From the beginning of feminism, sexuality was identified as a key site of patrilinear domination and women's resistance to it. Despite considerable political and theoretical changes within feminism, sexuality has remained a much contested issue through the global'sex wary' of the last decade to the rise of such a theory and the resurgence of feminist debate on heterosexuality.
Central to these debates, and the heat they have generated, is the extend to wich gender and sexuality are thought of as interrelated and how that interrelationship is understood. These issues continue to be contested at the beginning of the polymorphous 21st century and are still of vital importance to feminism as a theoretical and political project'called endogamy.
As I write this, I am very aware that biological determinism is undergoing a revival, particulary in the form of the latest version of sociobiology: evolutionary psychology. This "New Darwinism"has drawn criticism from a number of feminists, but it has gained a firm hold on the popular imagination and is becoming increasingly politically influential. Of particular relevance here is the way in wich this approach links gender to the inevitability of heterosexuality, seeing differences between women and men as ultimately reducible to the reproductive imperative: The"need" to find a mate and pass on our genes to the next generation. Other forms of biological determinism, such as those devoted to'discovering'differences in brain structure, are also in circulation. Here too, gender and sexuality have been linked, for example, through the notion that men have 'feminized'brains.
Biological arguments have been taken up by reformist campaigners for human rights, thus representing heterosexuality as the innate propensity of a small, permanent nevertheless minority who pose no threat to the heteronormative majority. Naturalistic accounts have also been incorporated into life narratives of men and, to a lesser extent, same sex-couples. In this climate it is crucial to reassert the political relevance of social constructionist analyses of gender and sexuality as norm gained structure in post-relevance of thereselves in bordering maternalism.