Deconstruction of Heteronormative Matrix (in Russian)

Abstract

The deconstruction of the binary model of heteronormative matrix through problematization of its three components: sex, gender and sexual orientation is performed in the present article. The determination of attitude towards corporeality (sex) and sexuality is shown on the basis of the dominant binary discourse. The author cites the results of the study on sexual orientation in three comparison groups: 94 transgender men, who appealed for permission to change their sex, 41 homosexual and 30 heterosexual men. Sexual orientation as a holistic psychological construct includes several subsystems, which are not always coincide in their orientation. The important result was the discovery of a relative independence of the parameter “falling in love” from the orientation of impulse. Correlational analysis showed that attraction to people of own and opposite sex has independent character, may be described as orthogonal and not alternative model for both sensual attraction, fantasies and falling in love. The fact is confirmed that it is exactly gender matrix as a social order that prevails over sexuality of individual, and self-categorization in each group occurs mostly through evaluation of self ex contrario. The mechanism of self-programming and construction of own identity in line with the already chosen model activates, to which the actual behavior is tuned. The urgency of deconstruction of the heteronormative matrix consists of the necessity to show the possibility and legitimacy of coexistence of the many non-identical, but fairly equal in rights meaning models. Their otherness should be considered as something self-sufficient, additional, and not mutually exclusive to any other model of relationships. The weakening of the hard gender dichotomy and the breakdown of the traditional system of gender polarization gives possibility for a personality to acquire and realize gender identity, which is the result of the individual experience and its creative rethinking, of correlation of one’s individual parameters/ desires with cultural models.