What do Queer Theorists argue about “sex as norm”? How do they relate this normative behavior and social construction of social roles? Use examples that help explain sex and sexual identities, from a sociological perspective.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

However, queer theorists, including Butler, appropriated this term, insisting that all sexual behaviors, all concepts linking sexual behaviors to sexual identities, and all categories of normative and deviant sexualities are social constructs, which create certain types of social meaning. In short, “sex is a norm” (Osborne and Segal 1993, interview with Judith Butler).
The undergirding emphasis in all these projects (gay/lesbian, queer, feminist) is that the categories of normative and deviant sexual behavior are not biologically but rather socially constructed. To be sure, Butler does not deny certain kinds of biological differences, but she seeks to explain the discursive and institutional conditions under which certain arbitrary biological differences become salient characteristics of sex (ibid.). She emphasizes that sexuality is a complex array of individual activity and institutional power, of social codes and forces, which interact to shape the ideas of what is normative and what is deviant at any particular
moment, and which then result in categories as to “natural,” “essential,” “biological,” or “god-given.” She seeks to show how a norm can actually materialize a body—that is, how the body is not only invested with a norm, but also in some sense animated by a norm or contoured by a norm (ibid.).