The field of critical heterosexualities studies invites sociologists to untether heterosexuality from biology. In this article, I leverage the findings of 113 interviews with a racially diverse sample of cis and trans women to examine how women maintain everyday dignity in the street despite widespread gender harassment and systemic, racialized sexual inequalities. Drawing on social constructionist theory and applying an intersectional framework, I examine heterosexuality as a performance, uncovering how gender identity, race, and sexual orientation intersect to shape both the costs and benefits of “doing heterosexuality” in the street. Through practices such as wearing wedding rings, holding the hands of men friends, and displaying affection for men in public places, straight, queer, cis, and trans women creatively resist heteronormativity’s regulation of their social-sexual lives and strive to enunciate sexual unavailability; communicate the existence of a protector; and signal respectability by demonstrating conformity with racialized, cisnormative ideals of gender and sexual normativity. Findings demonstrate that racialized, queer, and trans participants tend to experience greater emotional costs and fewer symbolic rewards associated with “doing heterosexuality” than white, straight-identified, and cis participants. This intersectional analysis enriches extant research on gender and sexuality, illuminating the utility of the “doing heterosexuality” framework for uncovering intersections between heterosexual accountability and gender inequality across diverse organizational and interpersonal contexts.

中文翻译：

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“我唯一的自卫就是我的婚戒”：做异性恋、逃避性别骚扰、在街上受人尊敬


批判性异性恋研究领域邀请社会学家将异性恋与生物学分开。在本文中，我利用对不同种族的顺性别和跨性别女性样本的 113 次访谈的结果，研究了女性如何在普遍的性别骚扰和系统性的种族化性不平等的情况下在街头保持日常尊严。借鉴社会建构主义理论并应用交叉框架，我将异性恋作为一种表演来研究，揭示了性别认同、种族和性取向如何相互交织，从而塑造了在街头“做异性恋”的成本和收益。通过佩戴结婚戒指、牵着男性朋友的手、在公共场所表达对男性的爱意等做法，异性恋、酷儿、顺式和跨性别女性创造性地抵制异性恋对她们社会性生活的调节，并努力阐明性不可用;传达保护者的存在;并通过表现出符合种族化、顺性别和性规范的理想来表示受人尊敬。研究结果表明，与白人、异性恋和顺性别参与者相比，种族化、酷儿和跨性别参与者往往经历更大的情感成本和更少的与 “做异性恋” 相关的象征性奖励。这种交叉分析丰富了现有的关于性别和性行为的研究，阐明了“做异性恋”框架在揭示不同组织和人际背景下异性恋问责制和性别不平等之间的交叉点的效用。