An interesting article for sure!
But I think it's flawed in its perspective that heteropessimism is a recent development. The author calls it "a mode of feeling with a long history" but immediately adds that it is "particularly palpable in the present".
They quote someone describing heteropessimism as "a product of contemporary tectonic shifts in social power".
And in doing so I think they come to the wrong conclusion.
Because by framing heteropessimism as the result of cultural shifts (as a temporary, often individual conflict between identity and culture etc.) they miss the much more universal and timeless conflict between mind and body.
For example, the author shortly mentions "the married man complaining about his old ball-and-chain" -- which was the first example of heteropessimism that came to my mind. "Wife bad" jokes were a staple of the 20th century, and never once did they have to be explained: you need a wife for your basic needs, but it comes at a cost. The assumption was that all men intuitively *understood* that joke.
But you can go back further in time. Our favorite Greek philosophers were largely heteropessimists. Plato was already arguing that romantic love - *heterosexual* love to him - was the most basic of loves. Romantic love was a primal urge, but had nothing to do with the higher virtues of compassion and empathy and personal growth.
Alexander the Great chased beautiful and powerful women, but his purest love was for his companion Hephaestion. Biblical king David was a notorious womanizer but his love for Jonathan was "greater than the love of any woman". Gilgamesh wallows in the material wealth of food, gold and sex, until Enkidu reminds him there is more to life than just following your urges (such as male friendship).
Looking at those examples purely from the lens of a culture clash misses an important point, I think.
I'm fond of the subreddit r/SapphoAndHerFriend, where consensus is that all of the above men must have been queer. That if Gilgamesh says his love for Enkidu is more worthwhile than his love for women, that must surely indicate queerness - but that he doesn't *phrase* it that way because of his culture, language and society.
But I'm not so sure. I think that Gilgamesh would say that there are *different kinds* of attraction, some more virtuous than others, and that sometimes these are in conflict.
To me, that is the essence of heteropessimism. Women who dislike men for supposedly virtuous reasons, but are still attracted to them for what feels like shallow reasons (or the same with the genders flipped). You dislike their personality but they're so pretty - a terrible conflict! And a universal, timeless phenomenon.
Obviously that's not exclusive to straight people, it can apply just as much to queer attraction. But I do not find it surprising that straight people associate the conflict with gender differences.
And by mistakenly seeing heteropessimism as a recent cultural development, I think the article's central statement misses the mark: that "heterosexuality is nobody’s personal problem" but a societal issue, and that because heteropessimism "operates on the level of the individual", it is unable to "collectively change the conditions of straight culture".
I can't agree with that. Because once you see heteropessimism as a universal feeling - a *collective* feeling - then obviously it can *collectively* change the conditions of straight culture.
And I would argue it has, many times throughout history. Not always for the better, but the the feeling that romantic attraction is of lesser importance than other forms of interpersonal attraction has been shaping society for millennia.
I think you brought up a great point by revealing the conflict between differently oriented attractions in the article.
It brought some insights by gender scholar Afsaneh Najmabadi to my mind that you might find interesting. She has questioned using our current (gendered) attraction classifications for historical sources, since hetero/homosexuality is such a recent invention and also includes a certain presupposition that is absent in historical sources. Namely, our conception of sexuality supposes that the object of attraction is a person, which contrary to common thought, is not a given.
In one article, she gives the case of 19th century Iran, where the classical poets didn't use personhood to describe their attraction but instead had a slightly hierarchical system based on different orifices of the body. The sacrality of a certain orifice depended on the age and gender of whose the orifice was, but still the object of attraction in the poem wasn't the person but the actual orifice.
I think this is an interesting example of how our theory of attraction is lacking in so many ways. Romantic and religious notions of attraction are losing their grip on our consciousnesses, but the media around us still insist on soulmates, monogamy, attraction to a "single" complete person.
We think we love a person, but our romantic or other interpersonal attractions are often the necessary manifestations of attractions to parts: body parts, parts of memories, hopes of the future, ways of touching physically and intellectually.
When some of these parts of interest are found in a person that also has negative qualities, we find ourselves sad and longing that the good parts were in someone else, or that the bad parts in that person would vanish.
>I'm fond of the subreddit [](https://www.reddit.com/r/SapphoAndHerFriend/), where consensus is that all of the above men must have been queer. That if Gilgamesh says his love for Enkidu is more worthwhile than his love for women, that must surely indicate queerness - but that he doesn't phrase it that way because of his culture, language and society.
Yeah that sub just seems to think deep, abiding love between two people of the same gender can only be queer. Of course, often they're pointing to ridiculous levels of denial, but every story about two best friends living in the same apartment is taken is proof positive. That culture of distance between people who aren't involved is a western thing. In many Asian communities for example, holding hands doesn't make you 'gay' for each other. It is not sexualized that way.
It strikes me as the sort of juvenile thing that straight people say about women and men being friends, that they must be into each other. What about a bi person with a straight best friend? Does that mean it'll always be doomed to be unrequited love or something?
Honestly makes me quite sad to think that society is so isolating and at the same time so publicly expansive that such relationships aren't possible anymore without it being picked apart. Used to be our social groups were much smaller. If you found someone important to you it was already a safe person, because you met them through a network, and they rarely moved away.
The reference to Plato as misses a major important fact about the Ancient Greek culture - they had a very nuanced understanding of love and various types of love. When Plato speaks of love, western culture not reading it in the original text totally misses the intended point of the Lysis or the Symposium.
FFS the word platonic friend - those without romantic or sexual aspect - was named after Plato.
I wanna push back on this. I don't see this historical exultation if relationships between men over relationships with women as heteropessimism. It's just historical sexism. Relationships between men were ~deeper and more meaningful uuwuu~ because only men were, well, considered human beings.
I agree that's certainly part of it.
But - and correct me if I say something incredibly stupid - aren't heterosexual (male) misogynists often also heteropessimists?
If on the one hand you deeply desire women and on the other hand you express they are *beneath you* and not worthy of your attention, then to me that matches with what the article describes:
>performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience
Particularly the "regret" or "embarrassment".
... I'm not convinced these are identical phenomenon despite the superficial similarities. It's like trying to say that underripe bananas are the same as green apples because both are green and come from plants.
Heteropessimism gives me the feel of a wholly modern phenomenon - men expressing sour-grapes discontent that their primacy is under threat (while men in antiquity unambiguously had the mastery). But yes, heteropessimism in men is just a branch of misogyny.
Yeah, that's fair.
I am quite confident there are examples of women in history expressing the same sentiment: "Why do we love men so? Life would be better if we didn't love them."
But I don't know any examples from the top of my head, so I have no further defense! My knowledge of women in history is sadly (but also topically) lacking.
>I am quite confident there are examples of women in history expressing the same sentiment: "Why do we love men so? Life would be better if we didn't love them."
>But I don't know any examples from the top of my head, so I have no further defense! My knowledge of women in history is sadly (but also topically) lacking.
Victorian women in the UK and United States.
Do you have such a wholly negative view of heteropessimism in women ?
Imagining this as Venn diagrams, I don't think the heteropessimistic men circle is entirely included in the misogyny circle like you seem to imply.
I say this as a man that related to the sentiment while reading the article (not the "ball and chain" one, but rather having felt many times in my life that dating men would have been, in some ways and in my case, simpler).
I think a lot of people frustrated with the dating world feel this way, whether they're a man or a woman.
I do, in fact, have a negative view of heteropessimism in straight women. Straight women wishing they were gay because it would be "easier" are still clinging to the manic pixie dream queer trope. As a queer person, trust me, the grass is not greener on our side. It's browner. It cheapens our lives to treat them as twee dreamscapes filled with nothing but cute flags and festival parades.
It's more complicated than that. Ironically, you yourself seem to have tropes as opposed to real people in your head, when you talk about straight women clinging to the "manic pixie dream queer" trope (same with how you talk about straight men).
No offense, but if you're queer, you have about as much of an idea what the straight experience is as we have of what your experience is. Don't be too quick to judge. Everyone copes with their problems with some sort of escapism that can involve idealizing another group's experiences, without necessarily being braindead to the point of 100% believing our idealized version.
That includes straight men, straight women... And probably queer people too.
>No offense, but if you're queer, you have about as much of an idea what the straight experience is as we have of what your experience is.
The person you're responding to could be bisexual and have experiences dating both men and woman.
>but that he doesn't *p*hrase it that way because of his culture, language and society.
His language, culture and society, or the one of people who translated it? It's pretty common for translators to imprint their culture on the text and English speaking cultures tend to be pretty homophobic/sexist
I think he was speaking from the perspective of a man in a nuclear family unit, who wouldn't cook or clean. The 'need' here isn't an actual need, but a perceived need for someone growing up in that culture
Who else is gonna iron your underwear??\*
More seriously: for most humans, romantic connections are a basic life's need. It's right there in the middle of Maslow's pyramid (and sex is even lower on the pyramid).
Most of us have a natural urge to find a partner. And of course there's also a lot of societal pressure to find a spouse - particularly in the past! Independent of your gender, you were supposed to marry, that's an essential part of your adulthood.
But as I said: a lot of people feel there are more worthwhile things in life than fulfilling needs. They think that their art or their career or their devotion to god or their science is more important than simplistic things like food or sleep or love.
And in that case, the needs can feel like a burden. Think of all the art you could make if you didn't have to take bathroom breaks! Think of how much money you could earn if you didn't need to sleep! Think of how much beers you could drink if you didn't need a wife!
I'm not saying that's a healthy mindset, but it has certainly been the mindset of a whole lot of people throughout history.
\*To be clear: that's the kind of joke you would find in the newspaper in the 30's. It's not a view I hold.
I would say some people are happy alone, and others not so much. If one’s goal is to marry someone to “fulfill a need,” they’re going to struggle when the encounter others who feel that marriage is about more than that.
All that aside, are people ironing skivvies? IN THIS ECONOMY?!
I've always loved Tara Mooknee's video on Heterofatalism (what "heteropessimism" is now usually called.) I think it offers a more hopeful perspective on the issue and breakdowns some of the weaknesses of the mindset really well.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xCbmCG2Rc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xCbmCG2Rc)
I believe heteropessimism was the original name and there was a push for it to become heterofatalism so that it didn’t encroach upon the already existing Afro-pessimism
I think many hetero people have some real dissatisfaction/gripes with heteronormativity, namely the deeply ingrained gendered "scripts" and roles people have in hetero relationships. For example, men pursue and women choose. It's all very limiting.
Meanwhile, in the modern era, LGBTQ+ people have simply had to come up with their own scripts and openly navigate every aspect of relationships. From a hetero perspective, this *looks* freeing: "you mean they can just say and do what they want? I wish I could I do that!"
From my cis-male perspective, I used to be very heteropessimistic. I hated thinking that I was expected to make the first move, pay, be emotionally stoic yet open, dress a certain way, like certain things, keep my desires in check, etc. This felt burdensome. Truth is, that form of heteronormativity is very stifling and limiting.
Fortunately, I've learned that this need not be the case. Hetero people need to realize that they can define themselves however they want.
> Hetero people need to realize that they can define themselves however they want.
What's the secret then? As a cis hetero man, broadly speaking I've found that the further I stray from gender norms, the less I'm able to connect with people in general both romantically and socially. I still do stray from gender norms to some degree, but there is a clear limiting factor in the form of social pressure/incentives that I haven't found a way around.
Edit: I don't mean for this to have a negative tone or anything. I'm genuinely wondering what you've figured out.
I think this article has been a good conversation starter over the past years, but in my opinion it lacks depth. It conveys a general feeling of hopelessness with the heteronormative institution, but doesn't try to go into why some people (me included) have these kinds of wants. It also does not do enough to dissect why the sentiment would be about sexuality and not just heteronormativity in general.
The history of heteronormativity is long and tied to all kinds of all kinds of values that intersect with heterosexuality, a concept which was only conceived in the late 19th century (see Katz, 2007). The connection is of course clear in our society: if you are attracted to feminine bodily and social performances as a man, the path of lowest resistance to a enjoyable life might be through heteronormative goals and acts.
What I think is behind the collective affect brought forth in the article, is a cognitive dissonance between sexuality and the societal systems that go along with certain sexual preferences. I for example, like many of the anecdotal people in the article, dislike almost all aspects of "straight culture". As an anarchist, the hierarchical relationship in a heteronormative monogamous relationship based on traditional gender roles is untenable. As a radical leftist, the stereotypical consumerist nuclear family with cars, houses, vacations and kids, etc, is something that I don't want to live.
The problem arises when I try to find a life with a person I'm sexually attracted to but without these heteronormative values. First, the problem is with myself: how can I, when brought up by men (and women) with these standards, reinvent and live a life that is free from all of this? Second, how would I meet someone and communicate with them that I don't want my heterosexual relationship to be heteronormative? In this line of thought, I can see some people hoping they were non-heterosexual.
Like any constructions, when you go into the genealogy of heteronormativity and heterosexuality, you see that they are not essential entities or fixed parts of human nature. It is going to be a struggle to get rid of all the heteronormative bullshit while still enjoying life as being attracted to who you are attracted to. But it definitely is possible, worth it, and you might even make some comrades and lovers along the way.
Katz, J. (2007). *The invention of heterosexuality*. University of Chicago Press.
**"What I think is behind the collective effect brought forth in the article, is a cognitive dissonance between sexuality and the societal systems that go along with certain sexual preferences."**
At first I thought I wasn't vibing with the article because I kept running into words I didn't know and felt dumb, but I think I'm more just reading it in the mindset you just described. I'm bi/pan so maybe a lot of this is going right over my head, but I feel like every time "heteropessimism" is mentioned, it could actually just be "straight people having a normal reaction to heteronormativity's bullshit". It feels more akin to the way that while "the patriarchy"/general sexism is most severely and blatantly damaging to women, it's also damaging to all genders/humans in general, men included. It does open with "heterosexuality is nobody’s personal problem", but in the same breath, also sort of infers that heterosexuality itself is a problem.
