Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Non-heteronormative Americans are also victims of private health industry

Columbia Law School professor, Katherine Franke, writes in Queering of Health Reform about how Americans are not only deprived for lack of money. They are also deprived for lack of similarity to the traditional married hetero family. And of course, being both non-heteronormative and low income makes you a target worse than being only low income.

I have used the term "non-heteronormative" instead of "LGBT" because the former encompasses a much broader span of the human race that defies traditional expectations about gender/sexuality. This actually includes heterosexual individuals who don't lead lives by the book of marriage and parenting. Some are unmarried parents in romantic relationship, some are unmarried parents not in romantic relationship, some are on-again-off-again in their relationships but always try to keep the kids lives well provided for and loved, married couples without children, etc, etc.

A final note about what I mean by "tradition expectations". By traditional expections, I not only mean religious or social conservatives, but also the general modern popular culture - supported by magazines, movies, Hollywood - that show women in certain roles of "sexiness" and men in other roles. I speak of the varoius images that seem like liberal liberation and free sexuality, but which, upon study, seem to be the opposite side of the same coin of required gender roles and expectations. This is one of the few things pop culture and social conservatives have in common.

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