Jane Ward (1)

My friend told me I *had* to read this, so I did. For an academic book, it had some genuinely funny bits. For example, lots of memes and pop culture jokes about how miserable it is to be married and/or straight ("Tragically, we are heterosexual," says Leslie Knope about her and Anne).

Not to brag, but I am happily married so I could read most of this with a light heart. I read a bunch of passages aloud to my husband who pointed out that the author sort of cherry-picked the worst of heterosexuality (self-help books, seduction camps, straight culture vs. queer culture (no contest), fragile/toxic masculinity, the whole history of misogyny and patriarchy, etc.). I'm joking, but what are you going to do? It's not like we can choose who we fall in love with.

Or can we? I was surprised when the author implied that being a lesbian can be a choice (a "cultivated political stance"). Is this empowering? Is the "born this way" view of sexuality a way to avoid a more thoughtful and intentional view of one's sexuality? I don't know, but it's a really interesting idea to mull over.

I was glad to see the final chapter was about the goal of finding a "deep heterosexuality" in which women can be seen as equals in relationships of "mutual regard." I'll quote from the most hopeful passages:

"How might the heterosexual impulse be taken to its most human and fulfilling, and least violent and disappointing, conclusion? ...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."

The author basically says we should all be feminists (duh). Sadly, we know that the misogyny paradox is real. How can you love a woman when you don't respect her? How can you call her your equal or partner when you don't acknowledge her full humanity?… (mer)

This book contains descriptions of sex acts, and of genitals.

The author does mention trans people throughout, but the descriptions of sexual activities is still very cisnormative, which ignores that there are straight trans people too.

Having lived as a straight woman, a bisexual man, and now a queer non-binary person, I found myself relating to things in this book from several different perspectives. From all of them, I agree with the conclusion that modern heterosexuality is tragic for both the men and women involved, and that straight men are capable of much better.… (mer)

DNF (why at end)

I came across this and am reading it as a NetGalley ARC. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am white, cis female, heterosexual, demisexual, and married for 40 years, child of parents happily married until death. I am very aware of problematic hetero nonsense, but have not experienced it personally. I know a reasonable number of het and queer couples & clumps (polyamorous) to claim I am familiar with what both success and failure look like.

I scrolled through the early reviews, and now I'm amused. Particularly at the reviewer who wants a more "unbiased" version of this book. Apparently they're new to humanity. But seriously, their problem is, they're new to an author different from themself. Jane Ward states her position in the human spectrum (lesbian) and her background as a teacher of gender studies, and with our own positions & experience, we--most of us--can understand why her observations might align with and/or differ from our own. This is how reading works.

The writing is a bit dense, as is common in academic work. It's not my favorite, but it's good so far.

Okay, DNF at 7%, because it's not just dense, it is repetitively dense, and I have no patience for that. It's too bad. I was interested, but the author's style stomped it into a pancake, sigh.… (mer)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A troubling account of heterosexual desire in the era of #MeToo

Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every day on relationship coaches, seduction boot camps, and couple’s therapy in a search for happiness.

In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the twenty-first century, and what straight people can do to fix it for good. She shows how straight women, and to a lesser extent straight men, have tried to mend a fraught patriarchal system in which intimacy, sexual fulfillment, and mutual respect are expected to coexist alongside enduring forms of inequality, alienation, and violence in straight relationships.

Ward also takes an intriguing look at the multi-billion-dollar self-help industry, which markets goods and services to help heterosexual couples without addressing the root of their problems. Ultimately, she encourages straight men and women to take a page out of queer culture, reminding them “about the human capacity to desire, fuck, and show respect at the same time.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I grew up in a wealthy white suburban area, with parents whose last child I was. They had long since ended the honeymoon phase of marriage; they had two daughters they each pretty thoroughly disliked at least one of; their feelings about each other were still in flux. Along I came; everything changed in their middle-aged world and my sisters' teens. Absolutely no one came out of that pressure cooker unmangled.

I am, in other words, very much in sympathy with the author's thesis that heterosexuals aren't happier than we are.

