I withdraw “deliberately”, after all how would I know. But “social construct” is technical jargon from a controversial theory in a controversial academic discipline. Almost every English-speaking adult knows what straight and gay are, but hardly any of them know what a social construct is. So I do believe that it’s misleading to speak of “heterosexuality” when you mean “the social construct of heterosexuality.”
Whether someone knows what the term “social construct” refers to has nothing to do with the matter. Most people don’t know what the term “pheromone” refers to, but it would be mistaken to infer from that that sexual attraction has nothing to do with pheromones, or that discussions of sexual orientation in terms of pheromones is necessarily misleading.
That said, though, sure, if social constructs don’t exist at all, then there certainly isn’t such a thing as a social construct of heterosexuality, in which case any discussion of same (including my own comments in this thread) is misleading, albeit (as you admit) not necessarily deliberately so.
I withdraw “deliberately”, after all how would I know. But “social construct” is technical jargon from a controversial theory in a controversial academic discipline. Almost every English-speaking adult knows what straight and gay are, but hardly any of them know what a social construct is. So I do believe that it’s misleading to speak of “heterosexuality” when you mean “the social construct of heterosexuality.”
Whether someone knows what the term “social construct” refers to has nothing to do with the matter. Most people don’t know what the term “pheromone” refers to, but it would be mistaken to infer from that that sexual attraction has nothing to do with pheromones, or that discussions of sexual orientation in terms of pheromones is necessarily misleading.
That said, though, sure, if social constructs don’t exist at all, then there certainly isn’t such a thing as a social construct of heterosexuality, in which case any discussion of same (including my own comments in this thread) is misleading, albeit (as you admit) not necessarily deliberately so.