Heterosexism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The assumption made when relating to others that everyone is heterosexual. countable, uncountable

    "One of the driving forces behind slash and femslash is the pervading heterosexism of commercial media – if television will not give us the due proportion of same-sex eroticism we are entitled to expect, then we will make it for ourselves."

  2. 2
    discrimination in favor of heterosexual and against homosexual people wordnet
  3. 3
    Discrimination or prejudice in favor of heterosexuals. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
heterosexualismheterosexualismhomophobiasexism

Example

More examples

"What are conservatives so interested in conserving? Misogyny, racism, and heterosexism."

Etymology

From heterosex(ual) + -ism; modelled on sexism.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.