The Compulsory heterosexuality and the stylization of the body in the light of Judith Butler's thought

Abstract

The present paper seeks to investigate the mechanisms that take care of normalizing the stylization of the body as an ideal process of the heterosexual institution. Through the work "Gender Problems: feminism and subversion of identity" by philosopher Judith Butler (2017), we propose to question the stylization process as a given and/or natural material, since such process consists in the production of educated bodies. In this process, we analyze the role of heterosexual culture in the standardization of gender identities, based on the masculine/feminine binarism, keeping in mind that the heterosexual imperative sustains a need to invoke disciplined, measured and consented subjects under an arbitrary set of regulations inscribed in the bodies for the sustenance of the established and socially created conventions that legitimize the production of an ideal masculinity and femininity. That being said, it is worth investigating the implications of the structuralist studies of Levi-Strauss and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic studies, in which they produce a heterosexual matrix, with the capacity to stimulate heterosexuality and deny the other sexualities considered deviant. Finally, it is intended to examine the stylization of the body as a performative process, that is, discursive fabrications that impose what should be used/ done, having, for example, a male or female gender identity.