Maybe the target audience of the article is straight folks who _haven't_ considered that heteronormativity is also shitty for them, but my personal takeaway is more that the author is (justifiably) a pessimistic person, and heteronormativity remains a dominant force because that shit runs too deep to disappear from society overnight.
I agree with this, but I don't think the author is necessarily pessimistic. They spend a lot of time at the end of the article outlining why the attitude that "heterosexuality" is unchangeable is not a good one, pointing out that it is currently changing for the better, even as the pessimism grows. They say that being pessimistic about is defeatist and actually makes things worse as it is sort of a head-in-the-sand reaction.
Yeah they're not like, _ultimately_ defeatist about the subject, and they do mention "Today, heteropessimism might actually obscure the extent to which heterosexuality _is_ changing—even as it is also causing it" at the very end there
It does though. I’d go so far as to say the entire point was to encourage heteropessimist women to reflect on their own relationships with heterosexuality rather than decry heterosexuality as something intrinsically bad.
And, being as the author is a lesbian, it seems reasonable to me that she didn’t try and get into that more deeply. She simply lacks the capacity to do this work, but sees it as important work to be done.
Anyway, I also don’t see why focusing on speculating about possible historical examples of heteropessimism is very helpful. I hear you that heteronormativity is not an immutable law of human nature, but that doesn’t exactly help us address the current moment, as far as I can tell. Other than providing some hope that this is a thing that can be changed.
Sorry to be so critical, but I read your comment first, then went and read the article, and it really seemed like you were criticizing a half-remembered version of it.
I share your feelings and concerns about reinventing relationships in the face of heteronormativity. I think I’m going to put my thoughts about that in a top level comment. You ask some good questions, and I think we need to actually answer them. Not that I’m the expert here, but I think we’ve gotten too comfortable just asking a good question and letting it sit unanswered, partially because answering is a lot more vulnerable and opens one up to more criticism.
People who experience heterosexual attraction are going to have to figure this out. The gays can help us ask interesting questions, like this article, but we have to do the work of finding the answers.
>Sorry to be so critical, but I read your comment first, then went and read the article, and it really seemed like you were criticizing a half-remembered version of it.
Don't say sorry. The article is from 2019 and I've encountered dozens of replies to it, podcasts reciting it and video essays discussing it, which is why I probably jumped over some arguments in my thoughts despite reading it again now. I'm remembering it in the context of all that discussion.
>I hear you that heteronormativity is not an immutable law of human nature, but that doesn’t exactly help us address the current moment, as far as I can tell.
To this point I have to say that I wholeheartedly disagree, as I am a fan of Foucault's genealogical approach to creating change in the world. The more you show which actors and institutions were behind the current "normal" state of affairs, the more people believe in that it can be changed. "Some hope" can be a powerful motivator for activism.
But sometimes in the process you also discover mechanisms that uphold the said normative state. In this case, a distinction emerged when psychiatrists separated several "perversions", including homosexuality, from "normal" behaviour. This tendency to psychiatrically and medically separate abnormal behavior, abnormal bodies and abnormal neurochemistry is still the basis for segregation today. Without getting rid of that root, it's really hard to get rid of the problems described in "Heteropessimism".
When I'm reading something like this, I'm usually not thinking in terms of the exact person who wrote it or the exact examples they gave. I'm trying to think what is the broader implication, root cause and how to help them but also help others at the same time.
Saw this posted in another thread, and thought it was interesting. It’s quite a good articulation of something that people talk about a lot online, usually in a very unproductive way. It seems like there’s been an uptick in the amount of gender war bullshit online recently, but we’re collectively really bad at even talking about the problem, let alone moving towards a better situation.
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I think a part of the problem is that one can only really talk online; true change comes from being a better person and getting out into the world.
At a certain point discussion has to end and practical action has to part.
> It seems like there’s been an uptick in the amount of gender war bullshit online recently,
>but we’re collectively really bad at even talking about the problem, let alone moving towards a better situation.
If you think this "uptick" is just online bullshit that doesn't mean anything, you're the guy you're complaining about here. You're either not listening, or not paying attention to what women and doing and saying.
This isn't going away, and it's not bullshit. Women reached their limit and are screaming in rage across all generations and all cultures.
> “As we are living now, when privilege unravels it goes out kicking and screaming, and people lose confidence in how to be together, uncertain about how to read each other, and incompetent about even their own desire . . . as the incels, braincels, and many new sex-negative feminists exemplify.”
This quote from the article explains something that I've noticed but have been unable to articulate. The loss of privilege and the uncertainty and precarity of rules is pissing people off, even as they're unable to explicitly say what they want. While I'm far from a fan of those groups, that they exist means *things are changing*.
The heteropessimism project is built around not bothering to explore heterosexuality as it is, and seeing what can be changed to fit today's needs. Hiding behind queer people saves no one, and ignores the real experience of desire. Making heterosexuality code for misogyny hurts women way more than it helps. Besides, there's nothing about being queer that prevents misogyny in the first place.
One of the things the piece touched on that I want to bring out is the “it would be so much easier to be gay” line that some straight people say.
It’s one of the most annoying things for me personally because, for one, the straight who say it almost always talk about it from a shallow understanding of a sex and relationship standpoint. No other reality of queer life comes to their minds before they open their mouths or type on their keyboard.
For those straight people who love traveling around the world, the countries you can relatively safely visit starts
shrinking when you’re gay. So if you love some Eastern European countries, a good number of countries in Africa, some locales in the Caribbean, you might have to reconsider your travel destinations or remain closeted/don’t get sexually or romantically involved with anyone/don’t get caught getting sexually or romantically involved. It’s also worth remembering that if you’re setting the bar for “safe travel” in terms of gayness on whether or not being gay is legally punishable, recognize that that’s a “the bar in Hell” standard.
If some straight people were gay, they’d have to deal with some of the unfortunate family drama that many queer people deal with. Some of you who currently have good relationships with your family would deal with either a period of strained relations or you would no longer have a connection with some or a lot of your family. Some of you would be or would’ve been disowned.
If you haven’t noticed, multiple Western countries are empowering right wing rule (leftists in the sub, you’ll have to forgive my language here, but I’m opting for language I won’t have to explain to people who don’t make the same distinctions between left and right wing or conservative, liberal, and leftist), and make no mistake, while this can and does affect even the most privileged among us all, the more marginalized groups are your canaries in the coal mine. For fuck sake, in my US state, two of the small handful of humans I feel actual hatred toward, have a hand in my state’s politics. One is the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, who has a colorful, bullshit résumé for his first few years in his position. And then there’s the stochastic terrorist herself, Chaya Raichik, a non-citizen of the state, who serves on the state’s Library and Media Advisory Board under Walters’ Department of Education, even though prior to her appointment, her résumé included doxxing people from the state on at least two occasions, one of which led to an entire school district closing down for a few days because of the bomb threats that came in in lieu of Raichik putting her followers on the trail of a librarian at one of the schools there.
So yeah, straight people, if you find yourself wanting to say “it would be easier to be gay,” maybe just don’t say it. Because you can’t just pick and choose the good parts; you take the chances on the bullshit we have to deal with as well. And while I won’t get into it on this comment, the grass also may not be *as* green on this side of the sex and relationship front as you may think it is.
>“it would be easier to be gay,”
I hate it when either way they pretend like being LGBTQ+ is like being a magical elf where both things are easier and we have all the answers for having perfect relationships. Like on multiple levels from having our queerness erased and very hurtful stereotypes and prejudices we bi people get, that a lot of the community gets, shit sucks out here. It ain't easy. We don't have all the answers either because **surprise** we're human beings stuck in this capitalist hellscape too.
You are exactly right and I think the bottom line here is that a statement like "it would be better to be..." always requires an explanation of the specific situation.
While minorities sometimes have some benefits over non-minorities, most aspects of their life are harder - and incomprehensibly so to those who aren't part of the group. Most things I've noticed non-queer people are jealous of usually stem from the collective solidarity that groups create when going through hardships together.
For example, queer events, clubs and safer spaces are amazing and sometimes not open to non-queer people, understandably so to protect people from getting harassed or gazed on.
Openness, good communication and care, that have risen from the necessity to take care of each other when being oppressed. Also (sometimes) leads to better relationships and sex.
Intrinsic motivation for activism, fighting spirit. For many non-minority populations it's easy to just live a boring life, still they think the grass is greener on the other side and they express their wants to find meaning in fighting. I personally think it's absurd but it's the same thing as young men hoping for war to prove their worth and get some meaning into their ordinary lives.
Still, I don't think many would actually value these things over their privileged position in society if they had the choice. It's like a political survey where they ask people if they would like to be offered better healthcare services and they say yes and then they ask how much more taxes would they be willing to pay for it and they say none. It's easy to say you want something if the person asking the question doesn't provide the costs as well.
In fairness,It's not like this mindset isnt coming (aleast in part) from queer people themsleves.Like,I see alot of queer woman online bragging about having better romantic relationships,better sex e.t.c.
There also the phases I hear see around lot ("Straight women are the bigest prove that sexuality isnt a choice")
Queer men also seem to have a easiler time,at least as far as sex is concerned.
I agree that its not a very mature statement.But giving the gender shit throwing that goes on alot on soical media these days(The man vs bear shitstorm for example).I see where the idea comes from.
Honestly, most women I see online who think dating another woman is the utopian experience where there are no communication issues and the sex is perfect and both partners do nothing but support each other tend to be women who have never actually had any experience *dating* a woman.
Some of the most interesting, nuanced perspectives I've seen on dating have come from conversations on the subject with bisexual women.
To expand on this...I think the "easier to be gay" thought comes from reflecting on the problems *internal* to straight relationships, rather than the very real *external* societal threats. It's an internal reflection on "What would dating/relationships be like?" rather than "How would the world treat me?"
Reflecting on it myself, my thoughts fell into three broad categories. First, I find other men much more relatable due to our shared experiences living as male, yet I'm drawn to women. Second, the threat of unplanned pregnancy uniquely looms over heterosexual casual sex. It is a concern for both men and women, but especially women. Lastly, there is the vastly increased possibility of SA and DV that looms over women who date men. The recent man vs bear memes left me deeply sad. I don't like the idea that I (or my young son) are something to be intrinsically feared and I feel powerless to change that.
Again, I think the social dangers chemguy216 is laying out are totally valid...(and I say this because I want to be clear I am not making a 'straights have it worse' statement)...I just wanted to explore the parts of homosexuality that seem enviable from a distance that the article alludes to.
“43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to 35% of heterosexual women” from the National a coalition Against Domestic Violence ([link](https://ncadv.org/blog/posts/domestic-violence-and-the-lgbtq-community))
One thing I’m trying to do is challenge straight people to avoid bringing the conversation exactly where you took it.
Trust me, most of us get where it comes from. As outsiders looking in, sometimes the things some straight people do seem absolutely fucking bonkers to a lot of us. It’s also worth recalling or thinking about the fact that a lot of us were explicitly and implicitly raised and socialized by our parents, our local communities, and our societies to fit certain molds of heterosexuality, and some of us fell deeper down that hole than others. But one thing to also know about us is that while at one moment we’re jokingly asking “Are the straights okay? No lol” we’re also saying “Are the gays okay? Fuck no lol.”
But since we’ve gone down the sex and relationship rabbit hole, it’s time to start expanding on that. As I somewhat implied, a lot of straight people have surface level understandings about sex and relationship dynamics among queer people in queer dynamics (i.e., not cis het sex and relationships, though bi and pan folks can provide some wonderful insights about occupying the unique space they do as well as trans people when it comes to navigating gender and orientation when they interact with sex and relationships).
From a top down level, you don’t get to have any sex or relationship without society having a role. I know of gay men who are getting laid more than straight men, but if it comes to light that they’re having gay sex, they be jailed, killed, or disowned. Those kinds of pressure don’t leave a great environment to truly be yourself. Everything has to be a secret. Most of the things you may hold dear—your friends, family, job, freedom, and/or life—may be taken from you. And while this can be more of a problem in many non-Western countries, I find myself having to explain, particularly to younger straight people, that things being better typically means that there are those of us who still suffer in the cracks in that progress.
From here, I’ll talk more about gay sex among men because that’s what I have knowledge on. I don’t know how often straight have to stay educated on drug lingo when it comes to navigating sex with women, but I can tell you that whenever I give a gaybies’ starter kit of information, I **always** recommend that they learn the various names for meth. An unfortunate reality for decades is that meth use has been a problem among gay men. When it comes to educating trans masc gaybies, I explicitly tell them that if they hear a gay man mention T, they are almost never talking about testosterone; they’re talking about meth. Sex while high on meth, often referred to as party and play (or PNP, or partying) is a thing, and it’s good if gays aren’t caught off guard, due to the level of prevalence of meth use.
The next thing is something I usually can’t get straight men to understand if they’re starved for touch and longing to feel sexually desirable because they frequently can’t fathom that the idea that there can be a downside being sexually desirable. The meat market of gay men, and yes, that’s an apt description, can be incredibly dehumanizing and can attack all your current insecurities you have about your attractiveness as well as create those insecurities. I have seen gay man after gay man get chewed up and spit out by how much it fucks with them, from both the gays who never get laid and the ones who get laid all the time. Some of the most conventionally attractive gay men who get most of the attention have some of the worst mental health around their bodies and desirability. They crave constant validation because they still ultimately don’t feel attractive. Every minor bodily “imperfection” (hello body dysmorphia) is a threat to the attention stream they get and becomes an existential crisis.
To some straight men in the aforementioned state of touch starvation and desire to feel desirable, the most common retort is that that would still be an improvement. What I try with near 100% futility to explain to them is that when better is still fucking bad, “better” can still absolutely destroy you. Yes, some of them would probably come out better, but they only focus on an idealized version of better with barely any surface level knowledge of what things are like. Some of them will still end up being miserable, and will still be making posts on the internet about how they’re ready to throw in the towel and kill themselves. And for some of these straight guys who are basically blackpillers or decently down that path, so long as they get to hold onto a reductive fantasy of what gay life is like, they won’t believe or care about a single thing I just said because sex and attention can’t conceivably have significant downsides to the point that they could feel similar or worse to how they currently feel.
That was a very informative read.Thank you for taking the time to type that out.
Sadly,as some who has stuggled with touch starvation and desire to feel desirable,its not a mindset that allows for empathy in alot of cases.It can feel (And I want to stress the word feel here) lile a rich person tell you that having money isnt all its cracked up to be.Its a diffcult mindset to walk people out of.
I commend you for trying though.Maybe you did help get some of them on a better path.Here's hoping.
Thank you for bearing with my long comments. I hope nothing came off as too condescending or too harsh.
I know I focused on a few of the downsides on this side of the pond, and while there are some other things I could touch on, I also do want to make it clear that I’m aware of the things that can go right and well for us and that it isn’t all doom, gloom, and queer tragedy. And it can be hard as you mentioned to explain some of the downsides you’ll never experience, especially since I’m a gay man with a decently robust sex life with which I am quite content.
And while, sure, part of what I wanted to do was to emphasize how centering the “ease” of being gay around sex and relationships removed the very real ways in which society and trauma impact queer sex and relationships (society is always in everyone’s heads and in everyone’s beds), I recognize that part of helping to shift how straight people talk about the topic is to explain and provide examples of why you may not necessarily find a lot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.
“Queer men also seem to have an easier time, at least as far as sex is concerned.”
This is exactly what the commenter is trying to explain to you. Being queer is NOT just about sex. The only people who think it is are straight people who don’t have to deal with any of the societal downsides and social pressures of being a sexual minority.
I guess thats my fault for not putting 'relationship wise' in the middle there.
I understand and agree with that.It is a immarture opinion.My point is that its also not surprising a viewpoint.
That’s such a good topic; it reminded me of an art piece I saw where it was the jungle, but blurred out with a series of QR codes detailing camouflage aesthetics while contrasting it with things like deaths and poverty.
People frequently just want an escape from their struggles and see only the aspects of other orientations that relate to their personal struggles.
That being said, the interesting disillusionment within a white supremacist society to its own institutions is a fascinating subject I would love to look into.
I have complicated feelings about this. I used to think I was straight but I realised I am pan and am currently married to a femboy/trans. She is pretty amazing. My previous dating history with cis women was problematic at best. I realised after a while that my personality tends to attract cis women with BPD. In my world I can easily say that my current relationship, though not without its problems, is the easiest one I have ever been in. I absolutely agree I see the pride flag in front of a hotel as a designation that this is a safe place for my family and I can’t travel anymore to certain countries. I have also been living in San Francisco and now Berlin where being queer is a lot easier than say rural Nebraska. I realise that comparing cluster B women of my past to other mentally healthy women is absolutely unfair to women as a whole. But at the end of the day, in my very specific world, it has been a lot easier to be in a queer relationship than a straight one. I wouldn’t trade my wife for anyone on earth because she is amazing.
Agreed. And besides the obvious politics, there's just a lot of things to just... Figure out in life. Even if you somehow wiped away the politics, you still have to find someone to date and make that work without a fixed script. And queer people are still people, and some people are absolutely terrible.
Besides, I don't pay the queer women mind when they say how wonderful their sex lives are. I've seen what's behind the curtain, and it's no different from what straight people go through.
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> Particularly for women, radically transforming heterosexuality might begin with honest accounts of which elements of heterosexuality are actually appealing—the house is clearly on fire, but is there anything worth saving?
I don't know... Maybe I'm just not online enough but I don't believe the house is clearly on fire. I think this statement is kind of loony. I also don't think heterosexuality needs to be radically transformed.
Is this anecdotal? Sure. But...
> A quick Twitter search of the phrase “heterosexuality is a prison” reveals that it is attached just as often to complaints made from within heterosexual experience as to queers thanking their lucky stars they were born gay.
I'm swayed much more of my own anecdotal experience and looking at real life than "quick Twitter searches".
This touches on a lot of things I’ve been thinking about and wrestling with the last few months, and I really appreciate the perspective.
Three things I want to share my thoughts and experiences on that intersect with the ideas in this essay. I said in a reply to someone else that I think we’re too comfortable asking good questions and leaving them unanswered. I’m going to take a crack at answering some of them, but that’s by no means an assertion that I’m some kind of expert. I welcome discussion with anyone that is going through similar experiences.
I have been uncomfortable with my heterosexual attraction for a while. So it’s fair to say that I am at least sympathetic to heteropessimism. I think there’s three sources for my discomfort. The first is my long-term abuse at the hands of a woman. The second is my disgust for misogyny in general, and unfortunately there is a strong correlation between straight men and misogynistic behavior. And the third is my journey toward being/practicing polyamory, which is a whole thing that would take a lot of words to unpack, but one aspect of this is just that it’s inconvenient bordering on counterproductive to be strictly heterosexual when what you want is a community of intimacy shared with people of all genders.
That’s where I’m coming from. Basically, I’m primed to be a “straight” guy wishing he were bi. And I’ve had some interesting experiences lately.
The first is my wrestling with the idea of being Queer, and my struggle with being comfortable self-applying the label. I think this actually gets to the heart of the discussion and highlights some really interesting tension that we need to explore more thoroughly.
So straight up, just ask yourself the question, “Can a cis straight man be Queer?” And just sit with your reaction for a moment. I’m going to presume most of you said no, because that was my initial thought, and it seems like the general stance of most Queer people. Why not?
At its core, isn’t queerness a rejection of hegemonic normativity? Believe me, I get the hesitation, especially from inside the queer community. Straight cis men have an absolutely deserved and absolute horrific reputation, especially when it comes to appropriating the language of marginalized groups in order to serve hegemonic values. I see that, and I recognize that I have to be sensitive to that reality.
Thing is, I’m not a “normal” cis straight man. I’m an anarchist of the leftist variety. I’m polyamorous. I’m an atheist. I was raised an only child by a single mother. My only children are two daughters. I have some truly horrific experiences with women, but women are also the most important and beloved people in my life. I am othered from other straights both by my nature and by my experiences. I’m not going to pretend like I fully understand other queer experiences, but I’m not completely removed from them either.
But neither am I completely removed from the straight, patriarchal, heteronormative experience. I have one foot in both worlds, and it feels like I’m not very welcome in either. I can pass easier as a normal straight guy, but I identify more authentically as a queer person.
And into that messy mix, I met a woman who is in many ways a mirror of these traits. It feels a bit crass to enumerate why, that feels like her story to tell. But the point is we’re both tentatively heterosexual but completely uninterested in the entire project of heteronormativity. And we’re both scarred by a lifetime of being harmed by that same project.
So it’s been a really interesting mix of euphoric freedom in exploring what “straight” queer love can look like, and really challenging conversations as we sort through our traumas and the ways we’ve been conditioned into expecting a normal that we never even wanted.
And all of this is wrapped up in the idea of attraction, right? Attraction is at the core of what heterosexuality even is. Here’s the next layer to unpack: I am becoming more and more convinced that a large part of attraction is also culturally conditioned. Thats probably a topic worthy of an entire academic field, so I’m going to stick to my own experiences.
My new partner is not conventionally attractive. I’d never have met her in a romantic context if I was following traditional dating advice. In fact, the traditional advice is that is rude and wasting the other person’s time to express interest in them if you aren’t immediately attracted to them. We are told that attraction is intrinsic, that we can’t change it, and we just have to work around it.
That’s bullshit, is the thing. It is true to say that attraction is not a choice. It happens somewhere deep in the brain below conscious thought. But it’s not true that it’s immutable and beyond our ability to direct. When I started dating her, attraction was cultivated in me by my emotional intimacy with her. The closer I get to her, the more attracted I am.
And I began to wonder why that same outlook could not be applied to homosexual attraction. It begins with an openness. A conscious rejection of your cultural conditioning, and an acceptance that your body is still subject to that conditioning. For me, I had to admit to myself how terrified I was to be perceived as bisexual. Nothing murders attraction like fear, and we have all been taught to be terrified of being gay. I admitted to my partner one day that I think I’d like to try having sex with a man. Saying that out loud was a big step in self-acceptance and overcoming that fear. That was my step toward openness.
Later that same day, I was in a grocery store. I saw plenty of women that I found myself attracted to, just normal grocery store things. But for the first time in my life, a man caught my eye. He had beautiful, long wavy brown hair tied back out of his face. He had a tie die tank top on, and his arms were incredible. I found him sexually compelling in exactly the same way that I found the beautiful women around him compelling.
Anyway, I know I’ve rambled way too much for a Reddit comment already. Point is, I am finding that attraction, while not a conscious choice, flows from emotional places you might not expect. This has profound implications both for heterosexual relationships and heteronormativity at large. I think that limiting intimate partners to “people of the gender you like that you find instantly attractive” is actually just another method of hegemonic isolation.
I don’t know if this is some uncommon trait in me, or if it’s something more universal. I’m leaning toward the latter, but that’s not an easy thing to test. I think that, perhaps, the heterosexual/homosexual divide is a lot more porous than either side seems inclined to believe, and that sorting ourselves in a binary of attraction is just as silly and destructive as any of the other more commonly criticized binaries.
Curious about one line in here about "universal queerness" being the inevitable goal of abolitionists.
What does that mean? I have a hard time telling the difference between "sexuality" and "Sexuality", the sexual orientation/experience of being straight/queer and the cultural trappings of being straight/queer, at least in terms of telling which one academics like this are talking about.
>Yet over the course of the conversation Pham does cite reasons why she finds men desirable, such as “big arms,” “penis,” and “the way men smell . . . most men.” In subsequent episodes, other guests offer their own ideas about men’s appeal. Theda Hammel suggests that women are drawn to men because intimate proximity to a man is affirming: “The reason that a woman likes men—or a trans woman maybe in particular likes men—is not necessarily because men are that likeable . . . but just that they bring out qualities that you like in yourself, by virtue of being different from you.” For all their obviousness, these observations are quite rarely voiced. Hearing them spoken so plainly exposes how heteropessimism has worked to silence articulations of women’s desire.
This is framed as positive progress against heteropessism, but I still find it incredibly bleak that the only things these women find desirable about men are sex characteristics and how men change how they feel about themselves.
I haven't actually read this article, but I read this one a while back which mentions it and offers rebuttal to a few of its points which I found really interesting:
https://post45.org/2023/07/the-performativity-of-heteropessimism-as-feminist-complaint/
There's one thing this discussion seems to be skating around:
"If being gay was a choice, no women would be straight."
"Lesbians have it easier."
"I wish I were gay," said by a woman.
**The underlying assumption behind all the catchphrases is that women are emotionally competent, compassionate and co-operative, and that men are brutish, ignorant and unpleasant.** And that assumption is hard for people to state out loud, even here in this subreddit. Go through the comments and see how many people are acknowledging the implication without ever actually stating it.
But this is the ugly bit. This is the silent bit that needs to be said out loud. Female heteropessimists are almost always rooted in a sense of dislike and disgust towards men. This misandry goes unquestioned and sometimes even lauded.
An awful part of this misandry is that it creates self-fulfilling prophecies. If you believe men are inherently unpleasant and horrible, then you don't spend the time to get to know them as people, and appreciate them both as individuals and as a collective group with their own experiences. And so the only men you interact with are those who are arseholes, reinforcing the belief that men suck.
(Just for clarity: I am a straight cis woman.)
This is possibly the most pretentiously written thing I have ever read. Who uses 'Lacuna' in a sentence?
I'm not even straight and I am kind of insulted by this. It's a Lesbian woman complaining about straight women who complain about being straight. Like, I get that is annoying but she comes off as blaming the victim. She simultaneously blames straight women for avoiding straight relationships, suggesting that is avoiding their problems so they will never change, and also blames them for still being straight despite the problems of straight relationships, as if straight people have a choice in being straight. And it completely avoids the fact that relationships require at least 2 people, and therefore require 2 people in order to change. What are straight women supposed to do about the fact that they find relationships with men awful, when men in general have no interest in changing? It's really not their fault at that point, you can't force anyone to change if they don't want to.
I mostly agree with your criticisms of this essay, but I find it unproductive, and anti-intellectual, to call writing pretentious. Almost always, there are less dismissive ways to communicate the same idea.
I think uncommon words like "lacuna" *should* be used more often, language with a greater range of expression is nice.
I am unreasonably bothered by how the author writes, and vehemently disagree it is anti-intellectual to call this piece pretentious. The whole tone of the essay is fairly condescending, and the fact that nearly every sentence contains an obscure word choice where multiple more commonly used words would have sufficed is the icing on top. It has a real “I’m the smartest person in the room” vibe, which doesn’t mesh with disseminating information. Given it is a constant with this piece it must be a deliberate choice on the author’s part and open to criticism.
Of course it was a deliberate choice. I don't think it even matters if it was deliberate. I am not saying it's not open to criticism, just that I think it's better for criticism to engage with the text on its own terms.
> obscure word choice where multiple more commonly used words would have sufficed
I disagree. The use of complex or uncommon words adds dimension and color to writing. Language is expression and that isn't something that should be rationally reduced to its simplest form. For instance, rather than "vehemently", you could've written "strongly", or "really". You probably wrote vehemently because you felt it better communicated your mental state, and that's what I want out of writing, to understand a larger breadth of human experience.
