Sexuality and American Culture

Jeffrey Weeks' essay "The Social Construction of Sexuality" reminds me of Foucault's arguments that sexuality and its terms were not always existent, but were defined by people in power. Weeks argues that the idea of sexuality came about because of society at large. Sexuality and its organization has been especially influenced by five areas, according to Weeks: kinship and family systems, economic and social organization, social regulation, political interventions, and "cultures of resistance," or protests against current norms which I believe is known as deviance in sociological terms.

Rictor Norton counters Weeks' claim to social construction in his essay "Essentialism and Queer History." He states that sexuality was always there, and did not appear just because some theorists decided to define what it was. For example, homosexuality has always existed, even before it was defined in 1869. According to Norton, "homosexuals are born and not made." But is has only been since moderns times that the rest of society had acknowledged the existence of "queers."

Personally, I feel that both authors make valid points. Norton makes clear that sexuality, even if it has not been defined, has and will always be there. It is a part of our lives as human beings that will not go away. However, I feel that he takes his argument too far when he says that social constructionists don't believe that "sexuality" did not exist ever, because Weeks even admits that sexuality has always had a social presence even when unknown. Weeks' case that "sexuality" is what he calls a "historical construction" makes just as much sense as Norton's "essentialist" claim. We would not be able to begin to grasp what sexuality was if not for the many terms society has presented us with over time. So in the end, I would have to disagree with Norton's final thought that using both schools of thought would be, while useful, inconsistent; I feel that if sexuality did not exist all around us, it would not need to be defined by humanity, so both social constructionism and essentialism can go hand in hand.