Michel Foucault: , noted that capitalism’s progression through the Victorian period was partly driven by the reproduction of married, heterosexual couples, which suggests that this ‘norm’ has been socially constructed. Therefore, by outlining how sexuality was structured by both modern societies, Foucault not only challenges any moral judgements society makes based on someone’s sexuality, he also shows the different ways that power dynamics contribute towards a person’s identity construction.
Judith Butler: Like Foucault, also described the hetero-normative societal structures, making her an important figure within gender studies, for her work on gender performance, which she outlined in Gender Trouble (1990) and further developed in Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993). She describes gender as something fluid and interchangeable that can be performed, which emphasizes the different ways people can express their identities beyond sexual difference.
As a result, gender performance challenges the rigid social codes that are attached to sexual difference, identity and sexuality – for example, attributing long hair, make-up and pink to femininity, while excluding short hair, sports and blue as more masculine. Therefore, Butler’s work is not only important for the transgender community, but also for anyone who does not strictly adhere to traditional gender roles.
Gilles Deleuze: also made notable contributions towards descriptions of the way that sexuality is societally structured. His book Anti-Oedipus (1972), written in collaboration with Felix Guattari as the first text in their Capitalism & Schizophrenia series, was important for the way they critiqued Freudian psychoanalysis, and the way it reduces desire to not only sexuality, but also for framing sexuality within a homo/heterosexual opposition. Instead, he and Guattari suggested that desire – and therefore sexuality – should be viewed as something more free-flowing plural, unstable and productive than Freud’s Oedipal complex Because Deleuze and Guattari also question traditional psychoanalysis’s prioritisation of the phallus and male identity when determining one’s sexuality, seen most clearly in how the attachment at the core of the Oedipal complex ignores girls, they attack the way society prioritises male heterosexuality in a complementary way to both Foucault and Butler
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