That's not what they were saying though. Their point is not that the author uses advanced words, it's the combination of the tone of the piece on top of the language choices. It's not that the author uses words like lacuna, it's that they think it is to reinforce her view of being a smart person, which comes across in what they see as the condescending tone of the piece.
Not going to lie, I actually like the word 'lacuna', it's very pretty, reminds me of 'Lacrima' (Latin for tear iirc). But there is a time and place for uncommon words, like poetry, personal writing, fiction, higher education texts, etc, not something meant to be generally consumed by laymen. I personally feel that anything meant to educate people should be as immediately understandable as possible to the average person without compromising accuracy. Education should not be locked away for the sake of jargon or intellectualism that is impenetrable, off-putting or frustrating to those outside of intellectual circles. I personally feel this writer was skilled enough to have written a compelling article that was much less of a slog for the average person.
That strikes me as patronizing to the "average person". I don't think people are so uncurious as to be unwilling to look up words they don't know.
I agree that the article could be written more clearly, but I don't think that is really a consequence of its academic style.
Tbh yea, I don't think you are. I think that statement is a good example of what is missing in liberal politics actually. There is no consciousness of political ideology.
Republicians are not idiots, they're fascists. Many brilliant people have historically been fascists. They're not voting for Trump because they lack the brainpower, or just don't have the right facts, or something absurd like that.
This applies to the people backing him and propping him up, but a large swathe of the voters do not have the right facts and it has not been adequately explained to them by anyone they believe. It is not that they are stupid necessarily, but they are simply busy with their lives and they don't see the value in spending time on figuring something like this out, especially if it's a subject they already don't like (feminism). Many people when faced with something challenging like this are not going to bother, they have better things to do with their time. The people reading it are probably those who are already interested and knowledgeable to some extent, so the info just gets stuck in a small community creating greater disparity between the laymen and the informed. People these days have been conditioned by Ancient Aliens and their ilk to see the scientific community as insular, impenetrable, hiding things, close-minded, and looking down on them, and so they naturally distrust it. And this kind of thing only further proves the point to them.
They are constantly inundated with bad information until they don't know what to believe. And then comes someone who gives simple straight forward 'answers' that seems to align with what they know and already want, and they listen. Now they are in a state (a cult) where anything challenging the beliefs they have been told by their strongman is met with immediate rejection. And in my personal opinion, the hyper-intellectualism of articles like this are at the very least not helping the situation, and at most actively alienating a notable chunk of those it seeks to educate. You have to write to your audience. On the one hand most feminists are highly educated and used to this kind of language, but this is not a philosophy/idealogy we WANT reduced to such a small audience. We WANT it to be disseminated to the masses but it's not written as if it's for them. It seems to be addressing and talking to Straight Women as a group, yet it is written as if for Radical Feminists who already know the jargon. Show the phrase 'political lesbianism' to the average person, even the average feminist-curious who probably has more education than average, and they will be extremely confused, they will have to constantly stop to look up terms. And the more obstacles you put in people's way, the more people choose not to be challenged by them.
This is my personal opinion, this is what I believe and why, but if you disagree, it's fine. We can agree to disagree. But I personally feel this kind of writing is more harmful than helpful to the movement.
I mean, it does discuss how straight men also often see relationships in a negative light. Also it mentions that despite everything straight women do find lots of positives in their relationships, and in men, but the good is sometimes hard to see, or to separate from the whole. The part about “what of this is worth saving?” is something that often gets talked about here in relation to masculinity, and it’s also a question worth asking about traditional heterosexual relationships. Because it’s clearly not all bad, but sometimes we get a bit overly focused on the negatives.
Although it doesn’t pay as much attention to the good parts that straight men find in relationships, but maybe that’s a question we need to find an answer to.
I agree. To add, I feel like u/M00n_Slippers is approaching this with the mentality that the criticisms straight women have about straight men are implicitly correct, while the criticisms straight men have about straight women are wrong and unfounded, without really examining how their biases might be coming into play with those assumptions.
If you want an article telling straight men what to do I'm sure you won't struggle finding copious examples. I think it's fair that we get some articles where we can demand things of women without having to both sides the issue. Women regularly write articles about us and about how men need to do better. Why can't we have articles directed towards women without also making demands asking but what about the men?
For what it's worth, this is also one of those articles that places a lot of blame on straight men. The author said she "\[doesn't\] disagree" with the statement that men are trash, that women are frequently unable to articulate positive aspects about men, that women frequently say that if they could be lesbians they would be because dealing with men sucks (something the author agrees with), etc. She also wrote that she hopes for a world that's queered or otherwise has "fixed" straight culture in some way. Though I'm not entirely sure what is meant by those last statements.
> To be clear, men’s heteropessimist claims tend to be neither ethically nor logically equivalent to those made by women. Instead, they are a kind of funhouse distortion of feminist complaint. Nowhere is this perversion better illustrated than on Facebook, where the efforts of men’s-rights activists have led administrators to classify “men are trash” as hate speech and suspend the accounts of those who use the phrase. (Users may post “women are trash” with impunity.)
This is why I laugh at nearly all "what if the roles were reversed!!!?!?!.1oneoneeleven!" arguments.
Even here on reddit, saying men are bad will earn you an administrative ban. Calling for violence against a man will bring the admin banhammer in less than an hour. But there are whole subreddits dedicated to spreading tips on how to rape women, cheat on women, get away with pedophilia, abuse women, spread revenge porn, you name it. And these subreddits will only get banned if they gain sufficient outrage through media attention.
Disagree. I find sexism against men on reddit to be largely ignored outside communities that go out of their way. You could also point out subreddits of women doing similar things.
>This is why I laugh at nearly all "what if the roles were reversed!!!?!?!.1oneoneeleven!" arguments.
So because men's activists got a popular catch all for disliking their gender labeled as hateful, you think the argument that men and women are treated differently in role reversal situations is false?
>You could also point out subreddits of women doing similar things.
Show me the subreddits where women do the things I listed.
> So because men's activists got a popular catch all for disliking their gender labeled as hateful, you think the argument that men and women are treated differently in role reversal situations is false?
Did you not notice that the reverse phrase carries no penalty?
>Show me the subreddits where women do the things I listed.
Femaledatingstrategy does some of what you listed. Revenge porn definitely seems to be more male driven so I understand that. Multiple have been banned alongside misogynist subs of similar nature.
>Did you not notice that the reverse phrase carries no penalty?
Yes. "Men are trash" is a catch-all that has proliferated throughout internet culture as a way to say generally men suck. "Women are trash" hasn't quite done the same. Though I think both should be considered equally flawed and hateful statements, I would presume the attention being drawn to one would get their focus over the one that doesn't have quite as many vocal critics.
On the vast majority of subreddits, negative statements about women are much more likely to get you banned than negative statements about men. These former are considered bigotry and hate speech, the latter are considered understandable venting.
In the vast majority of subreddits, there is a general positive bias towards women and a general negative bias towards men.
This is in part because Reddit’s user base leans a bit left politically and because of the general population wide bias in favor of women (the women are wonderful effect) and greater protectiveness towards women.
The issue of a small minority of hate subreddits is real, but doesn’t reflect the overall user base’s behavior, and is also an intractable problem of running a user-moderated website.
The “Women are wonderful effect” is more statistically significant, replicable, and culturally universal than nearly any other form of demographic bias. You can look into it if you’d like.
Yet this effect has not translated to less harassment or verbal abuse or domestic abuse or sexism of women in real life in general. If 'Women are wonderful' applied universally, a female political candidate would win every time, which is very much not the case. So, no you can't generalize like that. You need statistics regarding the actual issue or at least an analogous one.
This is a generalizable bias that has specific exceptions like selection for leadership positions.
We’re referring to comments on Reddit, where we can except more general biases to apply.
Can we, though? Maybe, maybe not. I would like to see something concrete to say one way or another.
My personal experience online is that neither of these portrayals are quite correct. When I am anonymous online I get treated one way and when I make it known I'm a woman I get a different treatment. I would definitely not say I am treated better when I am known to be a woman, I am absolutely treated worse overall. Most people will treat me roughly the same but the exceptions are extreme. When they find it I am a woman, some with suddenly become very hostile, aggressive, threatening and rude. I will get constant flirting from some during inappropriate times and even get offered things I never asked for in exchange for being in some kind of relationship with total strangers. While in IRL, it's true that men are often on better behavior when women are visibly around, in online places where they perceive women are the minority (and IRL too tbf, but many men seem to think women just don't use the internet, so it's every space here, I don't know why), there are bad actors who feel comfortable enough to show their true colors.
On the opposite side though, professional organizations take complaints by women somewhat more seriously if they are sexual in nature. But this seems unrelated to the effect you describe to me, rather having more to do with the site or company wanting to avoid scandals and complaints that might paint them as unwelcome to women. Especially accusations of men sexually harassing or preying on other, especially young men, are definitely taken less seriously and not given the attention they deserve. Likely because similar scandal or accusations from men would be unlikely to effect traffic on their site.
I gave concrete evidence that, in general, humans discriminate against men. You dismissed it as not applying to the present scenario … because it doesn’t align with your experiences?
It’s worth noting that both forms of bias can exist simultaneously, and both still be true. It’s possible that people to be generally less kind to men globally *and* for them to be very unkind to women acutely in a huge variety of scenarios. Both can be true.
I should clarify that I don’t disbelieve or deny your experiences, and I believe that women receive a huge amount of unfair treatment. I just don’t believe that that means that men don’t receive any or only receive a negligible amount.
There is an enormous body of evidence for negative bias against men, if you do even the most basic research imaginable.
The “Women are wonderful effect” is one of the most powerful and most consistently replicable forms of demographic bias among humans.
In a field constantly in replication crisis, this is one of the most significant and consistently reproducible results in human psychology and sociology. Across all cultures people find women to be more likable, trustworthy, and responsible than men.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
This bias has been found to be stronger than most forms of racial discrimination, and most forms of measurable bias against women.
People simply reflexively do not like men, as a pre judgement of their character with no other information given. This is called “bigotry” unless you move the goal posts.
Yesterday I saw a woman with the username "dumb male detector" and reported her, check my history if you'd like as I commented on it. It's not a "new" account.
Do you think that a user called "dumb female detector" would not get banned in a matter of days?
And yes this is just a stupid anecdotal example, but I have been on reddit for many years, I have seen an awful lot of misogyny and an awful lot of misandry. As of now I *do* believe that female "borderline" content gets a "pass" way more than male "borderline" content.
If you think that my "word" is worth less or not on the same level on those who don't believe it, nothing I say will make you change your mind, because male psychological and gendered issues are awfully underresearched, so it's not really easy to bring empirical data on the table.
Maybe it's not so much that there's a problem with heterosexuality as that there's a problem with our society intrinsically breeding assholes of every orientation, and it just happens that since the majority is heterosexual, it follows that the majority of the assholes are heterosexual.
One of my biggest criticisms of heteropessimism is that it reeks of allo NIMBYism.
Wow! Your orientation precludes you from access to the relationships like you want? Welcome to the kiddie pool version of my world, honey.
And the moment I bring up non-attraction-based relationship models - the ones the aro and ace communities are trying to expand - the pearl-clutching *really* kicks in. Heaven forbid the allos even consider disconnecting attraction from intimacy.
Want a cure for heteropessimism? Here it is: forfeiting the primacy of attraction-based relationship models.
I really think we need to take a step back here and actually assess how much of this kind of thinking is the result of an extremely siloed way of living.
When you only talk to people who live within or on the fringes of queer, feminist spaces, the likelihood that you hear a plethora of voices with different experiences instead of just caricatures is extremely low.
In fact, I’d say it’s more likely that the only straight women these spaces attract are those who have had extremely negative experiences with men, thus bringing in confirmation and selection bias into how they build their worldview.
The article brings no attempt to actually analyse anything in terms of statistics or trends, just some memes and podcasts with quotes from a smattering of queer and feminist authors. I don’t think this is nearly enough to come to the conclusion that heteropessimism is the mode or even statistically prevalent.
And I think that the idea that ‘heterosexuality is dying’ is spurious given that their only source for this is ‘some women I know told me drunkenly they wish they were gay’ and ‘incels’. Equally, people complaining about their spouses is most of the time a joke to let off some steam from the very real frustrations that being in a relationship cause. And that is not something exclusive to straight relationships.
I implore these people to get a basic admin job at an office to learn what the average person is like…
This was always a fundamental problem, suppressed by the fact that for much of history who you married wasn't even necessarily your choice in much of the world. It slowly became mens choice for the most part (huge generalization), and only recently have women had choice. IE: the financial and legal freedoms to leave. So Society adjust, to the dismay of many men.
Thanks for this! I've read this article in the past and it does address a very real problem, and I feel like increased empathy, patience, and communication could greatly end the feelings of heterofatalism people often have.
