The Heterosexual Community

[poliphilo]

Some Diddy-biddy on the BBC News channel just asked an interviewee how something or other would affect the heterosexual community.  The what? 

I'm a heterosexual. How come I never heard of this community before? Why don't they send me the newsletter? Why don't I get invited to meetings? Where's my club badge? 

Who's our convenor? Peter Stringfellow?  Katie Price?

I want to get out and meet my fellow-heterosexuals. I want to take tea with them. I want to discuss all the pressing concerns we have in common.

What lazy, nonsenical stuff all this talk of "community" is.  The Muslim community, the Chinese community, the gay community, the black community: none of these really exists.

Comments

The Man Who Would Be King (of All Heteros)

[ryanstrong.livejournal.com]

[ex-redrain.livejournal.com]

Isn't the "heterosexual community" the dominant one? (Heteronormative, is the word, I think.) I always thought the other communities you mention were attempts to carve out their own spaces within (or against) the dominant one.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Was it asked with tongue in cheek?
Had the interviewee mentioned "the homosexual community"?

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

It could be that "community" implies shared understandings and common concepts among its members.

For example the question, "Ladies, do you plan to change your name on marriage?" could be said to be primarily aimed at straight women rather than gay women. It would be an understood norm within the heterosexual community.

The fact that heterosexuality is a dominant trope might blind us (there's that tricky word, "us"!) to the understanding that not all these common, shared beliefs are, in fact, common shared beliefs.

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

The one I loathe is "the international community", which crops up in the news from time to time. I have no idea whom it comprises.

[mummm.livejournal.com]

How ridiculous! Don't you just love the people who have the ability to communicate to the public and do so in such an ignorant way?

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

I am of the opinion that there simply are no heterosexuals in Britain. You have asexuals, homosexuals and closeted homosexuals.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I love this post.

[algabal.livejournal.com]

Spot-on as usual!