Disrupting Cisheteronormativity: Recovering Historical Memory in Service of Liberation Psychology

This conceptual article examines cisheteronormativity as a structural organizing logic through which colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism have historically regulated sex, gender, sexuality, kinship, and psychological life. Drawing on liberation psychology as both a framework and method, the article brings queer theory, Indigenous feminist scholarship, Black feminist thought, and related critical traditions into dialogue to recover the historical conditions through which contemporary sexual and gender norms became institutionalized and came to appear natural. This genealogy traces how these systems operate through colonial governance, racialized constructions of gender and sexuality, patriarchal sexual scripts, cultural representation, and psychological knowledge and classification. The article concludes by considering implications for critical reflexivity, clinical practice, graduate education, and institutional transformation. Recovering the historical and structural organization of sexuality expands the knowledge available to psychology for understanding psychological suffering and human flourishing in service of developing a praxis oriented toward liberation.