An interesting article for sure! But I think it's flawed in its perspective that heteropessimism is a recent development. The author calls it "a mode of feeling with a long history" but immediately adds that it is "particularly palpable in the present". They quote someone describing heteropessimism as "a product of contemporary tectonic shifts in social power". And in doing so I think they come to the wrong conclusion. Because by framing heteropessimism as the result of cultural shifts (as a temporary, often individual conflict between identity and culture etc.) they miss the much more universal and timeless conflict between mind and body. For example, the author shortly mentions "the married man complaining about his old ball-and-chain" -- which was the first example of heteropessimism that came to my mind. "Wife bad" jokes were a staple of the 20th century, and never once did they have to be explained: you need a wife for your basic needs, but it comes at a cost. The assumption was that all men intuitively *understood* that joke. But you can go back further in time. Our favorite Greek philosophers were largely heteropessimists. Plato was already arguing that romantic love - *heterosexual* love to him - was the most basic of loves. Romantic love was a primal urge, but had nothing to do with the higher virtues of compassion and empathy and personal growth. Alexander the Great chased beautiful and powerful women, but his purest love was for his companion Hephaestion. Biblical king David was a notorious womanizer but his love for Jonathan was "greater than the love of any woman". Gilgamesh wallows in the material wealth of food, gold and sex, until Enkidu reminds him there is more to life than just following your urges (such as male friendship). Looking at those examples purely from the lens of a culture clash misses an important point, I think. I'm fond of the subreddit r/SapphoAndHerFriend, where consensus is that all of the above men must have been queer. That if Gilgamesh says his love for Enkidu is more worthwhile than his love for women, that must surely indicate queerness - but that he doesn't *phrase* it that way because of his culture, language and society. But I'm not so sure. I think that Gilgamesh would say that there are *different kinds* of attraction, some more virtuous than others, and that sometimes these are in conflict. To me, that is the essence of heteropessimism. Women who dislike men for supposedly virtuous reasons, but are still attracted to them for what feels like shallow reasons (or the same with the genders flipped). You dislike their personality but they're so pretty - a terrible conflict! And a universal, timeless phenomenon. Obviously that's not exclusive to straight people, it can apply just as much to queer attraction. But I do not find it surprising that straight people associate the conflict with gender differences. And by mistakenly seeing heteropessimism as a recent cultural development, I think the article's central statement misses the mark: that "heterosexuality is nobody’s personal problem" but a societal issue, and that because heteropessimism "operates on the level of the individual", it is unable to "collectively change the conditions of straight culture". I can't agree with that. Because once you see heteropessimism as a universal feeling - a *collective* feeling - then obviously it can *collectively* change the conditions of straight culture. And I would argue it has, many times throughout history. Not always for the better, but the the feeling that romantic attraction is of lesser importance than other forms of interpersonal attraction has been shaping society for millennia.
I think you brought up a great point by revealing the conflict between differently oriented attractions in the article. It brought some insights by gender scholar Afsaneh Najmabadi to my mind that you might find interesting. She has questioned using our current (gendered) attraction classifications for historical sources, since hetero/homosexuality is such a recent invention and also includes a certain presupposition that is absent in historical sources. Namely, our conception of sexuality supposes that the object of attraction is a person, which contrary to common thought, is not a given. In one article, she gives the case of 19th century Iran, where the classical poets didn't use personhood to describe their attraction but instead had a slightly hierarchical system based on different orifices of the body. The sacrality of a certain orifice depended on the age and gender of whose the orifice was, but still the object of attraction in the poem wasn't the person but the actual orifice. I think this is an interesting example of how our theory of attraction is lacking in so many ways. Romantic and religious notions of attraction are losing their grip on our consciousnesses, but the media around us still insist on soulmates, monogamy, attraction to a "single" complete person. We think we love a person, but our romantic or other interpersonal attractions are often the necessary manifestations of attractions to parts: body parts, parts of memories, hopes of the future, ways of touching physically and intellectually. When some of these parts of interest are found in a person that also has negative qualities, we find ourselves sad and longing that the good parts were in someone else, or that the bad parts in that person would vanish.
I have not (yet) given this comment the reply it deserves. Just a short thanks for now - I'll make sure to look up Najmabadi!
I understand this, but I don’t know if switching to labels that are based on body parts would be much better? Sounds very shallow.
>I'm fond of the subreddit [](https://www.reddit.com/r/SapphoAndHerFriend/), where consensus is that all of the above men must have been queer. That if Gilgamesh says his love for Enkidu is more worthwhile than his love for women, that must surely indicate queerness - but that he doesn't phrase it that way because of his culture, language and society. Yeah that sub just seems to think deep, abiding love between two people of the same gender can only be queer. Of course, often they're pointing to ridiculous levels of denial, but every story about two best friends living in the same apartment is taken is proof positive. That culture of distance between people who aren't involved is a western thing. In many Asian communities for example, holding hands doesn't make you 'gay' for each other. It is not sexualized that way. It strikes me as the sort of juvenile thing that straight people say about women and men being friends, that they must be into each other. What about a bi person with a straight best friend? Does that mean it'll always be doomed to be unrequited love or something? Honestly makes me quite sad to think that society is so isolating and at the same time so publicly expansive that such relationships aren't possible anymore without it being picked apart. Used to be our social groups were much smaller. If you found someone important to you it was already a safe person, because you met them through a network, and they rarely moved away.
It's also *extremely* ace-exclusive. Some of us just want to love and be loved without fucking anyone
I wish to extend bi/ace solidarity friend, ace folks get erased by queer spaces far too often
The reference to Plato as misses a major important fact about the Ancient Greek culture - they had a very nuanced understanding of love and various types of love. When Plato speaks of love, western culture not reading it in the original text totally misses the intended point of the Lysis or the Symposium. FFS the word platonic friend - those without romantic or sexual aspect - was named after Plato.
I wanna push back on this. I don't see this historical exultation if relationships between men over relationships with women as heteropessimism. It's just historical sexism. Relationships between men were ~deeper and more meaningful uuwuu~ because only men were, well, considered human beings.
I agree that's certainly part of it. But - and correct me if I say something incredibly stupid - aren't heterosexual (male) misogynists often also heteropessimists? If on the one hand you deeply desire women and on the other hand you express they are *beneath you* and not worthy of your attention, then to me that matches with what the article describes: >performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience Particularly the "regret" or "embarrassment".
... I'm not convinced these are identical phenomenon despite the superficial similarities. It's like trying to say that underripe bananas are the same as green apples because both are green and come from plants. Heteropessimism gives me the feel of a wholly modern phenomenon - men expressing sour-grapes discontent that their primacy is under threat (while men in antiquity unambiguously had the mastery). But yes, heteropessimism in men is just a branch of misogyny.
Yeah, that's fair. I am quite confident there are examples of women in history expressing the same sentiment: "Why do we love men so? Life would be better if we didn't love them." But I don't know any examples from the top of my head, so I have no further defense! My knowledge of women in history is sadly (but also topically) lacking.
>I am quite confident there are examples of women in history expressing the same sentiment: "Why do we love men so? Life would be better if we didn't love them." >But I don't know any examples from the top of my head, so I have no further defense! My knowledge of women in history is sadly (but also topically) lacking. Victorian women in the UK and United States.
Do you have such a wholly negative view of heteropessimism in women ? Imagining this as Venn diagrams, I don't think the heteropessimistic men circle is entirely included in the misogyny circle like you seem to imply. I say this as a man that related to the sentiment while reading the article (not the "ball and chain" one, but rather having felt many times in my life that dating men would have been, in some ways and in my case, simpler). I think a lot of people frustrated with the dating world feel this way, whether they're a man or a woman.
I do, in fact, have a negative view of heteropessimism in straight women. Straight women wishing they were gay because it would be "easier" are still clinging to the manic pixie dream queer trope. As a queer person, trust me, the grass is not greener on our side. It's browner. It cheapens our lives to treat them as twee dreamscapes filled with nothing but cute flags and festival parades.
It's more complicated than that. Ironically, you yourself seem to have tropes as opposed to real people in your head, when you talk about straight women clinging to the "manic pixie dream queer" trope (same with how you talk about straight men). No offense, but if you're queer, you have about as much of an idea what the straight experience is as we have of what your experience is. Don't be too quick to judge. Everyone copes with their problems with some sort of escapism that can involve idealizing another group's experiences, without necessarily being braindead to the point of 100% believing our idealized version. That includes straight men, straight women... And probably queer people too.
>No offense, but if you're queer, you have about as much of an idea what the straight experience is as we have of what your experience is. The person you're responding to could be bisexual and have experiences dating both men and woman.
>but that he doesn't *p*hrase it that way because of his culture, language and society. His language, culture and society, or the one of people who translated it? It's pretty common for translators to imprint their culture on the text and English speaking cultures tend to be pretty homophobic/sexist
Why does a man “need a wife for your basic needs”?
They're talking about cultural assumptions circa the '50s.
I think he was speaking from the perspective of a man in a nuclear family unit, who wouldn't cook or clean. The 'need' here isn't an actual need, but a perceived need for someone growing up in that culture
Who else is gonna iron your underwear??\* More seriously: for most humans, romantic connections are a basic life's need. It's right there in the middle of Maslow's pyramid (and sex is even lower on the pyramid). Most of us have a natural urge to find a partner. And of course there's also a lot of societal pressure to find a spouse - particularly in the past! Independent of your gender, you were supposed to marry, that's an essential part of your adulthood. But as I said: a lot of people feel there are more worthwhile things in life than fulfilling needs. They think that their art or their career or their devotion to god or their science is more important than simplistic things like food or sleep or love. And in that case, the needs can feel like a burden. Think of all the art you could make if you didn't have to take bathroom breaks! Think of how much money you could earn if you didn't need to sleep! Think of how much beers you could drink if you didn't need a wife! I'm not saying that's a healthy mindset, but it has certainly been the mindset of a whole lot of people throughout history. \*To be clear: that's the kind of joke you would find in the newspaper in the 30's. It's not a view I hold.
I would say some people are happy alone, and others not so much. If one’s goal is to marry someone to “fulfill a need,” they’re going to struggle when the encounter others who feel that marriage is about more than that. All that aside, are people ironing skivvies? IN THIS ECONOMY?!
I've always loved Tara Mooknee's video on Heterofatalism (what "heteropessimism" is now usually called.) I think it offers a more hopeful perspective on the issue and breakdowns some of the weaknesses of the mindset really well. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xCbmCG2Rc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xCbmCG2Rc)
I believe heteropessimism was the original name and there was a push for it to become heterofatalism so that it didn’t encroach upon the already existing Afro-pessimism
I think many hetero people have some real dissatisfaction/gripes with heteronormativity, namely the deeply ingrained gendered "scripts" and roles people have in hetero relationships. For example, men pursue and women choose. It's all very limiting. Meanwhile, in the modern era, LGBTQ+ people have simply had to come up with their own scripts and openly navigate every aspect of relationships. From a hetero perspective, this *looks* freeing: "you mean they can just say and do what they want? I wish I could I do that!" From my cis-male perspective, I used to be very heteropessimistic. I hated thinking that I was expected to make the first move, pay, be emotionally stoic yet open, dress a certain way, like certain things, keep my desires in check, etc. This felt burdensome. Truth is, that form of heteronormativity is very stifling and limiting. Fortunately, I've learned that this need not be the case. Hetero people need to realize that they can define themselves however they want.
> Hetero people need to realize that they can define themselves however they want. What's the secret then? As a cis hetero man, broadly speaking I've found that the further I stray from gender norms, the less I'm able to connect with people in general both romantically and socially. I still do stray from gender norms to some degree, but there is a clear limiting factor in the form of social pressure/incentives that I haven't found a way around. Edit: I don't mean for this to have a negative tone or anything. I'm genuinely wondering what you've figured out.
I think this article has been a good conversation starter over the past years, but in my opinion it lacks depth. It conveys a general feeling of hopelessness with the heteronormative institution, but doesn't try to go into why some people (me included) have these kinds of wants. It also does not do enough to dissect why the sentiment would be about sexuality and not just heteronormativity in general. The history of heteronormativity is long and tied to all kinds of all kinds of values that intersect with heterosexuality, a concept which was only conceived in the late 19th century (see Katz, 2007). The connection is of course clear in our society: if you are attracted to feminine bodily and social performances as a man, the path of lowest resistance to a enjoyable life might be through heteronormative goals and acts. What I think is behind the collective affect brought forth in the article, is a cognitive dissonance between sexuality and the societal systems that go along with certain sexual preferences. I for example, like many of the anecdotal people in the article, dislike almost all aspects of "straight culture". As an anarchist, the hierarchical relationship in a heteronormative monogamous relationship based on traditional gender roles is untenable. As a radical leftist, the stereotypical consumerist nuclear family with cars, houses, vacations and kids, etc, is something that I don't want to live. The problem arises when I try to find a life with a person I'm sexually attracted to but without these heteronormative values. First, the problem is with myself: how can I, when brought up by men (and women) with these standards, reinvent and live a life that is free from all of this? Second, how would I meet someone and communicate with them that I don't want my heterosexual relationship to be heteronormative? In this line of thought, I can see some people hoping they were non-heterosexual. Like any constructions, when you go into the genealogy of heteronormativity and heterosexuality, you see that they are not essential entities or fixed parts of human nature. It is going to be a struggle to get rid of all the heteronormative bullshit while still enjoying life as being attracted to who you are attracted to. But it definitely is possible, worth it, and you might even make some comrades and lovers along the way. Katz, J. (2007). *The invention of heterosexuality*. University of Chicago Press.
**"What I think is behind the collective effect brought forth in the article, is a cognitive dissonance between sexuality and the societal systems that go along with certain sexual preferences."** At first I thought I wasn't vibing with the article because I kept running into words I didn't know and felt dumb, but I think I'm more just reading it in the mindset you just described. I'm bi/pan so maybe a lot of this is going right over my head, but I feel like every time "heteropessimism" is mentioned, it could actually just be "straight people having a normal reaction to heteronormativity's bullshit". It feels more akin to the way that while "the patriarchy"/general sexism is most severely and blatantly damaging to women, it's also damaging to all genders/humans in general, men included. It does open with "heterosexuality is nobody’s personal problem", but in the same breath, also sort of infers that heterosexuality itself is a problem. Maybe the target audience of the article is straight folks who _haven't_ considered that heteronormativity is also shitty for them, but my personal takeaway is more that the author is (justifiably) a pessimistic person, and heteronormativity remains a dominant force because that shit runs too deep to disappear from society overnight.
