The Tragedy of Heterosexuality: 56 (Sexual Cultures)

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I'm not even sure where to begin for this one. I originally requested this book because I saw the title and I absolutely lost it. The concept seemed right up my alley, and I was really keen to read it. It had all the key elements to make for a potential five star read for me. But, alas... The execution. 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.

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. La premisa hetroromántica se le vende a la mujer como el vínculo más importante y que dará sentido a su vida, los dolores, tragedias y luchas forman parte de esta historia. Incluso se generan vinculos con otras mujeres al celebrar esta habilidad de sobrevivir a las decepciones y salir empoderadas: el sacrificio heteroromántico para llegar a la felicidad. El amor profundo de la mujer redime al hombre a través de su amor nutriente, perfecto y de aceptación. El dolor y sufrimiento femenino es el vehículo para la redención masculina y nuestra medalla de honor; sufrimiento y aceptación que se alinean con el capitalismo, con lo cual se acepta una vida aburrida y cansada como modelo a seguir. La heteroresignación y el heteropesimismo son ritos de edad de las mujeres. Hay un trabajo constante que la mujer tiene que realizar para mantener y sostener la satisfacción temporal del hombre dentro de la relación, con el miedo del abandono o la inseguridad económica. La lógica heteronormativa nos hace aceptar que entre hombres y mujeres no tenemos que gustarnos o querernos sino aguantarnos y suprimir nuestros deseos y necesidades. Que los hombres puedan ser desagradables o abusivos se plantean como cosas que hay que aguantar para cumplir con nuestras necesidades sexuales y románticas. queers are braced for the inevitable moment when a straight woman proclaims, offhandedly, "I wish I could just be a lesbian." Sigh. Why don't you be one, then? some of us wonder. It's not that hard. As an ally for straight people, I wish for them that their lust for one another might be genuinely born out of mutual regard and solidarity."

University of California, Riverside

Similarly, in lifetime victims of sexual crimes (although the CDC did not separate rape and other sexual violence when reporting on the sex of the perpetrator) lesbian victims are more likely to have a female perpetrator (14.8%) than both bisexual (12.5%) and heterosexual women victims (5.3%) – indicating that intimate partner sexual violence against women in lesbian relationships could be as prevalent as that in heterosexual relationships (I’ve also read a study where nearly 50% of lesbians reported sexual abuse by a woman partner – although the study is almost 30 years old and could hardly be called representative so that’s likely way high, but then again, the same shortcomings that study suffers from are present in a lot of studies relating to different sex perpetrators as well). La heterosexualidad como la entendemos ahora ha sido fruto de propaganda para enseñar a las mujeres a desear las relaciones con los hombres a pesar de su inequidad. La heterosexualidad se organiza entre el amor y el abuso, comenzando desde el "te molesta porque le gustas" esa lógica sigue presente en la heterosexualidad adulta con lo que la autora llama la “paradoja de la misoginia” donde el hombre desea a la mujer pero no la humaniza. "Los hombres desean los servicios que proveen las mujeres: emocionales, sexuales, reproductivos, domésticos; más que a las mujeres reales". Mientras que la mujer aprende a acontentarse con poco con tal de experimentar el amor romántico que se nos vende como la fuente de la felicidad, estatus, protección y estabilidad, promesas que muchas veces no se verán cumplidas. She lives in Southern California with her partner Kat Ross. Ward's published work focuses on a broad range of topics, from feminist pornography, queer parenting, and the racial politics of same-sex marriage, to the social construction of heterosexuality and whiteness.

