The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

 
 
The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

NYU Press

2020

 

 

The straights are not okay. Or at least, so says Jane Ward, only half in jest, in The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. Ward's writing mixes academic prolixity, Jezebelian snark, and Twitter-style hot takes in an unstable blend to diagnose the paradoxes of straight culture, empathize in feminist solidarity with straight women, and give heterosexuality a taste of the same medicine queerness is so often served in the form of deliberately patronizing hand-wringing and concern-trolling.
 
How well all that works depends on whether you think those goals are compatible or at odds. I'm not straight, so I didn't feel defensive or personally attacked by any part of this book - but my guess is that if you did get your hackles up in response to some of what Ward says, you'd be less receptive to any of the rest of it. If what seems to me like gentle teasing strikes you as an existential threat, or even just mean-spirited, then you're going to see this book very differently than I did, and like it an awful lot less.
 
In brief, Ward diagnoses the key problem with heterosexuality today as what she calls the 'misogyny paradox' - that straight men desire women's bodies and services, but collectively don't seem to respect or even particularly like women. Some heterosexual couples have good relationships on an individual basis, but dissatisfaction is widespread. It's also asymmetric. In the public square, straight women lament that men mistreat them, neglect them, leave the too much of what should be shared work, sometimes abuse and rape them, and generally fail to acknowledge their full personhood. Straight men's public grievances are that women complain too much and don't offer condition-free sex-on-demand as often or as easily as they'd like.
 
I myself have noticed how often straight women will say something to the effect of 'I wish I could be a lesbian,' a sentiment I've literally never heard reciprocated. There are essentially no straight men who wish they were gay, as far as I can tell. That imbalance in dissatisfaction is at the heart of Ward's critique. The problem with heterosexuality is that it's much worse for women than for men; the problem with heterosexuality is a problem with masculinity, a problem with straight men.
 
Ward presents us with three social scientific projects - two sound bits of research, and one methodologically suspect poll of her internet friends.

 
First she content analyzes texts from what she calls the 'heterosexual repair industry,' ranging from eugenics texts at the start of the 20th century to self-help books today. Modern straightness emerges, at least among White Americans, as an alternative to the previous system where fathers and husbands essentially owned 'their' women. The challenge these books address is that straight men and women mostly socialize with same-gender peers, and end up with few interests in common with their potential spouses. The solution is usually for straight women to change (men are almost never the target audience here) - to be more empathetic and accommodating, to try harder to bridge the gap, and be more willing to accept overwork and neglect as the price of remaining in a relationship.

Reading this chapter, I thought of the latest batch of pro-marriage scolds, who started their current round of hectoring after Ward finished her book, and who seem weirdly uninterested in even trying to make heterosexual marriage sound pleasurable, only profitable. Just get married, the latest sales pitch argues, so you can have more money to raise your children. Never mind whether you like it, do it anyway, make the sacrifice, society demands it. (The modern scolds may not be explicit eugenicists, but their fear of White population decline and minority electoral power within a democratic system seem to me to be only barely, and poorly, concealed.)

For the next chapter, Ward attended pick-up artist classes for sexually frustrated men. Some are lonely and genuinely romantically unsuccessful; others are uninterested in the sort of women who want to sleep with them, and want to learn how to 'upgrade' to their ideal - young, White, blonde, thin. In Ward's view, these courses are the masculine counterpart to the women's self-help books. One thing the classes teach is simply a different repertoire of pick-up lines and techniques than whatever the conventional wisdom is at the time, thus setting these men apart simply by making them different from most of their peers in the bars and nightclubs. But the other thing they teach is how men can make themselves attractive to women simply by not acting like misogynists, to empathize with straight women's viewpoint and perspective, or at least convincingly fake it.

Next, Ward solicits anonymous responses to her own thesis from her friends on social media, then analyses these qualitative data points to extract themes. I don't know if I can take this part seriously as research; it feels more like eavesdropping on a trash-talking session at an entertaining queer dinner party. Besides calling out straight culture as boring, Ward's respondents most often report a kind of sadness at seeing so many of the straight women they know get treated so badly by their boyfriends and husbands.

Finally, Ward offers her suggestion for a solution. She contrasts herself to other feminist scholars who've encouraged straight people to try becoming queer, or to give up on long-term romantic relationships and rely on the camaraderie and support of same-gender friendships to help raise one's children and otherwise help carry one through the difficulties of life. Instead, Ward proposes a kind of leaning in to heterosexuality. She calls on straight men to 'like women so much that they actually like women,' and to desire women's full personhood, not only their (idealized) bodies and the benefits of their unpaid labor.