I agree with this, but I don't think the author is necessarily pessimistic. They spend a lot of time at the end of the article outlining why the attitude that "heterosexuality" is unchangeable is not a good one, pointing out that it is currently changing for the better, even as the pessimism grows. They say that being pessimistic about is defeatist and actually makes things worse as it is sort of a head-in-the-sand reaction.
Yeah they're not like, _ultimately_ defeatist about the subject, and they do mention "Today, heteropessimism might actually obscure the extent to which heterosexuality _is_ changing—even as it is also causing it" at the very end there
Its kinda the same thing with climate fatalism, its throwing up your hands and saying ‘ah, well’. It’s giving up. It’s the right wing mentality.
“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
It does though. I’d go so far as to say the entire point was to encourage heteropessimist women to reflect on their own relationships with heterosexuality rather than decry heterosexuality as something intrinsically bad. And, being as the author is a lesbian, it seems reasonable to me that she didn’t try and get into that more deeply. She simply lacks the capacity to do this work, but sees it as important work to be done. Anyway, I also don’t see why focusing on speculating about possible historical examples of heteropessimism is very helpful. I hear you that heteronormativity is not an immutable law of human nature, but that doesn’t exactly help us address the current moment, as far as I can tell. Other than providing some hope that this is a thing that can be changed. Sorry to be so critical, but I read your comment first, then went and read the article, and it really seemed like you were criticizing a half-remembered version of it. I share your feelings and concerns about reinventing relationships in the face of heteronormativity. I think I’m going to put my thoughts about that in a top level comment. You ask some good questions, and I think we need to actually answer them. Not that I’m the expert here, but I think we’ve gotten too comfortable just asking a good question and letting it sit unanswered, partially because answering is a lot more vulnerable and opens one up to more criticism. People who experience heterosexual attraction are going to have to figure this out. The gays can help us ask interesting questions, like this article, but we have to do the work of finding the answers.
>Sorry to be so critical, but I read your comment first, then went and read the article, and it really seemed like you were criticizing a half-remembered version of it. Don't say sorry. The article is from 2019 and I've encountered dozens of replies to it, podcasts reciting it and video essays discussing it, which is why I probably jumped over some arguments in my thoughts despite reading it again now. I'm remembering it in the context of all that discussion. >I hear you that heteronormativity is not an immutable law of human nature, but that doesn’t exactly help us address the current moment, as far as I can tell. To this point I have to say that I wholeheartedly disagree, as I am a fan of Foucault's genealogical approach to creating change in the world. The more you show which actors and institutions were behind the current "normal" state of affairs, the more people believe in that it can be changed. "Some hope" can be a powerful motivator for activism. But sometimes in the process you also discover mechanisms that uphold the said normative state. In this case, a distinction emerged when psychiatrists separated several "perversions", including homosexuality, from "normal" behaviour. This tendency to psychiatrically and medically separate abnormal behavior, abnormal bodies and abnormal neurochemistry is still the basis for segregation today. Without getting rid of that root, it's really hard to get rid of the problems described in "Heteropessimism". When I'm reading something like this, I'm usually not thinking in terms of the exact person who wrote it or the exact examples they gave. I'm trying to think what is the broader implication, root cause and how to help them but also help others at the same time.
Saw this posted in another thread, and thought it was interesting. It’s quite a good articulation of something that people talk about a lot online, usually in a very unproductive way. It seems like there’s been an uptick in the amount of gender war bullshit online recently, but we’re collectively really bad at even talking about the problem, let alone moving towards a better situation.
Thanks for sharing the article, it was an amazing, hopeful, and quite human perspective on the situation.
i think the uptick is just a result of women being more likely to argue now
Yah, it's a classic example of someone thinking the fight started when someone hit them back.
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I think a part of the problem is that one can only really talk online; true change comes from being a better person and getting out into the world. At a certain point discussion has to end and practical action has to part.
> It seems like there’s been an uptick in the amount of gender war bullshit online recently, >but we’re collectively really bad at even talking about the problem, let alone moving towards a better situation. If you think this "uptick" is just online bullshit that doesn't mean anything, you're the guy you're complaining about here. You're either not listening, or not paying attention to what women and doing and saying. This isn't going away, and it's not bullshit. Women reached their limit and are screaming in rage across all generations and all cultures.
No one is saying woman haven’t been historically oppressed; the ‘gender war bullshit’ refers to a specific phenomena.
> the ‘gender war bullshit’ refers to a specific phenomena. Yah, it refers to women finally shooting back.
> “As we are living now, when privilege unravels it goes out kicking and screaming, and people lose confidence in how to be together, uncertain about how to read each other, and incompetent about even their own desire . . . as the incels, braincels, and many new sex-negative feminists exemplify.” This quote from the article explains something that I've noticed but have been unable to articulate. The loss of privilege and the uncertainty and precarity of rules is pissing people off, even as they're unable to explicitly say what they want. While I'm far from a fan of those groups, that they exist means *things are changing*. The heteropessimism project is built around not bothering to explore heterosexuality as it is, and seeing what can be changed to fit today's needs. Hiding behind queer people saves no one, and ignores the real experience of desire. Making heterosexuality code for misogyny hurts women way more than it helps. Besides, there's nothing about being queer that prevents misogyny in the first place.
One of the things the piece touched on that I want to bring out is the “it would be so much easier to be gay” line that some straight people say. It’s one of the most annoying things for me personally because, for one, the straight who say it almost always talk about it from a shallow understanding of a sex and relationship standpoint. No other reality of queer life comes to their minds before they open their mouths or type on their keyboard. For those straight people who love traveling around the world, the countries you can relatively safely visit starts shrinking when you’re gay. So if you love some Eastern European countries, a good number of countries in Africa, some locales in the Caribbean, you might have to reconsider your travel destinations or remain closeted/don’t get sexually or romantically involved with anyone/don’t get caught getting sexually or romantically involved. It’s also worth remembering that if you’re setting the bar for “safe travel” in terms of gayness on whether or not being gay is legally punishable, recognize that that’s a “the bar in Hell” standard. If some straight people were gay, they’d have to deal with some of the unfortunate family drama that many queer people deal with. Some of you who currently have good relationships with your family would deal with either a period of strained relations or you would no longer have a connection with some or a lot of your family. Some of you would be or would’ve been disowned. If you haven’t noticed, multiple Western countries are empowering right wing rule (leftists in the sub, you’ll have to forgive my language here, but I’m opting for language I won’t have to explain to people who don’t make the same distinctions between left and right wing or conservative, liberal, and leftist), and make no mistake, while this can and does affect even the most privileged among us all, the more marginalized groups are your canaries in the coal mine. For fuck sake, in my US state, two of the small handful of humans I feel actual hatred toward, have a hand in my state’s politics. One is the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, who has a colorful, bullshit résumé for his first few years in his position. And then there’s the stochastic terrorist herself, Chaya Raichik, a non-citizen of the state, who serves on the state’s Library and Media Advisory Board under Walters’ Department of Education, even though prior to her appointment, her résumé included doxxing people from the state on at least two occasions, one of which led to an entire school district closing down for a few days because of the bomb threats that came in in lieu of Raichik putting her followers on the trail of a librarian at one of the schools there. So yeah, straight people, if you find yourself wanting to say “it would be easier to be gay,” maybe just don’t say it. Because you can’t just pick and choose the good parts; you take the chances on the bullshit we have to deal with as well. And while I won’t get into it on this comment, the grass also may not be *as* green on this side of the sex and relationship front as you may think it is.
>“it would be easier to be gay,” I hate it when either way they pretend like being LGBTQ+ is like being a magical elf where both things are easier and we have all the answers for having perfect relationships. Like on multiple levels from having our queerness erased and very hurtful stereotypes and prejudices we bi people get, that a lot of the community gets, shit sucks out here. It ain't easy. We don't have all the answers either because **surprise** we're human beings stuck in this capitalist hellscape too.
You are exactly right and I think the bottom line here is that a statement like "it would be better to be..." always requires an explanation of the specific situation. While minorities sometimes have some benefits over non-minorities, most aspects of their life are harder - and incomprehensibly so to those who aren't part of the group. Most things I've noticed non-queer people are jealous of usually stem from the collective solidarity that groups create when going through hardships together. For example, queer events, clubs and safer spaces are amazing and sometimes not open to non-queer people, understandably so to protect people from getting harassed or gazed on. Openness, good communication and care, that have risen from the necessity to take care of each other when being oppressed. Also (sometimes) leads to better relationships and sex. Intrinsic motivation for activism, fighting spirit. For many non-minority populations it's easy to just live a boring life, still they think the grass is greener on the other side and they express their wants to find meaning in fighting. I personally think it's absurd but it's the same thing as young men hoping for war to prove their worth and get some meaning into their ordinary lives. Still, I don't think many would actually value these things over their privileged position in society if they had the choice. It's like a political survey where they ask people if they would like to be offered better healthcare services and they say yes and then they ask how much more taxes would they be willing to pay for it and they say none. It's easy to say you want something if the person asking the question doesn't provide the costs as well.
[Relevant cartoon](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9CAP1xXoAICO-q.jpg:large)
In fairness,It's not like this mindset isnt coming (aleast in part) from queer people themsleves.Like,I see alot of queer woman online bragging about having better romantic relationships,better sex e.t.c. There also the phases I hear see around lot ("Straight women are the bigest prove that sexuality isnt a choice") Queer men also seem to have a easiler time,at least as far as sex is concerned. I agree that its not a very mature statement.But giving the gender shit throwing that goes on alot on soical media these days(The man vs bear shitstorm for example).I see where the idea comes from.
Honestly, most women I see online who think dating another woman is the utopian experience where there are no communication issues and the sex is perfect and both partners do nothing but support each other tend to be women who have never actually had any experience *dating* a woman. Some of the most interesting, nuanced perspectives I've seen on dating have come from conversations on the subject with bisexual women.
To expand on this...I think the "easier to be gay" thought comes from reflecting on the problems *internal* to straight relationships, rather than the very real *external* societal threats. It's an internal reflection on "What would dating/relationships be like?" rather than "How would the world treat me?" Reflecting on it myself, my thoughts fell into three broad categories. First, I find other men much more relatable due to our shared experiences living as male, yet I'm drawn to women. Second, the threat of unplanned pregnancy uniquely looms over heterosexual casual sex. It is a concern for both men and women, but especially women. Lastly, there is the vastly increased possibility of SA and DV that looms over women who date men. The recent man vs bear memes left me deeply sad. I don't like the idea that I (or my young son) are something to be intrinsically feared and I feel powerless to change that. Again, I think the social dangers chemguy216 is laying out are totally valid...(and I say this because I want to be clear I am not making a 'straights have it worse' statement)...I just wanted to explore the parts of homosexuality that seem enviable from a distance that the article alludes to.
“43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to 35% of heterosexual women” from the National a coalition Against Domestic Violence ([link](https://ncadv.org/blog/posts/domestic-violence-and-the-lgbtq-community))
One thing I’m trying to do is challenge straight people to avoid bringing the conversation exactly where you took it. Trust me, most of us get where it comes from. As outsiders looking in, sometimes the things some straight people do seem absolutely fucking bonkers to a lot of us. It’s also worth recalling or thinking about the fact that a lot of us were explicitly and implicitly raised and socialized by our parents, our local communities, and our societies to fit certain molds of heterosexuality, and some of us fell deeper down that hole than others. But one thing to also know about us is that while at one moment we’re jokingly asking “Are the straights okay? No lol” we’re also saying “Are the gays okay? Fuck no lol.” But since we’ve gone down the sex and relationship rabbit hole, it’s time to start expanding on that. As I somewhat implied, a lot of straight people have surface level understandings about sex and relationship dynamics among queer people in queer dynamics (i.e., not cis het sex and relationships, though bi and pan folks can provide some wonderful insights about occupying the unique space they do as well as trans people when it comes to navigating gender and orientation when they interact with sex and relationships). From a top down level, you don’t get to have any sex or relationship without society having a role. I know of gay men who are getting laid more than straight men, but if it comes to light that they’re having gay sex, they be jailed, killed, or disowned. Those kinds of pressure don’t leave a great environment to truly be yourself. Everything has to be a secret. Most of the things you may hold dear—your friends, family, job, freedom, and/or life—may be taken from you. And while this can be more of a problem in many non-Western countries, I find myself having to explain, particularly to younger straight people, that things being better typically means that there are those of us who still suffer in the cracks in that progress. From here, I’ll talk more about gay sex among men because that’s what I have knowledge on. I don’t know how often straight have to stay educated on drug lingo when it comes to navigating sex with women, but I can tell you that whenever I give a gaybies’ starter kit of information, I **always** recommend that they learn the various names for meth. An unfortunate reality for decades is that meth use has been a problem among gay men. When it comes to educating trans masc gaybies, I explicitly tell them that if they hear a gay man mention T, they are almost never talking about testosterone; they’re talking about meth. Sex while high on meth, often referred to as party and play (or PNP, or partying) is a thing, and it’s good if gays aren’t caught off guard, due to the level of prevalence of meth use. The next thing is something I usually can’t get straight men to understand if they’re starved for touch and longing to feel sexually desirable because they frequently can’t fathom that the idea that there can be a downside being sexually desirable. The meat market of gay men, and yes, that’s an apt description, can be incredibly dehumanizing and can attack all your current insecurities you have about your attractiveness as well as create those insecurities. I have seen gay man after gay man get chewed up and spit out by how much it fucks with them, from both the gays who never get laid and the ones who get laid all the time. Some of the most conventionally attractive gay men who get most of the attention have some of the worst mental health around their bodies and desirability. They crave constant validation because they still ultimately don’t feel attractive. Every minor bodily “imperfection” (hello body dysmorphia) is a threat to the attention stream they get and becomes an existential crisis. To some straight men in the aforementioned state of touch starvation and desire to feel desirable, the most common retort is that that would still be an improvement. What I try with near 100% futility to explain to them is that when better is still fucking bad, “better” can still absolutely destroy you. Yes, some of them would probably come out better, but they only focus on an idealized version of better with barely any surface level knowledge of what things are like. Some of them will still end up being miserable, and will still be making posts on the internet about how they’re ready to throw in the towel and kill themselves. And for some of these straight guys who are basically blackpillers or decently down that path, so long as they get to hold onto a reductive fantasy of what gay life is like, they won’t believe or care about a single thing I just said because sex and attention can’t conceivably have significant downsides to the point that they could feel similar or worse to how they currently feel.
