Livre d'Or

I think Blank's definition of "heterosexual" is quite specific;

Whereas I'm perfectly happy with the idea of straight, gay, etc. monks based on what sacrifices they're making, what temptations of the flesh they're fighting against, etc.

I think there's a point here about denotation and connotation, another (possibly the same?) point about the truth conditions for counting someone as straight versus the inferences you can get away with drawing about someone based on them counting as straight.

To a certain extent it sounds like it's coming from the same place that "love was invented in the Middle Ages by troubadours" comes from, to which my usual mental reply is "so what were Aphrodite and Eros all about then?"

I looked up Jonathan Katz on wikipedia - it turns out there are two of them in the relevant area. It looks like social constructionism is relevant here. It feels like something I ought to know more about, if only in a "know what you're arguing against" way. One problem is, I think, that when I get too close to social constructionism it seems like I'm entering a weird parallel universe where words don't mean what I'm used to them meaning and I can hardly move for concepts that presuppose something you deeply disagree with and find utterly alien. Which in some ways is a shame, as I'm sure there's a lot that's interesting to be said about the modern categories and concepts.