Heteronormativity refers to a social method for arranging sexual status unequally. The study of heteronormativity inherits and builds on the legacy of Gayle Rubin (1984) and others who directed sexuality studies to study the cultural production of hierarchical sexualities. Rubin’s work extended Michel Foucault’s account of the invention of sexuality discourse within European sexual science (Foucault 1978). Rubin and Foucault teach that defining sexuality as a characteristic of types of people is the first act of a form of power that then conditions how sexualities become ranked along hierarchical lines. Sexuality thus refers not only to a way of taxonomizing persistent subjectivity but also to a technology for creating forms of knowledge, including self-knowledge. Queer theorists proposed the idea of heteronormativity to highlight a form of power that uplifts heterosexuality by marginalizing sexualities outside its mold. This power is normative because it sets and enforces rules: more than just describing heterosexuality as normal, it polices conformity to heterosexual norms. Queer theorists use heteronormativity to study how heterosexuality enters power relationships with any sexual life that appears queer (strange, out of place) in relation to heterosexuality (Warner 1993; Jagose 1996). Heteronormativity also illuminates trans life by addressing how binary sex gets...