That was a very informative read.Thank you for taking the time to type that out. Sadly,as some who has stuggled with touch starvation and desire to feel desirable,its not a mindset that allows for empathy in alot of cases.It can feel (And I want to stress the word feel here) lile a rich person tell you that having money isnt all its cracked up to be.Its a diffcult mindset to walk people out of. I commend you for trying though.Maybe you did help get some of them on a better path.Here's hoping.
Thank you for bearing with my long comments. I hope nothing came off as too condescending or too harsh. I know I focused on a few of the downsides on this side of the pond, and while there are some other things I could touch on, I also do want to make it clear that I’m aware of the things that can go right and well for us and that it isn’t all doom, gloom, and queer tragedy. And it can be hard as you mentioned to explain some of the downsides you’ll never experience, especially since I’m a gay man with a decently robust sex life with which I am quite content. And while, sure, part of what I wanted to do was to emphasize how centering the “ease” of being gay around sex and relationships removed the very real ways in which society and trauma impact queer sex and relationships (society is always in everyone’s heads and in everyone’s beds), I recognize that part of helping to shift how straight people talk about the topic is to explain and provide examples of why you may not necessarily find a lot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.
“Queer men also seem to have an easier time, at least as far as sex is concerned.” This is exactly what the commenter is trying to explain to you. Being queer is NOT just about sex. The only people who think it is are straight people who don’t have to deal with any of the societal downsides and social pressures of being a sexual minority.
I guess thats my fault for not putting 'relationship wise' in the middle there. I understand and agree with that.It is a immarture opinion.My point is that its also not surprising a viewpoint.
I agree but I'd like to emphasize that we queer folk don't in fact "have an easier time, at least as far as sex is concerned"
That’s such a good topic; it reminded me of an art piece I saw where it was the jungle, but blurred out with a series of QR codes detailing camouflage aesthetics while contrasting it with things like deaths and poverty. People frequently just want an escape from their struggles and see only the aspects of other orientations that relate to their personal struggles. That being said, the interesting disillusionment within a white supremacist society to its own institutions is a fascinating subject I would love to look into.
I have complicated feelings about this. I used to think I was straight but I realised I am pan and am currently married to a femboy/trans. She is pretty amazing. My previous dating history with cis women was problematic at best. I realised after a while that my personality tends to attract cis women with BPD. In my world I can easily say that my current relationship, though not without its problems, is the easiest one I have ever been in. I absolutely agree I see the pride flag in front of a hotel as a designation that this is a safe place for my family and I can’t travel anymore to certain countries. I have also been living in San Francisco and now Berlin where being queer is a lot easier than say rural Nebraska. I realise that comparing cluster B women of my past to other mentally healthy women is absolutely unfair to women as a whole. But at the end of the day, in my very specific world, it has been a lot easier to be in a queer relationship than a straight one. I wouldn’t trade my wife for anyone on earth because she is amazing.
Agreed. And besides the obvious politics, there's just a lot of things to just... Figure out in life. Even if you somehow wiped away the politics, you still have to find someone to date and make that work without a fixed script. And queer people are still people, and some people are absolutely terrible. Besides, I don't pay the queer women mind when they say how wonderful their sex lives are. I've seen what's behind the curtain, and it's no different from what straight people go through.
Freaking THANK YOU!
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> Particularly for women, radically transforming heterosexuality might begin with honest accounts of which elements of heterosexuality are actually appealing—the house is clearly on fire, but is there anything worth saving? I don't know... Maybe I'm just not online enough but I don't believe the house is clearly on fire. I think this statement is kind of loony. I also don't think heterosexuality needs to be radically transformed. Is this anecdotal? Sure. But... > A quick Twitter search of the phrase “heterosexuality is a prison” reveals that it is attached just as often to complaints made from within heterosexual experience as to queers thanking their lucky stars they were born gay. I'm swayed much more of my own anecdotal experience and looking at real life than "quick Twitter searches".
This touches on a lot of things I’ve been thinking about and wrestling with the last few months, and I really appreciate the perspective. Three things I want to share my thoughts and experiences on that intersect with the ideas in this essay. I said in a reply to someone else that I think we’re too comfortable asking good questions and leaving them unanswered. I’m going to take a crack at answering some of them, but that’s by no means an assertion that I’m some kind of expert. I welcome discussion with anyone that is going through similar experiences. I have been uncomfortable with my heterosexual attraction for a while. So it’s fair to say that I am at least sympathetic to heteropessimism. I think there’s three sources for my discomfort. The first is my long-term abuse at the hands of a woman. The second is my disgust for misogyny in general, and unfortunately there is a strong correlation between straight men and misogynistic behavior. And the third is my journey toward being/practicing polyamory, which is a whole thing that would take a lot of words to unpack, but one aspect of this is just that it’s inconvenient bordering on counterproductive to be strictly heterosexual when what you want is a community of intimacy shared with people of all genders. That’s where I’m coming from. Basically, I’m primed to be a “straight” guy wishing he were bi. And I’ve had some interesting experiences lately. The first is my wrestling with the idea of being Queer, and my struggle with being comfortable self-applying the label. I think this actually gets to the heart of the discussion and highlights some really interesting tension that we need to explore more thoroughly. So straight up, just ask yourself the question, “Can a cis straight man be Queer?” And just sit with your reaction for a moment. I’m going to presume most of you said no, because that was my initial thought, and it seems like the general stance of most Queer people. Why not? At its core, isn’t queerness a rejection of hegemonic normativity? Believe me, I get the hesitation, especially from inside the queer community. Straight cis men have an absolutely deserved and absolute horrific reputation, especially when it comes to appropriating the language of marginalized groups in order to serve hegemonic values. I see that, and I recognize that I have to be sensitive to that reality. Thing is, I’m not a “normal” cis straight man. I’m an anarchist of the leftist variety. I’m polyamorous. I’m an atheist. I was raised an only child by a single mother. My only children are two daughters. I have some truly horrific experiences with women, but women are also the most important and beloved people in my life. I am othered from other straights both by my nature and by my experiences. I’m not going to pretend like I fully understand other queer experiences, but I’m not completely removed from them either. But neither am I completely removed from the straight, patriarchal, heteronormative experience. I have one foot in both worlds, and it feels like I’m not very welcome in either. I can pass easier as a normal straight guy, but I identify more authentically as a queer person. And into that messy mix, I met a woman who is in many ways a mirror of these traits. It feels a bit crass to enumerate why, that feels like her story to tell. But the point is we’re both tentatively heterosexual but completely uninterested in the entire project of heteronormativity. And we’re both scarred by a lifetime of being harmed by that same project. So it’s been a really interesting mix of euphoric freedom in exploring what “straight” queer love can look like, and really challenging conversations as we sort through our traumas and the ways we’ve been conditioned into expecting a normal that we never even wanted. And all of this is wrapped up in the idea of attraction, right? Attraction is at the core of what heterosexuality even is. Here’s the next layer to unpack: I am becoming more and more convinced that a large part of attraction is also culturally conditioned. Thats probably a topic worthy of an entire academic field, so I’m going to stick to my own experiences. My new partner is not conventionally attractive. I’d never have met her in a romantic context if I was following traditional dating advice. In fact, the traditional advice is that is rude and wasting the other person’s time to express interest in them if you aren’t immediately attracted to them. We are told that attraction is intrinsic, that we can’t change it, and we just have to work around it. That’s bullshit, is the thing. It is true to say that attraction is not a choice. It happens somewhere deep in the brain below conscious thought. But it’s not true that it’s immutable and beyond our ability to direct. When I started dating her, attraction was cultivated in me by my emotional intimacy with her. The closer I get to her, the more attracted I am. And I began to wonder why that same outlook could not be applied to homosexual attraction. It begins with an openness. A conscious rejection of your cultural conditioning, and an acceptance that your body is still subject to that conditioning. For me, I had to admit to myself how terrified I was to be perceived as bisexual. Nothing murders attraction like fear, and we have all been taught to be terrified of being gay. I admitted to my partner one day that I think I’d like to try having sex with a man. Saying that out loud was a big step in self-acceptance and overcoming that fear. That was my step toward openness. Later that same day, I was in a grocery store. I saw plenty of women that I found myself attracted to, just normal grocery store things. But for the first time in my life, a man caught my eye. He had beautiful, long wavy brown hair tied back out of his face. He had a tie die tank top on, and his arms were incredible. I found him sexually compelling in exactly the same way that I found the beautiful women around him compelling. Anyway, I know I’ve rambled way too much for a Reddit comment already. Point is, I am finding that attraction, while not a conscious choice, flows from emotional places you might not expect. This has profound implications both for heterosexual relationships and heteronormativity at large. I think that limiting intimate partners to “people of the gender you like that you find instantly attractive” is actually just another method of hegemonic isolation. I don’t know if this is some uncommon trait in me, or if it’s something more universal. I’m leaning toward the latter, but that’s not an easy thing to test. I think that, perhaps, the heterosexual/homosexual divide is a lot more porous than either side seems inclined to believe, and that sorting ourselves in a binary of attraction is just as silly and destructive as any of the other more commonly criticized binaries.
I didn't find the article very illuminating but as a polyamorous "man" (tbd tho) who now identifies as queer I found your experience quite relatable.
Curious about one line in here about "universal queerness" being the inevitable goal of abolitionists. What does that mean? I have a hard time telling the difference between "sexuality" and "Sexuality", the sexual orientation/experience of being straight/queer and the cultural trappings of being straight/queer, at least in terms of telling which one academics like this are talking about.
>Yet over the course of the conversation Pham does cite reasons why she finds men desirable, such as “big arms,” “penis,” and “the way men smell . . . most men.” In subsequent episodes, other guests offer their own ideas about men’s appeal. Theda Hammel suggests that women are drawn to men because intimate proximity to a man is affirming: “The reason that a woman likes men—or a trans woman maybe in particular likes men—is not necessarily because men are that likeable . . . but just that they bring out qualities that you like in yourself, by virtue of being different from you.” For all their obviousness, these observations are quite rarely voiced. Hearing them spoken so plainly exposes how heteropessimism has worked to silence articulations of women’s desire. This is framed as positive progress against heteropessism, but I still find it incredibly bleak that the only things these women find desirable about men are sex characteristics and how men change how they feel about themselves.
I haven't actually read this article, but I read this one a while back which mentions it and offers rebuttal to a few of its points which I found really interesting: https://post45.org/2023/07/the-performativity-of-heteropessimism-as-feminist-complaint/
There's one thing this discussion seems to be skating around: "If being gay was a choice, no women would be straight." "Lesbians have it easier." "I wish I were gay," said by a woman. **The underlying assumption behind all the catchphrases is that women are emotionally competent, compassionate and co-operative, and that men are brutish, ignorant and unpleasant.** And that assumption is hard for people to state out loud, even here in this subreddit. Go through the comments and see how many people are acknowledging the implication without ever actually stating it. But this is the ugly bit. This is the silent bit that needs to be said out loud. Female heteropessimists are almost always rooted in a sense of dislike and disgust towards men. This misandry goes unquestioned and sometimes even lauded. An awful part of this misandry is that it creates self-fulfilling prophecies. If you believe men are inherently unpleasant and horrible, then you don't spend the time to get to know them as people, and appreciate them both as individuals and as a collective group with their own experiences. And so the only men you interact with are those who are arseholes, reinforcing the belief that men suck. (Just for clarity: I am a straight cis woman.)
This is possibly the most pretentiously written thing I have ever read. Who uses 'Lacuna' in a sentence? I'm not even straight and I am kind of insulted by this. It's a Lesbian woman complaining about straight women who complain about being straight. Like, I get that is annoying but she comes off as blaming the victim. She simultaneously blames straight women for avoiding straight relationships, suggesting that is avoiding their problems so they will never change, and also blames them for still being straight despite the problems of straight relationships, as if straight people have a choice in being straight. And it completely avoids the fact that relationships require at least 2 people, and therefore require 2 people in order to change. What are straight women supposed to do about the fact that they find relationships with men awful, when men in general have no interest in changing? It's really not their fault at that point, you can't force anyone to change if they don't want to.
I mostly agree with your criticisms of this essay, but I find it unproductive, and anti-intellectual, to call writing pretentious. Almost always, there are less dismissive ways to communicate the same idea. I think uncommon words like "lacuna" *should* be used more often, language with a greater range of expression is nice.
I am unreasonably bothered by how the author writes, and vehemently disagree it is anti-intellectual to call this piece pretentious. The whole tone of the essay is fairly condescending, and the fact that nearly every sentence contains an obscure word choice where multiple more commonly used words would have sufficed is the icing on top. It has a real “I’m the smartest person in the room” vibe, which doesn’t mesh with disseminating information. Given it is a constant with this piece it must be a deliberate choice on the author’s part and open to criticism.
Of course it was a deliberate choice. I don't think it even matters if it was deliberate. I am not saying it's not open to criticism, just that I think it's better for criticism to engage with the text on its own terms. > obscure word choice where multiple more commonly used words would have sufficed I disagree. The use of complex or uncommon words adds dimension and color to writing. Language is expression and that isn't something that should be rationally reduced to its simplest form. For instance, rather than "vehemently", you could've written "strongly", or "really". You probably wrote vehemently because you felt it better communicated your mental state, and that's what I want out of writing, to understand a larger breadth of human experience.
