The privileging of heterosexuality as natural and normal is termed ‘heteronormativity’. The gender binary (the presumption that there are only two distinct opposite genders), and the belief that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of the opposite sex form its focal points.
The concept of heteronormativity, thus, allows us to move from viewing gender and sexuality as natural processes to understanding regimes that institute certain forms of gender and sexuality as preferred, permissible, or “natural” as opposed to others which are then deemed criminal, unlawful, deviant or “unnatural”.
In our context, marriage, which the Centre has taken great pains to describe as a holy union, a sacrament, historically has been a tool of the Brahmanical social order to maintain the caste and gender hierarchies that form its organising principles. Caste endogamy, obligatory heterosexuality, the gender binary, and the constraint of female sexuality are the pillars on…