The author puts the blame for the unhappiness squarely on men and their misogyny. The institutions men have built are designed to reinforce straight white male supremacy. Gay men, too, if white, participate in the male-designed system of woman-degrading misogyny. To their detriment, of course; to all male beings' detriment.

As far as it goes, this is pretty inarguably like the world one sees outside one's doors and windows, so am I going to beef with that? Hm. I'm not sure it counts as a beef, but allow me to assure you, Author Ward, that women whether heterosexual, bisexual, or lesbian, or any combination thereof, are perfectly capable of being horribly racist, sexist, and abusive. Allow me to tell you about my mother's incestuous sexual abuse of my ephebe self; her phony "christian conversion" that enabled her to use a whole new vocabulary of hateful, denigrating, destructive invective aimed at making sure I was eternally off-balance and unsure of my male self's worth...the aforementioned sisters and their litany of belittling and insulting characterizations of me...so, yeah, about those awful and abusive men: they had mothers whose actions were, if examined carefully, pretty awful. Was that solely and entirely the mothers' response to patriarchy and heteronormativity? I beg to differ. Some people are just not very nice and should be not be encouraged to spread that by having children!

Yet now our QUILTBAG brethren and sistern are falling over themselves to get married and have kids! We're equal, we can do the same things straight people do! And here, Author Ward, you and I agree: Shouldn't we be liberating our straight family from this structure designed to control and contain women, not rushing into it for ourselves? Isn't that a better project all the way around? Allow people to design their own lives, and stay away from prescribed identities like "husband" or "wife" or "parent" if those aren't appealing.

Suddenly the blind panic of the red-meat right to clamp down on abortion first, then come after the rest of the bodily and spiritual autonomy that so threatens their control, makes all the sense in the world. Heterosexuality is, from a QUILTBAG person's perspective, a terrible tragedy indeed. It's conflated with heteronormativity. Demoting "heterosexuality" to a sexual behavior is a darn good project. I myownself have engaged in heterosexuality (didn't much like it). In heteronormativity, even, and I REALLY didn't like that. Stopped it a long time ago.

So Author Ward, standing outside the institution and hollering at the guards, is onto a winner for all of me. She wouldn't be if she hadn't decoupled "heterosexuality" to the straight version of "homosexuality"...that simply describes what sexual behaviors one engages in. Now the problem, the enemy, is identified as "heteronormativity" or the cultural monolith of patriarchal abuse and control. The inmates in the institution need freeing! They need it badly and now. This moment in history is an inflection point. We can see that because every single facet of the progressive social and economic agendas are being fought by the social-control freaks using every tool and trick the centuries of their ruthlessly enforced dominance have given them. Because they know that, given freedom to choose, people aren't going to choose their way in majority numbers.

Racists fear being made into a minority...why? Heteronormatives fear living in a world with people who love in different ways...why? Because they fear the repression they're nakedly, openly enacting against us. "Sucks to be you" is their silent, though getting less and less so, taunt.

So there's value in this exercise for me, a cis white American male, a scion of almost godlike privilege.

The problems with a lesbian-only critique of straightness are clear, including a lack of critical straight participants in this exercise and the exclusion of all Y-chromosome bearers. I refuse to believe not one male has ever made a critique of heteronormative culture that is valid, that does not wholly or partially exemplify the misogynistic mode of control. But there's another beam in the author's eye: TERFs like Adrienne Rich and Cherie Moraga. Of all the marginalized groups that need a voice in this chorus, the trans community is top of my list...not one word. I'm poking at the author's lack of inclusiveness because inclusion is what the author's demanding. But only for XXwomen...? I thought biological determinism was among the patriarchy's tools of control....

So I don't think the read is perfect. I do think it enlightened me and brought thoughts to the surface of my mind that I really enjoy having there. Yes, we need to educate our heteronormative society's mainstream about the costs to them all of the horrible system that's in place. But let's stop excluding people as part of that, and Author Ward's presentation of trenchant and valuable arguments does that regrettable thing.… (mer)