Analysis Of Why Can 'T I Be Normal?' By Mary Louise Adams

The emphasis on normalcy in the investigation into sexuality, as explicated by Mary Louise Adams, can be understood as form of power relations in which the construction of the category of normal reinforces an alterity that is made intelligible through newly emerging discourses. In this essay I will employ the work of Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Gary Kingsmen, Fredrich Engels, Judith Butler, Simone De Beauvoir and Julian Lee in order to explicate how Mary Louise Adams article, “Why Can’t I be Normal?: Sex Advice For Teens” examines the contextually specific category of normalcy as historically, politically, socially, culturally and symbolically constructed. In doing this I hope to bring to light the various dimensions of power that compose …show more content…
152), permeated the cultural landscape in novel ways following the Second World War. As such, these new iterations of youth sexuality were crucial to the creation of normal sexual identities and sexual alterity. Monogamous dating is defined by Adams as both a practice and an institution synonymous with the development of middle class heterosexual values, consumer culture and the rise of the nuclear family. Therefore, her investigation into dating transforms our understanding of the relationship between sexual normalcy and economy. Adams employs a historical materialist methodology in her investigation of dating where the historical transformation of society is central to the development of “middle class youth culture”, “nascent consumer society” and “contemporary ideologies about gender” (Pg. 152, 153). As recalled in Fredrich Engels’ exploration of the conceptual parallels between the onset of the capitalist economy and the rise of the monogamous family, class relations becomes an important way of articulating relations of power. As such, while Engels’ investigation of the monogamous family focuses on the relationships of power between the proletariat and bourgeois class of society alongside the development of private property, Adams’ investigation is focused on the class of youth as an increasingly visible and policed category, and the intergenerational relations of power among youth and adults/experts. Importantly, while dating can be understood as “[reflecting] the larger economic and political circumstances” (pg. 153), it is crucially a central institution for the development of a “natural expression of heterosexuality” and the subsequent construction of a normal sexual orientation and gender. Thus, Adams demonstrates how the development of middle-class dating culture becomes a central space for depicting youth as “a particular kind of sexual being” in addition to

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Analysis Of Why Can 'T I Be Normal?' By Mary Louise Adams

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