Heteronormativity leads to people being out of touch with their sexuality because they try to emulate "normal" sex

The argument

This argument holds that heteronormativity threatens wellbeing by leaving people out of touch with their own sexuality, because it pressures them to emulate a model of 'normal' sex rather than discover what they actually desire. Heteronormativity is the assumption that heterosexuality, and a particular script for sex and relationships built around it, is the natural default that everyone is expected to match. People absorbing that assumption come to measure themselves against it. They may pursue the relationships they are 'supposed' to want, perform the sexual roles presented as normal, and quietly suppress or dismiss any desires that do not fit the template — often without ever examining those desires honestly. The result is a sexuality shaped by conformity to an external standard rather than by genuine self-knowledge. On this account, the damage is not confined to any one group. Anyone whose real desires diverge from the prescribed script — in orientation, in the kind of intimacy they want, in how they relate to others — is pushed toward imitation rather than authenticity. People can spend years estranged from their own wants, mistaking the role they have been taught to play for who they are, which is why the position holds that heteronormativity harms everyone, not only those who are visibly outside the norm. Being out of touch with one's own sexuality in this way carries a real cost to wellbeing: confusion, dissatisfaction, shame and unfulfilling relationships built on a borrowed template rather than honest desire. Genuine wellbeing depends on understanding and accepting one's own sexuality, and the pressure to emulate 'normal' sex works directly against that. Because heteronormativity leads people to be out of touch with their sexuality as they try to emulate 'normal' sex, this argument holds, it is a threat to wellbeing.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The mechanism the argument describes — that a prescribed sexual script pressures people to suppress desires that do not fit it — plausibly harms those whose genuine desires diverge from the norm, but the leap to 'harms everyone' does not follow from it. For people whose authentic desires happen to align with the conventional script, the norm and their own wants coincide, so there is nothing for them to suppress and no estrangement from their sexuality need arise; the very engine of harm the argument identifies, conforming against one's real desires, simply does not engage where desire and script match. The conclusion therefore overgeneralises: real, serious and widespread harm to those pushed toward imitation is not the same as universal harm to all. One can hold the strong version of the argument — that heteronormativity damages anyone it estranges from their own wants — without the further, unsupported claim that it damages people for whom no such estrangement occurs. 'Harms everyone' is rhetorically sweeping but is not what the described mechanism delivers.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The described mechanism — suppressing desires that do not fit the script — engages only where a person's real desires diverge from the norm, not where they happen to align with it, in which case no estrangement need arise. [Rejecting P3] Real and widespread harm to those pushed toward imitation is not the same as harm to 'everyone'; the conclusion's universality outruns what the mechanism shows.