Team of Researchers Blames Children's Films for Perpetuating "Heteronormativity"

The results, say the researchers, illustrate two ways that the children’s films “construct heterosexuality”: through “depictions of hetero-romantic love as exceptional, powerful, transformative, and magical,” and “depictions of interactions between gendered bodies in which the sexiness of feminine characters is subjected to the gaze of masculine characters.” (…)

The team says the results point to heterosexuality achieving a “taken-for-granted status” “because hetero-romance is depicted as powerful.”

“Both ordinary and exceptional constructions of heterosexuality work to normalize its status because it becomes difficult to imagine anything other than this form of social relationship or anyone outside of these bonds,” they concluded.

This is a really homophobic site, but the journalist hardly goes out of the way to criticize the study; she probably thinks it’s so fantastically and obviously silly by itself. I find the study to be scarily accurate.

I think the point should be that on the whole media aimed at children depicts ONLY heterosexual relationships as powerful, transformative etc. then there’s also the fact that it also gives children unrealistic romantic expectations and enforces gender stereotypes but those are WHOLE other issues…