The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

Speaking as if directly to this decent but self-centered male sex partner, the representative of “anyman, everyman,” she explains, You’re a decent guy. . . . I do not feel like you are going to rape me. . . . The sex wasn’t particularly bad, either. . . . It was normal sex. Normal, boring, vaguely dehumanizing hetero sex. Which is precisely the point: The normalcy. . . . Because there was something in the choreography of the whole thing that just struck me as, I don’t know—unsatisfying in a way only feminism can remedy. . . . Here, supposedly, is what you consider sex: We make out, you play with my boobs, I blow you, you do not go down on me even though I ask [*insert some bullshit on how “I only go down on women I’m in love with. Now put it in your mouth.”]. Penis goes in vagina, penis moves in and out of vagina, . . . penis ejaculates. . . . Sex is now over because you have decided it is over. You have decided sex is over because you are a man, and because this choreography that favors men with penises—man becomes erect, man penetrates woman, man ejaculates—is what we have been told sex is.50