heterosexualism

Noun

heterosexualism (uncountable)

1. Discrimination against non-heterosexual people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
   • What I fear is the normalization of homosexual behavior, which otherwise stands as a challenge to heterosexualism—the belief that all sexual behavior should be procreative or at least not preclude the possibility of babymaking.1990, Lawrence Mass, Dialogues of the Sexual Revolution
   • The organization is no longer a coalition against racism. It's now a coalition against racism, sexism, classism, militarism and heterosexualism.1993, Roderick Keith Linzie, Analysis of the anti-racist student movement at the University of Michigan -- Ann Arbor

   Synonyms:

   heterosexism

2. The state or existence of heterosexuality, including the traditional gender roles that accompany it.
   • The moral fabric of American family life centered on the suburban "split level family" of the suburbs, upholding the values and beliefs of heterosexualism, as pictured in the novels of Edmund White and other recent gay writers.1993, Gilbert H. Herdt, Andrew Boxer, Children of Horizons: how gay and lesbian teens are leading a new way out of the closet
   • From the position of possibility created by separating from heterosexualism, Hoagland incites a "moral revolution" that can enable lesbian agency and might also lead to the end of heterosexualism, gender domination, and the (moral) existence of women and men.1998, Janet R. Jakobsen, Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference
3. Synonym of heterosexuality.
   • I have talked this observation over with Rank, Freud, Ferenczi and other psychoanalysts, and it seems to be generally agreed that secret, isolated autoerotism does not convert easily to heterosexualism and is far more difficult to cure by psychoanalysis than homosexual masturbation that has not...1946, Journal of Clinical Psychopathology: 1945/1946 - Volume 7, page 483
   • My viewpoint is one that bears directly against the view of gays and bisexual people that homosexuality is entirely normal, an equivalent substitute for heterosexualism and - as some argue - the real McCoy.1979, Brian J. Ford, Patterns of sex: the mating urge and our sexual future, page 155

   Synonyms:

   heterosexuality