https://www.reddit.com/r/QueerTheory/comments/1flapsa/how_is_heteronormativity_not_political/
created by bluer289 on 20/09/2024 at 12:24 UTC
18 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)
Looking at the "controversy" of games having LGBTQ content I keep coming across things like this[1]:
1: https://www.deviantart.com/hisarcher19/art/How-to-fix-PM-TTYD-remake-1055907559
Looking at how people fought back against EA's microtransactions in Battlefront II, you could hit them right in the brand. Parents, normies, and other people just wanting a good time free of politics thought they could trust Nintendo to deliver just that. But like Disney now, they are letting the tail wag the dog and have damaged their brand. Nintendo let these localizers pull a Bud Light. Let's hope Nintendo sees they shouldn't take sides in the culture war and certainly not attack their core audience.
We've had wins in Helldivers 2 and Steller Blade , I say let's add one more.
We want fun, localizers want The Message™️.
Now ignoring how nobody cared in the end, and how telling it is that he sees it as a "message" like it's a dog whistle..
They always do that and justify it as "heterosexuality is the norm" like it isn't "political".
This is clearly q fallacy but I can't remember what it is.
Do any of you know?
Comment by The_Ethics_Officer at 20/09/2024 at 13:37 UTC*
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This would fall into the appeal to tradition fallacy. Normality is invisible as people fail to recognize the status quo is always a social construction.
I'm struggling to give one specific theory/reading recommendation, as the opposition against this type of thinking is baked into the whole of queer theory. Being a poststructuralist project, queer theory actively works to identify how these dominant views of heteronormality are naturalized (i.e., taken for granted as just how the world works) and demonstrate how they are actually creations.
Butler's work on performativity/discursive formation in *Gender Trouble* was a response to such thinking. While heteronormativity claims to be prediscursive (i.e., a natural fact), it is constructed and maintained culturally through discourse. The repeated performance of "normality" simultaneously creates said normality.
EDIT: Wanted to clarify that this invisibility of heteronormativity is exactly what "naturalization" is. They cannot see it as political because dominant ideology is made to seem natural.