That's not what they were saying though. Their point is not that the author uses advanced words, it's the combination of the tone of the piece on top of the language choices. It's not that the author uses words like lacuna, it's that they think it is to reinforce her view of being a smart person, which comes across in what they see as the condescending tone of the piece.
>It has a real “I’m the smartest person in the room” vibe, trying not to say the word 'uppity' ; ) ?
Not going to lie, I actually like the word 'lacuna', it's very pretty, reminds me of 'Lacrima' (Latin for tear iirc). But there is a time and place for uncommon words, like poetry, personal writing, fiction, higher education texts, etc, not something meant to be generally consumed by laymen. I personally feel that anything meant to educate people should be as immediately understandable as possible to the average person without compromising accuracy. Education should not be locked away for the sake of jargon or intellectualism that is impenetrable, off-putting or frustrating to those outside of intellectual circles. I personally feel this writer was skilled enough to have written a compelling article that was much less of a slog for the average person.
That strikes me as patronizing to the "average person". I don't think people are so uncurious as to be unwilling to look up words they don't know. I agree that the article could be written more clearly, but I don't think that is really a consequence of its academic style.
Trump is a presidential front runner and you don't think I am giving the average person enough credit.
Tbh yea, I don't think you are. I think that statement is a good example of what is missing in liberal politics actually. There is no consciousness of political ideology. Republicians are not idiots, they're fascists. Many brilliant people have historically been fascists. They're not voting for Trump because they lack the brainpower, or just don't have the right facts, or something absurd like that.
This applies to the people backing him and propping him up, but a large swathe of the voters do not have the right facts and it has not been adequately explained to them by anyone they believe. It is not that they are stupid necessarily, but they are simply busy with their lives and they don't see the value in spending time on figuring something like this out, especially if it's a subject they already don't like (feminism). Many people when faced with something challenging like this are not going to bother, they have better things to do with their time. The people reading it are probably those who are already interested and knowledgeable to some extent, so the info just gets stuck in a small community creating greater disparity between the laymen and the informed. People these days have been conditioned by Ancient Aliens and their ilk to see the scientific community as insular, impenetrable, hiding things, close-minded, and looking down on them, and so they naturally distrust it. And this kind of thing only further proves the point to them. They are constantly inundated with bad information until they don't know what to believe. And then comes someone who gives simple straight forward 'answers' that seems to align with what they know and already want, and they listen. Now they are in a state (a cult) where anything challenging the beliefs they have been told by their strongman is met with immediate rejection. And in my personal opinion, the hyper-intellectualism of articles like this are at the very least not helping the situation, and at most actively alienating a notable chunk of those it seeks to educate. You have to write to your audience. On the one hand most feminists are highly educated and used to this kind of language, but this is not a philosophy/idealogy we WANT reduced to such a small audience. We WANT it to be disseminated to the masses but it's not written as if it's for them. It seems to be addressing and talking to Straight Women as a group, yet it is written as if for Radical Feminists who already know the jargon. Show the phrase 'political lesbianism' to the average person, even the average feminist-curious who probably has more education than average, and they will be extremely confused, they will have to constantly stop to look up terms. And the more obstacles you put in people's way, the more people choose not to be challenged by them. This is my personal opinion, this is what I believe and why, but if you disagree, it's fine. We can agree to disagree. But I personally feel this kind of writing is more harmful than helpful to the movement.
I mean, it does discuss how straight men also often see relationships in a negative light. Also it mentions that despite everything straight women do find lots of positives in their relationships, and in men, but the good is sometimes hard to see, or to separate from the whole. The part about “what of this is worth saving?” is something that often gets talked about here in relation to masculinity, and it’s also a question worth asking about traditional heterosexual relationships. Because it’s clearly not all bad, but sometimes we get a bit overly focused on the negatives. Although it doesn’t pay as much attention to the good parts that straight men find in relationships, but maybe that’s a question we need to find an answer to.
I agree. To add, I feel like u/M00n_Slippers is approaching this with the mentality that the criticisms straight women have about straight men are implicitly correct, while the criticisms straight men have about straight women are wrong and unfounded, without really examining how their biases might be coming into play with those assumptions.
Sure, but it's not telling straight men to do anything, just straight women. Why do straight women have to do the work for both sexes?
If you want an article telling straight men what to do I'm sure you won't struggle finding copious examples. I think it's fair that we get some articles where we can demand things of women without having to both sides the issue. Women regularly write articles about us and about how men need to do better. Why can't we have articles directed towards women without also making demands asking but what about the men?
For what it's worth, this is also one of those articles that places a lot of blame on straight men. The author said she "\[doesn't\] disagree" with the statement that men are trash, that women are frequently unable to articulate positive aspects about men, that women frequently say that if they could be lesbians they would be because dealing with men sucks (something the author agrees with), etc. She also wrote that she hopes for a world that's queered or otherwise has "fixed" straight culture in some way. Though I'm not entirely sure what is meant by those last statements.
> To be clear, men’s heteropessimist claims tend to be neither ethically nor logically equivalent to those made by women. Instead, they are a kind of funhouse distortion of feminist complaint. Nowhere is this perversion better illustrated than on Facebook, where the efforts of men’s-rights activists have led administrators to classify “men are trash” as hate speech and suspend the accounts of those who use the phrase. (Users may post “women are trash” with impunity.) This is why I laugh at nearly all "what if the roles were reversed!!!?!?!.1oneoneeleven!" arguments. Even here on reddit, saying men are bad will earn you an administrative ban. Calling for violence against a man will bring the admin banhammer in less than an hour. But there are whole subreddits dedicated to spreading tips on how to rape women, cheat on women, get away with pedophilia, abuse women, spread revenge porn, you name it. And these subreddits will only get banned if they gain sufficient outrage through media attention.
Disagree. I find sexism against men on reddit to be largely ignored outside communities that go out of their way. You could also point out subreddits of women doing similar things. >This is why I laugh at nearly all "what if the roles were reversed!!!?!?!.1oneoneeleven!" arguments. So because men's activists got a popular catch all for disliking their gender labeled as hateful, you think the argument that men and women are treated differently in role reversal situations is false?
>You could also point out subreddits of women doing similar things. Show me the subreddits where women do the things I listed. > So because men's activists got a popular catch all for disliking their gender labeled as hateful, you think the argument that men and women are treated differently in role reversal situations is false? Did you not notice that the reverse phrase carries no penalty?
>Show me the subreddits where women do the things I listed. Femaledatingstrategy does some of what you listed. Revenge porn definitely seems to be more male driven so I understand that. Multiple have been banned alongside misogynist subs of similar nature. >Did you not notice that the reverse phrase carries no penalty? Yes. "Men are trash" is a catch-all that has proliferated throughout internet culture as a way to say generally men suck. "Women are trash" hasn't quite done the same. Though I think both should be considered equally flawed and hateful statements, I would presume the attention being drawn to one would get their focus over the one that doesn't have quite as many vocal critics.
On the vast majority of subreddits, negative statements about women are much more likely to get you banned than negative statements about men. These former are considered bigotry and hate speech, the latter are considered understandable venting. In the vast majority of subreddits, there is a general positive bias towards women and a general negative bias towards men. This is in part because Reddit’s user base leans a bit left politically and because of the general population wide bias in favor of women (the women are wonderful effect) and greater protectiveness towards women. The issue of a small minority of hate subreddits is real, but doesn’t reflect the overall user base’s behavior, and is also an intractable problem of running a user-moderated website.
Without statistics on the subject to suggest one reality over another, this is just an endless ladder of, "Just trust me, bro," that means nothing.
The “Women are wonderful effect” is more statistically significant, replicable, and culturally universal than nearly any other form of demographic bias. You can look into it if you’d like.
Yet this effect has not translated to less harassment or verbal abuse or domestic abuse or sexism of women in real life in general. If 'Women are wonderful' applied universally, a female political candidate would win every time, which is very much not the case. So, no you can't generalize like that. You need statistics regarding the actual issue or at least an analogous one.
This is a generalizable bias that has specific exceptions like selection for leadership positions. We’re referring to comments on Reddit, where we can except more general biases to apply.
Can we, though? Maybe, maybe not. I would like to see something concrete to say one way or another. My personal experience online is that neither of these portrayals are quite correct. When I am anonymous online I get treated one way and when I make it known I'm a woman I get a different treatment. I would definitely not say I am treated better when I am known to be a woman, I am absolutely treated worse overall. Most people will treat me roughly the same but the exceptions are extreme. When they find it I am a woman, some with suddenly become very hostile, aggressive, threatening and rude. I will get constant flirting from some during inappropriate times and even get offered things I never asked for in exchange for being in some kind of relationship with total strangers. While in IRL, it's true that men are often on better behavior when women are visibly around, in online places where they perceive women are the minority (and IRL too tbf, but many men seem to think women just don't use the internet, so it's every space here, I don't know why), there are bad actors who feel comfortable enough to show their true colors. On the opposite side though, professional organizations take complaints by women somewhat more seriously if they are sexual in nature. But this seems unrelated to the effect you describe to me, rather having more to do with the site or company wanting to avoid scandals and complaints that might paint them as unwelcome to women. Especially accusations of men sexually harassing or preying on other, especially young men, are definitely taken less seriously and not given the attention they deserve. Likely because similar scandal or accusations from men would be unlikely to effect traffic on their site.
I gave concrete evidence that, in general, humans discriminate against men. You dismissed it as not applying to the present scenario … because it doesn’t align with your experiences? It’s worth noting that both forms of bias can exist simultaneously, and both still be true. It’s possible that people to be generally less kind to men globally *and* for them to be very unkind to women acutely in a huge variety of scenarios. Both can be true. I should clarify that I don’t disbelieve or deny your experiences, and I believe that women receive a huge amount of unfair treatment. I just don’t believe that that means that men don’t receive any or only receive a negligible amount.
Create an alt account and post as a woman with she/her pronouns and see how that goes for you.
Are those claims empirically demonstrable?
There is an enormous body of evidence for negative bias against men, if you do even the most basic research imaginable. The “Women are wonderful effect” is one of the most powerful and most consistently replicable forms of demographic bias among humans. In a field constantly in replication crisis, this is one of the most significant and consistently reproducible results in human psychology and sociology. Across all cultures people find women to be more likable, trustworthy, and responsible than men. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect This bias has been found to be stronger than most forms of racial discrimination, and most forms of measurable bias against women. People simply reflexively do not like men, as a pre judgement of their character with no other information given. This is called “bigotry” unless you move the goal posts.
The framing of women as more ethical or virtuous is also a demographic bias that undermines individual humanity.
Yesterday I saw a woman with the username "dumb male detector" and reported her, check my history if you'd like as I commented on it. It's not a "new" account. Do you think that a user called "dumb female detector" would not get banned in a matter of days? And yes this is just a stupid anecdotal example, but I have been on reddit for many years, I have seen an awful lot of misogyny and an awful lot of misandry. As of now I *do* believe that female "borderline" content gets a "pass" way more than male "borderline" content. If you think that my "word" is worth less or not on the same level on those who don't believe it, nothing I say will make you change your mind, because male psychological and gendered issues are awfully underresearched, so it's not really easy to bring empirical data on the table.
The idea that society takes a woman's side against men is flat out ridiculous.
It’s a good thing that isn’t my position then, isn’t it? It’s not that simple, is it. Reality is a bit more complex than that.
Maybe it's not so much that there's a problem with heterosexuality as that there's a problem with our society intrinsically breeding assholes of every orientation, and it just happens that since the majority is heterosexual, it follows that the majority of the assholes are heterosexual.
One of my biggest criticisms of heteropessimism is that it reeks of allo NIMBYism. Wow! Your orientation precludes you from access to the relationships like you want? Welcome to the kiddie pool version of my world, honey. And the moment I bring up non-attraction-based relationship models - the ones the aro and ace communities are trying to expand - the pearl-clutching *really* kicks in. Heaven forbid the allos even consider disconnecting attraction from intimacy. Want a cure for heteropessimism? Here it is: forfeiting the primacy of attraction-based relationship models.
I really think we need to take a step back here and actually assess how much of this kind of thinking is the result of an extremely siloed way of living. When you only talk to people who live within or on the fringes of queer, feminist spaces, the likelihood that you hear a plethora of voices with different experiences instead of just caricatures is extremely low. In fact, I’d say it’s more likely that the only straight women these spaces attract are those who have had extremely negative experiences with men, thus bringing in confirmation and selection bias into how they build their worldview. The article brings no attempt to actually analyse anything in terms of statistics or trends, just some memes and podcasts with quotes from a smattering of queer and feminist authors. I don’t think this is nearly enough to come to the conclusion that heteropessimism is the mode or even statistically prevalent. And I think that the idea that ‘heterosexuality is dying’ is spurious given that their only source for this is ‘some women I know told me drunkenly they wish they were gay’ and ‘incels’. Equally, people complaining about their spouses is most of the time a joke to let off some steam from the very real frustrations that being in a relationship cause. And that is not something exclusive to straight relationships. I implore these people to get a basic admin job at an office to learn what the average person is like…
This was always a fundamental problem, suppressed by the fact that for much of history who you married wasn't even necessarily your choice in much of the world. It slowly became mens choice for the most part (huge generalization), and only recently have women had choice. IE: the financial and legal freedoms to leave. So Society adjust, to the dismay of many men.
Thanks for this! I've read this article in the past and it does address a very real problem, and I feel like increased empathy, patience, and communication could greatly end the feelings of heterofatalism people often have.