Sexual Construct (Thinking Sex- Rubin)
It is common practice to view sex and desire as a personal choice. To view it with the lens of preferences innate to a person or inherent to them. The argument exists in the realm of sexual essentialism, of viewing sex as a natural, unchanging force. Of finding certain attributes in a person attractive because of your tastes. But, like most choices and preferences, the one influencing sex and desire is a product of a deeply pervasive social structure that conditions you to choose a specific partner. As Rubin quotes Foucault, “desires are not pre-existing biological entities, but rather that they are constituted in the course of historically specific social practices (149).” This visualisation of sex by Foucault can be illustrated by a person choosing a partner that just does not fit your category of desirability, but the kind that would be acceptable to your parents, the kind that you can communicate and connect with because of the likeliness of your backgrounds, the kind that can “understand” because they are conditioned similarly. And all of this "commonalities" derive from beliefs with deep historic roots.
Viewing sex and choices driven by desire as independent of the political and social structure, hence, becomes a rudimentary understanding of sex. And breaking down this understanding, thus, becomes necessary to destabilise the existing hierarchies of “acceptable” sexual preferences. To gauge the problem, the system perpetuating it must be scrutinised.
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