The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

All of this said, my intention is not to romanticize queer life. Being queer hardly means we are saved from sexual abuse, intimate-partner violence, unhealthy relationships, or traumatic breakups. Queer people act out and hurt each other in numerous ways, including violence, addiction, lying, and so forth. But the key difference between straight culture and queer culture in this regard is that the latter does not attribute these destructive behaviors to a romantic story about a natural and inescapable gender binary. Lesbians, for instance, do not find ourselves attracted to a gender category that is principally defined by its inability to understand or identify with our own. We are not mansplained by the people who claim to love us. We are not expected by our partners to shoulder the most devalued household and parenting labor because we are women. On the whole, misogyny has not cast a shadow of fear over our flirtations. Our relationships, unlike straight relationships, aren’t presumed to be subject to gender-based antagonisms or in structural conflict from the start.