Deconstructing the Heteronormative Image of the Early Christian Household: Reconsidering Gender as a Key Organising Concept of Family Functioning

Abstract

Heteronormativity is the process of socially constructing a privileged heterosexuality and its related binary understandings of gender, over unconventional presentations of gender and gender-related issues. The early Christian household constructs a heteronormative image of the family only. This implies that heterosexual marriage and relationships were the only access to sanctioned sexuality and respectability in the community. Therefore, binary opposites enforced the heterosexual structure and function of family as “given” and “natural”. Meanwhile, male dominance in heterosexual and heteropatriarchal structures persists. This paper questions the inevitability and naturalness of heterosexuality and heteropatriarchy and its normative status for constructing the ancient/Christian family. It aims to problematise gender as the dominant, unassailable expression and organising concept of family functioning which—in turn—determines social constructs.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.