The Tragedy of Heterosexuality: 56 (Sexual Cultures)

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For Manne, it’s a prime example of male entitlement, an aspect of misogyny that prioritizes what men believe they deserve and what women should give them, which is, obviously, problematic. Some people have criticized the portion towards the end where she asks queer people whether they like being around straight people or if they prefer queer people and why, and a lot of the responses are about how boring straight people are and how they don't seem to care about much aside from buying things and self-promotion. People thought this section was mean-spirited, but I just thought it was funny. Probably not the most helpful in terms of how to help straight people get out of the bind of their tragic situations, but funny. Psychic damage one million. I finished this audiobook and then had a Golden Bachelor/Bachelor in Paradise double header with Claire and then did a sexual harassment training course for work, which really added to the experience. (Although (here's how I can make this about the Bachelor) Bachelor in Paradise this season so far is, dare I say, subversive. Super unintentionally, it just so happens that the stereotypical gendered traits within the relationships are a little inverted, por pura causalidad. If anyone here is in Bachelor Nation hit my line.)

Justamente una forma en la que se expresa la miseria hetrosexual es en el terror cultural a la homosexualidad, la homofobia es la expresión externa de la miseria hetero: la tristeza, y resignación a la normalidad, el miedo a desear, a ser diferente. Una de las frases del libro nos dice "si lo queer es demasiado, lo hetero es muy poco" El aburrimiento es parte de la cultura hetero, la autora define algo aburrido como algo vacío y vincula el aburrimiento con la opresión. Dentro de la hetrosexualidad, el género es una repetición, un proceso sin fin en el cual adquirimos la normalidad, o legibilidad dentro el binario masculino/femenino. En el control de estos roles predictivos y poco originales la cultura hetrosexual genera personalidades aburridas y reprimidas. El enfoque hetero es mantener las cosas tal cual están, politicamente es apático y desinteresado por la justicia social. In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the 21st 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. In the popular consciousness, women and men are assumed to have totally different interests, personalities, and sex drives, making them inherently incompatible. Heterosexual relationships, thus, become a battleground where partners get what they want from each other through coercion and manipulation. Looking in on heterosexuality as a queer outsider and ally, Ward rejects the commercialized self-help tactics she examines and proposes a more radical approach, adapted from queer and feminist writers and personal conversations, which she calls “deep heterosexuality.” Straight couples don’t need to learn cleverer and more subtle ways to manipulate each other. They need to find ways to relate that don’t depend on patriarchy and misogyny.Men need to learn to genuinely like women and situate loving and pleasing women at the center of their sexual attraction to women. Men can learn from lesbians how to desire and have sex with women and love them as true equals. They can identify with women, share women’s interests and concerns, and still find women as thrilling as lesbians do. Exactly. And yet as we have seen during the pandemic, women are still doing more than their share of the household labor, about which countless articles and books have been written, and curbing their work hours to manage children while most men have not. And thus is the state of heterosexual marriage. He estado leyendo muy poco pero escuché a la autora hablar de este libro en un podcast (tierneytalks) donde tocaba los puntos principales de este libro, y el título me llamó mucho la atención. Advertencia: mi reseña es larguísima porque este libro me puso dio mucho en que pensar.

Look, I don't hate allo-cishet people, that's not what this is. What this is is appreciation for Ward's ability to deconstruct societal scripts in a way that they actually end up making a lot of sense. I am... perpetually confused by how human beings function and how societal norms develop, but Ward has a real skill for making it accessible while stressing that while dangerous social norms are the fault of social structures, we can choose to reject them if we choose to recognize them. I am, in other words, very much in sympathy with the author's thesis that heterosexuals aren't happier than we are.It was also very interesting to see the history from which this current social paradox arose, and the circumstances under which the idea of heterosexuality being about love between a man and a woman (rather than just a partnership, alliance, or business arrangement) began to arise. People always say the nature of gayness was different in the past... It was interesting to see how the nature of straightness is similarly transient and sometimes difficult to discern. This book is really worth a read, but I'm wondering if straight people are ready to hear that their straightness is a tragedy. In philosopher Kate Manne’s latest book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, she references an article written anonymously by a woman — a humanities professor who teaches feminist theory — who felt sexually violated by her husband throughout their eight-year marriage. All she could do was comply: