Binaries are two different things that are seen as just facts. We mostly see this concept with gender. With this view men and women cannot integrate. They are seen as completely different and do not share common traits together.
I think in certain cultures a lot of emphasis is placed on biological sex. As the text explains, we are often judged by our outward appearance. For example, if you appear to be a woman people often asume that you are attracted to the opposite sex, only have traits that are categorized under female and etc. This is because a lot of us do live in a hetoronormative society. We are just now learning to look beyond biology.
However, it is important to note that not everyone fits into the binary system. Sex that is assigned at birth can be different from gender identity. This is the case for transgendered people. They can be born a woman and identify as a man. There are also people who don’t identify as any of these two categories.
One of the subjects that I found very interesting were people who were born with sex variations. It is something that doesn’t get talked about a lot. What I found sad to read was how parents decide the gender and have doctors operate on them at childhood. I find this very inhumane because the child doesn’t get a chance to choose or even figure out what their true gender identity is. We can see that the binary system erases a lot of different identities. Transgendered people and intersex are two prominent groups that get excluded from this perspective.
Heterosexual is seen as the norm in society and do hold a privilege over other sexualities. An example of this is that people apart of the LGBT community did not get the basic human right to marry who they want until 2015 in the United States. They still fave a lot of discrimination to this day. In certain states business owners are able to refuse services to these people. A lot of times gay people don’t even have the opportunuty to adopt children.
