Straightness as power

Straightness is said to be a position of power. In many situations, this is very obvious and apperant. I would however come with the bold statement and say, many straight people do not directly face oppressions for their sexuality, it is normalised in the media, and generally heterosexuality is expected of everyone. Diverging from older standards of what love, attraction and sexuality is, also comes with many down-sides.

There is no question in that being sga and mga is punished. That these people face violence, harrassment, and persecution. Oppression is however not an axis, with 2 or 3 points. Various identities affect how one's orientation is viewed. For many, no matter which orientation they have, people will view their sexuality very similarily. A good example of this is trans women. From how trans women are treated, it seems that a trans woman's straightness might not have that much significance to how they are viewed. They will be viewed as sexual deviants, indecisive, confused, predatory, or broken no matter who they are or are not attracted to. And then the issues of how heteronormativity and the specific sex essentialism affects intersex people, straight or not.

With that in mind, is being straight really a guarantee for straight privilege, and are those two concepts basicaly completely connected? This is not a question if someone has privilege if they are marginalised in another way, but rather. Due to how specific things are, can straight trans women really be inherently straight privileged? I have seen many people try to argue things like this away, by saying straight is seperate from being het. But this hold the ill implication that trans men and women's man- and woman-hood are less credible, thus less eligible for them to get the male and female identities of being straight.

After reflecting on this for awhile, I realised that this can not all be summarised in a short post. And I think I will have to save going further for later, because this is quite clearly a very large topic. Intersectionality and overlap also makes this a very hard topic to discuss. Heteronormativity affects sga and mga people differently, it affects intersex people in specific ways, it affects non-binary people, PoC, women, and trans people all in so many ways, it is hard to point to the validity of straight privilege as a concept itself.

I would like to conclude with straightness and heteronormativity is most likely just a portion of intersexism, binarism, and cissexism, as well as homophobia. And that it most likely is not much alone, but a tool of patriarchy. There is however a lot more to be said, and many more perspectives and sides to it than what I've mentioned so far.