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Parental Perpetuation of Heteronormativity and Agism: A brief history

Master wordsmith, President Barrack Obama is back, and his inaugural speech reminded me of a blog post over at Womanist Musings: What if Sasha and Malia Obama aren’t straight? In this post, Womanist Musings calls Obama’s heteronormativy out regarding his children. His choice of words failed him. In a series of interviews a reporter lightheartedly brought up the first daughters and potential boyfriends. Obama quipped that that’s why they have Secret Service. Womanist Musings points out the damage of statements like this; damage toward Sasha and Malia’s control over their own sexuality and the general perpetuation of gender roles and heteronormativity in this country. She writes, “When the secret service do appear in media, they are largely white cisgender men and it has often made me wonder about the implications of them acting as gatekeepers to the sexuality and bodies of young Black women.” This is a keen observation of power structures that, likely, and hopefully, Obama didn’t know he’d fallen prey to; a simple joke at the anxiety, I would guess, most fathers feel at the fear of their daughters growing too fast, but those in the limelight are criticized most often; are good liberals from the “top down” allowed a sense of humor at the expense heteronormativity?

Womanist Musings continues to point out the harm in jokes like the one Obama let loose back in June. She says it “denies the legitimacy of [Sasha and Malia’s] sexual agency and ...