The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

by Jane Ward

In my now forty-five years as an observer of the straight world, I have noted that it appears to be perfectly acceptable for straight couples to share few interests, to belittle or infantilize each other, or to willingly segregate themselves during important moments in their relationships. Straight couples experience significant rites of passage like weddings and baby showers nearly separate from each other, even though these rituals, at least theoretically, are intended to signify something about the evolution of their partnerships. Many straight women spend dozens of hours planning each detail of their weddings or baby showers or baby gender-reveal parties, while straight men keep their distance from the very rituals that are intended to mark important moments in their lives. In no way do I intend to imply that couples should spend every minute together, but if we held straight couples to basic standards of good friendship—mutual respect and affection and a sense of comfort and bondedness based on shared experience—many straight relationships would fail the test.

John Gray offered a blueprint for a widely adopted, late-modern “patriarchal bargain,” to use the feminist political-economist Deniz Kandiyoti’s term, wherein women who perceive feminism to threaten their symbolic capital, safety, or respectability could choose instead a set of private, interpersonal negotiations (such as performing dramatic displays of gratitude when male partners engage in equitable behavior).65 Drawing from numerous global examples, Kandioyoti illustrates that many women “would rather adopt interpersonal strategies that maximize their security through manipulation of the affections of their sons and husband” rather than resist in ways that might deem them bad women—such as engaging in collective, public support for the redistribution of gendered power.

We have insufficient language to describe queer people’s experience of finding straight culture repellent and pitiable, given that heterosexuality has been presented to us as love’s gold standard. But even without a suitable name for this contradiction—the fact that the world’s most glorified relationship is often a miserable one—many queers have still spoken this truth.

“The so-called straight person is no safer than I am really. . . . The terrors homosexuals go through in this society would not be so great if society itself did not go through so many terrors it doesn’t want to admit.”4 As Baldwin saw it, it is not simply that straight people are suffering and in denial about it but that heterosexual misery expresses itself through the projection of terror onto the homosexual.

One way to think about this is that homophobia is the outward expression of heterosexual misery, a kind of subconscious jealous rage against the gendered and sexual possibilities that lie beyond the violence and disappointments of straight culture. Added to this anger is also an unspoken sadness—a chilling cloud of resignation—that is a palpable and sometimes repellent ingredient of the affect of straight culture. Straight people have few opportunities to grieve the disappointments of straight culture (the bad and coercive sex, the normalized inequities of daily life, straight men’s fragility and egomania, straight women’s growing disillusionment with men’s fragility and egomania, the failed marriages, the coparenting that is really solo parenting . . .) because how does one speak about the failure of the very system that defines people’s success?

Indeed, tremendous energy on the part of straight women continues to flow in the direction of repairing straight men, resulting in a lot of displaced disappointment and grief for which queer people (the gay or lesbian best friend) can become sounding boards and confidants. This heterofeminine grief is displaced to the extent that it remains focused on fixing relationships with individual men rather than identifying hetero norms and heteromasculinity themselves as fundamental problems.

This is why so many lesbians could relate to Carly Rae Jepsen's "Boy Problems"

“I like straight people just fine. But straight culture is dull as dirt. It isn’t even culture. It’s just what’s left over when all the interesting stuff has been driven out.” (femme WASP) “Straight men just seem like duds, like the worst person to get stuck next to at a dinner party. They don’t ever seem equally matched to their women partners—like the woman does all the socializing/connecting and the man has little to say or mansplains and interrupts or dominates.” (queer white trans) “They all do the same thing as other single or coupled straight people as if they are following a given agenda. It’s uncomfortable how boring they are.” (queer Hispanic female)

As described earlier, straight men suck the energy out of the room, and straight men are the first to fill it with boring vapor. Straight culture is what’s left over when all the interesting stuff has been emptied out or bored through. Straight women do the emotional labor, and straight men step in, or interrupt, when it’s time to explain things. And how do queers know this? We have witnessed it, but we have also listened to straight women complain about it,

Straight culture’s orientation toward heteroromantic sacrifice is also influenced by socioeconomic class. Respect for sacrifice—or sucking it up and surviving life’s miseries—is one of the hallmarks of white working-class culture, for instance, wherein striving for personal happiness carries less value than does adherence to familial norms and traditions.26 Maturity and respectability are measured by what one has given up in order to keep the family system going, an ethos that is challenged by the presence of a queer child, for instance, who insists on “being who they are.”

