ABSTRACT
From Alfred Kinsey’s studies of sexual behavior of men and women in the 1950s to current studies of heterosexual behavior such as Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, heterosexuality has been assumed to be a natural occurring phenomenon outside social forces and without historical variance (Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin 1948; Kinsey et al. 1953; Michael et al. 1994). Heterosexuality has not been conceptualized as an identity in need of social explanation or empirical investigation. It is just assumed to have always existed, as it is today and since the beginning of the human race. It was not until recent work on the social construction of heterosexuality that a critical stance was taken toward heterosexuality as both an identity and a norm.
