Abstract
Heterosexuals are the ghosts that haunt research about the LGBTQ+ community. Often assumed to be uniformly privileged, they are typically imagined in three ways by researchers: (a) their civil rights are abstractly framed as a goal post for the LGBTQ+ movement; (b) they are viewed as potential resources for activists to mobilize; and (c) they are treated as the source of LGBTQ+ people’s suffering. In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward turns these assumptions on their head, inviting readers to ask instead, “How does heteronormativity harm the very individuals who are supposed to benefit from it?” By asking this, she decenters queer trauma from research on the LGBTQ+ community and insists that we consider what straight and cisgender people can learn from their queer and transgender counterparts. She argues that re-centering queer joy in our conversations about gender and sexuality has the potential to lead to transformative justice, not only for LGBTQ+ people, but straight people as well.
Despite widespread cultural beliefs in the naturalness and superiority of heterosexuality, Ward compellingly argues that it is actually designed to create misery for all involved. She notes that a “misogyny paradox”—wherein men are conditioned to objectify women’s bodies but disavow the feminine—poisons heterosexuality from the start. She illustrates this by highlighting two industries that have emerged to sell heterosexuality: relationship therapy (which focuses on women) and the seduction industry (which targets men). Ward begins by providing an overview of how marriage therapists have long taught women that keeping heterosexual relationships alive means performing extensive emotional labor and accepting that men will not do the same. She then shows how the “pick-up artist” subculture emerged to similarly resolve the contradictions of heterosexuality for men, teaching them how to attract women who are “out of their league” by temporarily providing them with the emotional connection they yearn for while acknowledging the sexual objectification they face daily. Ward argues these industries expose the forced quality of heterosexuality and the dissatisfaction that its participants, especially women, experience.
Ward closes the book by challenging the idea that LGBTQ+ people’s goal should be assimilation. Rather than modeling their love lives after heterosexuals, she shows how many lesbian and queer community members view heterosexuality as “a sick and boring life.” Instead of buying into gay men–driven movement narratives that insist LGBTQ+ people are “just like” straight people, she argues that straight people could learn a great deal from LGBTQ+ relationships, particularly the emotional support and focus on women’s pleasure that define the relationships of many queer women. As such, she proposes we reverse the ally relationship and consider how LGBTQ+ people can be role models for the straight people in their lives, especially the straight women who bear the brunt of the misogyny paradox. Rather than shaming straight people, she encourages readers to support them in developing a “deep heterosexuality” that is grounded in men’s emotional connection to women rather than their objectification of them.
This book is an exceptionally timely intervention. We live in a moment where the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement has crystallized around a political agenda based on securing the same rights as straight people—and when many young gay men and lesbians insist their sexuality is irrelevant. The Tragedy of Heterosexuality refreshingly disrupts this narrative, calling us back to a time when lesbian feminists and queer theorists had more revolutionary goals of transforming sexuality for the betterment of all. Furthermore, it does so without also resurrecting some of the central problems of these earlier theories, particularly their centering of cisgender white LGB people. For example, Ward compellingly connects widespread cultural anxieties around heterosexuality to the goals of the eugenics movement and unpacks the unique challenges heterosexual Black women face when they interface with the aforementioned relationship industries due to misogynoir.
These arguments could have been even stronger with more rigorous methods. The chapter that explores LGBTQ+ attitudes toward the lives of straight people, while captivating, relies heavily on the author’s personal social media networks. Ward acknowledges that these data are not meant to be generalizable, yet this caveat sidesteps an important question: If heterosexuality is such a tragedy, why do so many LGBTQ+ people outside Ward’s queer and progressive networks seek to model their relationships and families after it? Had this chapter included the rich content analysis and ethnography that made other chapters so powerful, this question could perhaps have been more deeply explored. However, these minor critiques in no way diminish the importance of the book, which I expect to become required reading in LGBTQ+ and gender studies courses.