Bianca Schad Dr. Natalia Imperatori-Lee RELS 390 Sexuality and the Sacred September 4, 2024 The reading titled “Notes on Historical Grounding:Beyond Sexual Essentialism” by Carter Heyward was both eye-opening and thought-provoking, which is why I have chosen to write a response paper on it. The reading raised many points I had never considered before, and I found myself making a number of connections to these ideas. Before this reading, I had never heard of the term “sexual essentialism”, but after this reading, I fully understood what it was, and I realize that I have been looking at sexuality from such a narrow viewpoint, and not considering the other factors that play into the definition. Heyward raises many interesting points, but the most important being that …show more content…
She contrasts the two different views of sexuality, an essentialist viewpoint and a historical viewpoint very clearly, which helped me understand the difference and the need to turn away from viewing sexuality from an essentialist viewpoint. Heyward also went into depth about how sexuality intersects with other aspects of identity such as race, class and gender, and how “one can not truly comprehend the meaning of sexuality from a historical perspective, without viewing its place in the context of power relations between genders” (Heyward,11) which I thought was super interesting. Other important points she raises are the difference between power relations in terms of gender, how sexuality is fluid, and how sexuality is always changing. Heyward states, “Not only are we not living in the nineteenth century, we are not living in the 1950s or 1960s in terms of how we may experience nutrition, sexual activity, pregnancy, disease, and other body-self phenomena. Understanding our sexualities historically involves understanding ourselves as people