I just felt like these remarks were incredibly unprofessional and shouldn't be in a book which I thought to be was a scientific work of gender- and sexuality studies. As for the second, “without suffering so much,” part of the equation where Ward argues that women are better off in non-heterosexual relationships, well, there’s no denying that women too frequently do suffer in heterosexual relationships. Interestingly enough though, from 2017 through 2020, intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships was roughly 75% more common than it was in heterosexual relationships according to the USDOJ (and according to the CDC both sexual and regular intimate partner violence is less common in gay relationships than male victimization is in heterosexual relationships, so a disproportionate part of those additional victims was found in lesbian relationships). Ward writes about “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality,” I would argue that it is more The Tragedy of Love. The solution to this tragedy though, is not to sunder and point fingers, but to heal and embrace. The writing I felt like switched from informative to being straight up 'holier than thou' and 'better than you' and that irked me to no end. I didn't get anything from the remaining chapters than the quote witch which I started this review "Why don't you then, it's not that hard". Ward's first book, Respectably Queer, is based on her observations of three different queer organizations: the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, Bienestar, and Los Angeles-Christopher Street West. [ citation needed]

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This book is really worth a read, but I'm wondering if straight people are ready to hear that their straightness is a tragedy. Muchas mujeres, incluy��ndome, usamos frases como "pinches onvres" o decimos desear haber nacido lesbianas, la autora nos pregunta: si la heterosexualidad es tan natural, por qué resulta tan cohersiva, por qué hay tanto desagrado público entre hombres y mujeres? por qué las mujeres están tan insatisfechas sexualmente? La autora asegura "la hetrosexualidad es una orientación sexual organizada alrededor del desagrado mutuo (misoginia y resentimiento)", el desinteres y violencia de parte de los hombres se encuentra con el resentimiento y el miedo de parte de las mujeres como base de las relaciones hetero; y explica como la transición de mujer degradada y subordinada a mujer como igual y digna de amor no ha sido completa ni resuelta dentro de la heterosexualidad. 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. And then Ward diagnoses the problem. She does this by doing what she calls “reversing the ally gaze” or, what I call “treating straight people the way they treat us”. 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.

Nor is it in the sexual arena where, despite the lower rate of orgasms, women in heterosexual relationships appear to be about as satisfied as their lesbian counterparts – at the very least, the data is inconsistent and frequently also show that straight women are more satisfied than lesbian women are (and even more so than bisexual women). And it’s not like men can’t be dissatisfied with the sex in a relationship either (hell, even the sky high male orgasm rate is only about 85%). The “birthday blowjob” isn’t a cultural phenomenon for nothing (on a TMI personal note, more than once have I run into women who give oral exactly once in a relationship – that being on the first date that ends in sex). 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. 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. Ward is known for her books The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (New York University Press, 2020), a 2021 PROSE Award Winner, [2] and Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men ( NYU Press, 2015), [3] a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. [4] Ward's research has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, NPR, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Forbes, Salon, Newsweek, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, and Vice. Her 2008 book Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations was named a favorite book of 2008 by The Progressive magazine. [5]Straight culture promises women the world, but, in reality, offers women very little,” Ward said. “Queer culture, on the other hand, is a source of joy for most queer people; it’s homophobia and straight culture, not queer culture, that is the source of most queer suffering.”

Singal, Jesse (August 5, 2015). "Why Straight Men Have Sex With Each Other". New York . Retrieved November 28, 2015. I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in return for my review. I am a hetero woman who has researched and written a lot about hetero love, romance, sex and marriage. I appreciated Jane Ward's take on the heterosexual repair industry and her deep dive into what heterosexual women have to put up with to get and keep what society tells them they need — the love of a man and a happily-ever-after narrative. But a patriarchal society that for so long has made women dependent on men and supported romantic relationships that are overwhelmingly unequal has not made that all that pleasant for us. 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.All the feminist texts I had read could not drown out what I had absorbed from society and popular culture: that it was my duty to satisfy my husband, regardless of my own feelings.” 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. Half essay, half academic research, this reading was right at my alley. And maybe it can be of yours too, if you’re interested in these type of thing, but you’re bored/not interested/intimidated of/by academic papers, that tend to take themselves too seriously. This book will make you reflect on this subject, and some of our every-day-life events that we take for granted, but maybe we shouldn’t. Are queer people really the victims of our society? Should we really feel sorry for the LGBTIAQ+ community? Or should we focus our lense to the straight and cis woman? I have my own answer to this question. I hope you get to read this and get your own. This book is a loving lesbian intervention, a defamiliarized look at what we’ve come to expect from heterosexuality."