ABSTRACT

This chapter examines status inequality that is associated with sexual orientation. It presents a brief overview of the inequities involved in being gay, lesbian, and bisexual. The chapter illustrates that growing up gay, lesbian, or bisexual in a cultural and social setting in which there are strong expectations of heterosexuality and gender normativity can create deep stresses for an individual. Mainstream Western society has viewed the either/or sets of male/female, masculine/feminine, and heterosexuality/homosexuality as exhaustive sexual possibilities and as closely interlocked. Heterosexuality has been viewed as natural and therefore normal, a view supported by dominant institutions, values, and behaviors. Bisexuality challenges the idea that orientation is innate and immutable, an idea that many straight and gay people believe. Publicly known association by a heterosexual with homosexuals, especially of a personal kind, creates the risk that some of the ostracism held for lesbians and gays may “rub off” on the individual.