Heterosexuality

In the article “Becoming a 100 Percent Straight, the author Michael L. Messner, studied heterosexuality and how it's influenced by socitey. Heterosexuality is viewed as the default sexuality. According to Messner, heterosexuality is more than just a sexuality. Heterosexuality is a constructed identity and it has nothing to do with sexual acts. What Messner meant by the term “doing heterosexuality” was that heterosexuality and masculinity was not something he was, rather is was something he was doing (Messner, 70). Heterosexual men are expected to act differently than homosexual men. For example, hetersexual men are not suppose to act feminine because only gay men do that. Heterosexuality has a privileged status in society than homosexuality (Anderson, 82). Heterosexuality is more easily accepted in society because they are enforcing gender norms. Masculine-acting men are "acting" the part of the heterosexual, dominant, "normal" man. Homosexuality is not a normative form for a
Nadal and colleagues, defined microaggression as behaviors and statements that communicate hostile and hurtful messages to particular social groups (Nadal, 488). These social groups include people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and genderqueer. Microaggression severely impacts the mental health of members of marginalized social groups (Nadal, 489). Microaggression make marginalized individuals feel inadequate about themselves which internally damages their self-esteem. What “doing heterosexuality” does for these marginalized group is protect them from stigmas, embarrassments, and ostracism. For example, Tom Waddell an Olympic athlete, revealed his sexual orientation years after his athletic years. In an interview, waddell claimed that he wanted to be a dancer, but he keep on going with his male/macho imagine because he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle the name calling and the negativity since a dancer is considered