ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how heterosexual sex is normatively constructed in ways that compromise and circumscribe individual sexual choices. It proposes that three dominant discourses of heterosexuality provide a cultural template on which heterosexual relations are organized: a male sexual drive discourse, a have/hold discourse, and a permissive sex discourse. The place of reciprocity in patterning contemporary heterosexual relations or, as Gilfoyle, Wilson, and Brown proposed, a pseudo-reciprocal gift discourse. Others have also emphasized the importance of cultural imperatives that relate to the more nitty-gritty aspects of sex. The coital imperative can be witnessed through what the author know about both the practice and the language of heterosex. In the early direct-to-consumer marketing of Viagra in New Zealand and in the United States, the drug manufacturers were clearly trading on a coital imperative to sell their product.
