Assumptions about heterosexuality are everywhere, but especially when it comes to domestic and family violence and how we respond to it.
This matters because the Federal Government is currently consulting on the Second Action Plan under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. The National Plan is an important document: it sets the direction for how Australia understands and responds to gender-based violence, including where funding and resources are directed. As the Government develops its next Action Plan, we need to ask not only what is included, but what is missing.
In a recent study we conducted, we critically analysed the National Plan. We were stuck by the absence of heterosexuality. This might seem surprising. After all, most of the violence against women discussed in the National Plan is in heterosexual relationships. Yet heterosexuality is rarely treated as relevant to understanding that violence. Instead, relationships between men and women are generally discussed in terms of gender alone.
We argue this is a problem.
Part of the reason heterosexuality becomes invisible is heteronormativity: the privileging of heterosexuality as normal and natural. Because heterosexuality is treated as the default, it often does not need to be named. While LGBTQ+ relationships are understood as being shaped by sexuality, heterosexual relationships are simply treated as relationships.
But heteronormativity is not just about assuming that people are heterosexual. It also establishes (often limiting) expectations about what relationships should look like. For example, who provides care and household labour, who should initiate sex, who should accommodate whose desires, and other expectations of how men and women are supposed to act in relationships.
These expectations shape the everyday lives of heterosexual people. They can help explain why women continue to perform more unpaid household and caring work, why heterosexual women’s sexual pleasure is often deprioritised, and why particular forms of masculinity and femininity remain so deeply entrenched.
They also matter for violence.
The person most likely to use violence against a heterosexual woman is a man known to her, often an intimate partner. Yet the fact that these relationships are overwhelmingly heterosexual is rarely considered as significant. The violence is understood through the lens of gender (men’s power and control over women) but much less often through the lens of heterosexuality and the norms that govern heterosexual relationships.
We show how this is particularly evident in the National Plan, and we also look at another important national gender-based violence framework, Change the Story, developed by Our Watch. Both provide important analyses of what is called the gendered “drivers” of violence against women. But our analysis found that both largely reproduce the same conceptual problem: heterosexuality remains the invisible norm.
In both documents, the only time heterosexual people are given a sexuality is in relation to LGBTQ+ people. So, for example, they talk about how LGBTQ+ people report similar rates of sexual violence as heterosexual women. Heteronormativity, meanwhile, is largely framed as something that only impacts LGBTQ+ people.
We argue that this is incorrect.
Of course, LGBTQ+ people are profoundly impacted by heteronormativity too. However, heterosexual people, and particularly heterosexual women, bear the burden of heteronormativity potentially even more so than LGBTQ+ people. Heterosexual people live within a system that tells them what relationships should look like, what sex should look like, what families should look like, and what men and women should be like. It is important we challenge these heterosexual norms because we want everyone to live a fulfilling life that is not burdened by rigid expectations around sexuality.
It is also important to challenge these heterosexuality norms for violence prevention.
The current framing of the gendered drivers of violence (e.g., expectations that men should be dominant, aggressive and sexually entitled, or that women should be caring, accommodating and responsible for maintaining relationships) is important to analyse. But these are not only gender norms. They are also sexuality norms about how heterosexual relationships are supposed to operate.
This does not mean replacing patriarchy with heteronormativity as an explanation for violence. The two are deeply intertwined. Rather, we need to understand how they work together. Patriarchy helps explain the unequal distribution of power between men and women. Heteronormativity helps explain how particular ideas about heterosexual relationships, sex, family and gender become normalised and reproduced.
This also matters for the cultural change that sits at the heart of Australia’s violence prevention agenda. Both the National Plan and Change the Story recognise that preventing violence requires changing the social norms and structures that enable it. Yet if heterosexuality remains the invisible norm, we risk overlooking an important part of the culture we are trying to change.
As Australia develops its Second Action Plan, we therefore need to broaden how we think about the drivers of violence against women. Gender remains fundamental. But if we are serious about changing that culture that enables violence, we also need to examine the norms governing heterosexuality.
If we want everyone to have safer and less violent relationships, perhaps we need to start asking a simple, yet overlooked question – what would it mean to change the norms of heterosexuality?