Abstract
Even though the normativity of heterosexuality has come into question in recent years, heterosexual norms continue to figure as a structuring principle in contemporary social life. Drawing on 40 qualitative interviews with a diverse group of young German and British women, this article analyses empirical research on feminist disidentification to show that heteronormativity plays a central role in young women’s negotiations of feminism. Numerous respondents established a link between feminism, unfemininity, man-hatred and lesbianism. By exploring constructions of ‘the feminist’, and by reconceptualizing the figure of ‘the feminist’ as a constitutive outside of heterosexual norms that haunts the interviews, this article foregrounds the importance of examining the dimension of sexuality in analyses of contemporary social phenomena.
| Original language | English |
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| Pages (from-to) | 827-842 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Sociology |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2010 |