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I loved Elizabeth Jane Ward’s Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, so of course when I discovered her new book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality I had to give it a try.
“As an ally to straight people, I wish for them that their lust for one another might be genuinely born out of mutual regard and solidarity,” Ward notes. But for many Americans, heterosexuality is “a sexual orientation characterized by attraction to people one dislikes.” #notallheterosexuals, obviously, but the inescapable dislike that men and women feel toward each other, not only in general but between both parties in a marriage (whom you might assume got married because they feel some affection for each other), are a staple in sitcoms, jokes about marriage, marriage manuals, etc.
IMO this trend reached its apex in the 1950s & 1960s, when pop culture tended to treat marriage as both compulsory and inescapably awful - to the extent that Morticia and Gomez’s loving relationship in The Addams Family was meant to be part of what made the Addam’s family weird! - but, as Ward points out, the idea is definitely still around. Many straight women find men boring, irritating, morally repugnant, and physically repulsive, not only in general but often in the specific person of their own partner, and many straight men return this favor with interest.
To be honest I thought that finding men in general boring and irritating disqualified me from straightness, but in fact that is apparently common among straight women, and the only quality I am lacking is endurance. All that you truly need to succeed as a straight person is the willingness to put up with a disappointing partner that you neither like nor respect nor enjoy having sex with!
Seriously, though, when so many heterosexual women say outright that they don’t find men attractive or enjoy having sex with them, what does it mean for a woman to be heterosexual? Is the willingness to endure disappointing sex for an even more disappointing relationship truly the defining feature? Ward doesn’t say this outright, but one feels a certain skepticism of the whole heterosexual project in the lead-up to the heterosexual repair program she offers in the last chapter: “Deep heterosexuality proclaims: if straight women and men are actually attracted to each other, that is excellent. Now let’s expand the notion of heterosexual attraction to include such a powerful longing for the full humanity of women, and for the sexual vulnerability of men, that anything less becomes suspect as authentic heterosexual desire.”
Rather than the current simulacrum of heterosexuality that straight men unconvincingly muster, Ward suggests, “Straight men could be so unstoppably heterosexual that they crave hearing women’s voices, thirst for women’s leadership, ache to know women’s full humanity, and thrill at women’s freedom.”
She MAY be absolutely serious about this, but to be honest it’s hard not to read this as tongue-in-cheek. Again, #notallstraightmen, but it’s hard to imagine straight men as a whole embracing this program. In fact, even though Ward aims this vision of heterosexual repair exclusively at men, I suspect that if it got into the wild, the populace would somehow turn it around so that it would be women, once again, trying earnestly to reach a new and higher standard of heterosexuality. “Not only will I listen to my boyfriend’s dull ramblings,” says our heroine, giving herself a grim pep talk in the mirror, “but I will find them genuinely interesting. And I WILL enjoy having sex with him, too!”
“As an ally to straight people, I wish for them that their lust for one another might be genuinely born out of mutual regard and solidarity,” Ward notes. But for many Americans, heterosexuality is “a sexual orientation characterized by attraction to people one dislikes.” #notallheterosexuals, obviously, but the inescapable dislike that men and women feel toward each other, not only in general but between both parties in a marriage (whom you might assume got married because they feel some affection for each other), are a staple in sitcoms, jokes about marriage, marriage manuals, etc.
IMO this trend reached its apex in the 1950s & 1960s, when pop culture tended to treat marriage as both compulsory and inescapably awful - to the extent that Morticia and Gomez’s loving relationship in The Addams Family was meant to be part of what made the Addam’s family weird! - but, as Ward points out, the idea is definitely still around. Many straight women find men boring, irritating, morally repugnant, and physically repulsive, not only in general but often in the specific person of their own partner, and many straight men return this favor with interest.
To be honest I thought that finding men in general boring and irritating disqualified me from straightness, but in fact that is apparently common among straight women, and the only quality I am lacking is endurance. All that you truly need to succeed as a straight person is the willingness to put up with a disappointing partner that you neither like nor respect nor enjoy having sex with!
Seriously, though, when so many heterosexual women say outright that they don’t find men attractive or enjoy having sex with them, what does it mean for a woman to be heterosexual? Is the willingness to endure disappointing sex for an even more disappointing relationship truly the defining feature? Ward doesn’t say this outright, but one feels a certain skepticism of the whole heterosexual project in the lead-up to the heterosexual repair program she offers in the last chapter: “Deep heterosexuality proclaims: if straight women and men are actually attracted to each other, that is excellent. Now let’s expand the notion of heterosexual attraction to include such a powerful longing for the full humanity of women, and for the sexual vulnerability of men, that anything less becomes suspect as authentic heterosexual desire.”
Rather than the current simulacrum of heterosexuality that straight men unconvincingly muster, Ward suggests, “Straight men could be so unstoppably heterosexual that they crave hearing women’s voices, thirst for women’s leadership, ache to know women’s full humanity, and thrill at women’s freedom.”
She MAY be absolutely serious about this, but to be honest it’s hard not to read this as tongue-in-cheek. Again, #notallstraightmen, but it’s hard to imagine straight men as a whole embracing this program. In fact, even though Ward aims this vision of heterosexual repair exclusively at men, I suspect that if it got into the wild, the populace would somehow turn it around so that it would be women, once again, trying earnestly to reach a new and higher standard of heterosexuality. “Not only will I listen to my boyfriend’s dull ramblings,” says our heroine, giving herself a grim pep talk in the mirror, “but I will find them genuinely interesting. And I WILL enjoy having sex with him, too!”
