient concrete examples." As a historian of sexuality who is a bit tired of our late French friend, Katz's words elicited a hearty "amen" from me!All things considered, a worthy (and brief) contribution to the field, with a daring new angle.

Jonathan Katz is a scrupulous, witty historian who gets better with every book. In "The Invention of Heterosexuality," Katz takes up one of the most neglected tasks in scholarship on sexuality, which is to look directly at what is considered 'normal', how it got to be considered normal, and how that norm has changed over time. This book is deceptively easy to read, given how challenging it is to dominant assumptions about sexuality. I recommend it highly!

For those who believe that heterosexuality and homosexuality are timeless orientations, this book is a useful eye-opener. Katz traces the development of the idea of a homosexual identity, paying attention to the role played by psychoanalysis and sexology. This is a readable book, not off-puttingly jargon-filled.