Queerness—to the extent that it emphasizes authenticity in one’s sexual relationships and fulfillment of personal desires—is an affront to the celebration of heteroromantic hardship. As Robin Podolsky has noted, “What links homophobia and heterosexism to the reification of sacrifice . . . is the specter of regret. Queers are hated and envied because we are suspected of having gotten away with something, of not anteing up to our share of the misery that every other decent adult has surrendered to.”

When heterosexuality is seen as the "correct" thing, it demonstrates that many self-identified heterosexuals are engaging in these relationships out of obligation instead of genuine desire.

For many lesbian daughters of working-class straight women, opting out of heterosexuality exposes the possibility of another life path, begging the question for mothers, “If my daughter didn’t have to do this, did I?” Heterosexuality is compulsory for middle-class women, too, but more likely to be represented as a gift, a promise of happiness, to be contrasted with the ostensibly “miserable” life of the lesbian.

The lesbian feminist theorist Sara Ahmed has offered a sustained critique of the role of queer abjection in the production of heteroromantic fantasies. In Living a Feminist Life, she notes that “it is as if queers, by doing what they want, expose the unhappiness of having to sacrifice personal desires . . . for the happiness of others.”28 In the Promise of Happiness, Ahmed argues, “Heterosexual love becomes about the possibility of a happy ending; about what life is aimed toward, as being what gives life direction or purpose, or as what drives a story.”29 Marked by sacrifice, misery, and failure along the way, the journey toward heterosexual happiness (to be found with the elusive “good man”) remains the journey.

As Adrienne Rich argued in 1980, “Profound skepticism, caution, and righteous paranoia about men may indeed be part of any healthy woman’s response to the woman-hatred embedded in male-dominated culture.” But Rich also highlighted that because misogyny is so profoundly normalized, many women, even feminist women, “fail to identify it until it takes, in their own lives, some permanently unmistakable and shattering form.”30 The normalization of misogyny, and women’s sense that although straight men are often unlikable and/or abusive, women must endure them anyway (because how else are women going to get their sexual and romantic needs met?) continues to have such cultural resonance that it is often the more or less explicit premise of self-help books marketed to women.

Which lesbian among us has not been accused of being a "man-hater" for simply pointing out something inappropriate a man said or did to his girlfriend or wife?

Straight Men Are the Worst (and Straight Women Are Enablers) “I can’t handle how low the bar is for straight-identified men when it comes to literally everything: emotional skills, sexual skills, communication, self-awareness. When I am not annoyed or enraged about this, it makes me deeply sad.” (queer femme, white, cis woman) “Straight men and the way they treat everyone makes me uncomfortable. My guard is always fully up when I meet a new straight man. He might hurt anyone, including himself at any moment to prove how manly he is. . . . I am ready to fight for my life whenever I meet a new straight man. . . . Also the way straight women coddle and excuse away the behavior of their partners as if they are children. They are enabling them to do dumb shit.” (queer Latina)

I really wish Jane Ward has read "Loving to Survive" by Dee L. R. Graham prior to starting this book.

“I find it depressing to see what my straight female friends put up with regarding treatment from men. I really sympathize with these women, but at the same time it makes me feel alienated from them. Our lives become so different when theirs revolves around attachment to a cruel, insensitive, self-centered, or simply boring man.” (queer white European cis female)

“The gender dynamics between cis-het straight people are often disturbing and not especially feminist. Even if the man ‘supports’ feminism, he eats up more air time, . . . he looks for validation. . . . When I spend time with single cis-het female friends, much of the conversation is dominated by their dating lives, and sadly, pathetically, whether or not a man they are dating is ignoring them. . . . I also hate it when cis-het women say things like, ‘I wish I could just be a lesbian.’” (Filipino, masculine female)

The reason it is unsettling for many queers to listen to straight women complain about men’s deficiencies is not because we don’t agree with this assessment (we agree) but because it is distressing to hear these same women justify or resign themselves to men’s shortcomings.

Constantly!!!!!!!!!!!!

Straight women are especially delighted when the men they love display basic decency or reciprocity, and they tell us so: “I am so lucky to have one of the good ones,” they say. Meanwhile, many of us queers are thinking, “That’s what counts as good?” We also know that the answer is yes, it is what counts as good, because as the folks quoted above explain, many straight men are violent and unpredictable. They are cruel, insensitive, self-centered, and simply boring.

Women’s swirl of heteroadoration and real or performative hatred can look to queer observers like a kind of gallows humor. What can a straight woman do but laugh and/or cry about having a husband she finds lazy and thoughtless,35 a terrible conversationalist,36 and as much work as taking care of a child?

