Heterosexuality is the most common sexuality

The argument

Across every country where the question has been asked, surveys find that the overwhelming majority of people identify as heterosexual. National statistics offices and large social surveys in Britain, the United States and elsewhere consistently report that roughly nine in ten adults or more describe themselves as straight, with all other orientations together accounting for the remainder. Whatever allowances are made for under-reporting and changing attitudes among the young, heterosexuality remains by a wide margin the most common human sexuality. Proponents of this position argue that social norms everywhere form around statistical regularities. Languages, institutions and everyday assumptions default to the common case: buildings are designed for the right-handed majority, calendars around majority religions, and social scripts around the family patterns most people actually live. On this view it is neither surprising nor sinister that a society whose members are overwhelmingly heterosexual should treat heterosexual pairing as the default expectation in its forms, fictions and casual conversation. A norm that tracks the lived reality of most of the population is what norms ordinarily are. It follows, on this argument, that heteronormativity is better described as normal than as a threat. To call the majority pattern a danger to wellbeing, proponents contend, is to mistake the ordinary functioning of social defaults for an act of aggression. Minorities can and should be treated decently within those defaults, but the existence of a default reflecting the most common sexuality is, on this account, simply what any society built by and for its actual population looks like.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The argument slides from a descriptive fact to a normative conclusion. That most people are heterosexual (an observation about frequency) does not establish that treating heterosexuality as the assumed default is harmless or right (a value claim). The right-handed analogy actually cuts the other way: a world designed only for the majority does penalise left-handers, which is why accommodations exist. Critics of heteronormativity object not to the existence of a majority but to defaults that impose expectations and marginalise those who fall outside them. Prevalence and harm are fully compatible, so citing the majority does not answer the charge.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] That norms often form around majorities does not make majority-based defaults benign; the question is whether they harm the minority they exclude. [Rejecting P3] Calling heteronormativity 'ordinary' describes how it arises but does not show it poses no threat to wellbeing — an is does not settle an ought.