The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

straight culture seems to rely on a blind acceptance that women and men do not need to hold the other gender in high esteem as much as they need to need each other and to learn how to compromise and suppress their disappointment in the service of this need.

dramatically narrow ideas about what constitutes a female body worth desiring (waxed, shaved, scented, dieted, young, etc.) suggests that heteromasculinity is characterized by a much weaker and far more conditional desire for women’s bodies than is often claimed.

Erin Rodgers coined the term “emotional gold digger” to describe straight men’s reliance on women partners to “play best friend, lover, career advisor, stylist, social secretary, emotional cheerleader, mom.”

It is possible for straight men to like women so much, so deeply, that they actually really like women. 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. This is how lesbian feminists lust for women. I do not despair about the tragedy of heterosexuality, because another way is possible.

To be an authentically straight man, or a deep heterosexual—and not a pseudoheterosexual who uses women to impress men—one must be a feminist.