Unfortunately, I know plenty of bi/queer-identified women dating men who are guilty of this very thing.

Queer observers of heterosexual misery don’t always know how to feel about straight women’s suffering. Perhaps it is their own private business; perhaps everything is fine as long as straight women, themselves, are willing to forgive the men in their lives. And perhaps queers are doing no better, as many of us also lie, cheat, and engage in no end of painful behavior. But the thing about heterosexual misery that makes it irreducible to basic human foible is that straight relationships are rigged from the start. Straight culture, unlike queer culture, naturalizes and often glorifies men’s failures and women’s suffering, hailing girls and women into heterofemininity through a collective performance of resilience.

I wonder if Jane Ward replaced "lesbian" with "queer" in sections like this to make it seem more universal and relatable? I have very few heterosexual friends, so most of my observations of this behavior comes from my observations of queer-identified women who exclusively date men. They are still queer. This obfuscates what Ward misrepresents as a clear divide between "queerness" and "straightness" irt women's relationships with men.

For instance, straight women’s suffering, and men’s redemption, played itself out on the national stage in 2016 with the release of Beyoncé’s opus Lemonade, which chronicled Jay-Z’s lying and infidelity and Beyoncé’s rage and ultimate forgiveness. Here again, popular discourse seized on the opportunity to position a Black woman as an exemplar of heteroromantic survival. The Ethiopian American writer Hannah Giorgis, writing for the Atlantic, explains that very little was required of Jay-Z for him to be forgiven: Male redemption narratives have rarely required of their leading figures any meaningful restoration or atonement. The simple act of apologizing is enough to warrant a second act. Of course, Beyoncé is entitled to forgive her husband, . . . [but this] redemption tour is not simply a private burying of grievances, but also a public statement, a literal performance of absolution wrought through female suffering. [Their subsequent joint album] Everything Is Love . . . ends with Jay celebrating Bey—and the myriad other black women like her—by praising her ability to endure his misdeeds. . . . But the suggestion . . . that women’s pain is the sole vehicle for male redemption, is exhausting. Who rescues the rescuer?38

If I speak...

Giorgis speaks, indirectly, to one of the primary reasons that straight culture remains unaddressed, or “unrescued” from itself: people cannot be rescued from forms of suffering that they themselves relate to as badges of honor.

IF I SPEAK...

Thinking psychoanalytically about straightness, the French feminist philosopher Monique Wittig put it this way: “The straight mind cannot conceive of a culture, a society where heterosexuality would not order not only all human relationships but also its very production of concepts and all the processes which escape consciousness, as well.”42 Basically, straightness shapes everything, precisely by narrowing the field of what is conceivable or limiting the imagination.

"Who's the man?"ad infinitum.

because queer circuits of desire do not rely on the erotic encounter of “opposites” embedded in a broader culture of gendered acrimony and alienation, queer lust need not reconcile a conflict between wanting to fuck and generally disliking one’s fuckable population. Queer desire does not immediately hit up against prescripted, institutionally sanctioned misogyny. This means that something very powerful is possible in queer life that I rarely see in straight culture: a merging of objectifying desire, on the one hand, and a feminist, subjectifying respect for those who are desired, on the other.

Is "queer" appropriate to use in this context? Or the most accurate word for what Ward is attempting to describe? What would be wrong with replacing it with "homosexual desire" if it is simply describing the act of desiring?

Rich argued, to have genuine regard for women logically meant not attempting to own them in marriage or otherwise block their intimacy with friends and comrades or inhibit their capacity to live engaged and meaningful lives. For the Radicalesbians, to desire women meant that one’s “energies flowed toward women,” that one desired to “relate more completely to women.”17 It meant disinvesting in “male identification,” or in the practice of supporting, benefiting from, justifying, and being complicit with patriarchal interests. It meant recognizing that while straight men claimed to love women, in fact their energies flowed toward men—toward admiring men, seeking men’s approval, forging bonds with men, and so on. Heterosexuality, lesbian feminists recognized, was an oppressively homosocial—and often homoerotic—institution that romanticized men and women’s alienation from each other.

Difference and animality do not have to mean hierarchy.” Wolf went on to explain that women and men are so different, at least so differently socialized, that they are, for all intents and purposes, in a “cross-cultural relationship.”

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.

I will try to be a better ally to straight and some bi people by not alienating them by simply sharing my observations about their relationship dynamics.