Ward, Jane (2015-07-31). Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men (Sexual Cultures, 19). NYU Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-2517-2. Ward focuses on the development of this tension in the United States, with particular attention to the influence of the eugenics movement and the relationship between heteronormativity and American white supremacy (Ward 2020, p. 39). Eugenicists of the early 1900s held that the preservation of white society required happy white homes, because happiness would lead to fecundity. Thus, the happy heterosexual home became an ideal of American life. Ward’s archival analysis reveals that this ideal was a demanding one: men and women of the time routinely loathed both the marriages in which they’d found themselves and the partners to whom they were bound. They regarded one another’s bodies as unfamiliar and disgusting (Ward 2020, p. 39), and women, routinely raped on their wedding nights and knowing little, if anything, of what they were about to experience, came to know their husbands as purveyors of an unspeakable, ungratifying, and ugly act (Ward 2020, p. 41). This, of course, is poor soil for seeds of love and companionship.

All the feminist texts I had read could not drown out what I had absorbed from society and popular culture: that it was my duty to satisfy my husband, regardless of my own feelings.” Ward, Jane (2016). "Dyke Methods: A Meditation on Queer Studies and the Gay Men Who Hate It". WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly. 44 (3): 68–85. doi: 10.1353/wsq.2016.0036. S2CID 88566406. ProjectMUSE 632147. Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every day on relationship coaches, seduction boot camps, and couples' therapy in a search for happiness. Del otro lado, es revelador que cuando un hombre describe interés en el mundo femenino (historias, arte, cultura o vida emocional de las mujeres) se le percibe como gay. En la hetrosexualidad actual, los hombres llegan a valorar más la aprovación de otros hombres que la humanidad femenina, usando los cuerpos de las mujeres para ganar respeto entre otros hombres. En ese contexto la mujer funciona en un triángulo erótico, donde el sexo con mujeres fortalece los lazos entre hombres. El sexo como validación masculina a través de la dominación sexual es parte de un sistema que beneficia y premia a los hombres que se disocian de la experiencia femenina en el sexo (cultura de la violación). los hombres gastan tiempo y energía en generar vínculos eróticos entre ellos sin lograr interesarse en el placer y el concentimiento femenino. Mientras los hombres hetero aseguran amar a las mujeres, sus energías continuan fluyendo hacia otros hombres (admirar, buscar su compañía y su aprovación), la heterosexualidad es una orientacion homosocial donde se romantiza la alienación entre hombres y mujeres. Para la mujer, el sexo no deseado, cohersivo y centrado en el hombre está normalizado porque el amor hetrosexual ya está construido alrededor del sacrificio femenino.

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Similarly, in lifetime victims of sexual crimes (although the CDC did not separate rape and other sexual violence when reporting on the sex of the perpetrator) lesbian victims are more likely to have a female perpetrator (14.8%) than both bisexual (12.5%) and heterosexual women victims (5.3%) – indicating that intimate partner sexual violence against women in lesbian relationships could be as prevalent as that in heterosexual relationships (I’ve also read a study where nearly 50% of lesbians reported sexual abuse by a woman partner – although the study is almost 30 years old and could hardly be called representative so that’s likely way high, but then again, the same shortcomings that study suffers from are present in a lot of studies relating to different sex perpetrators as well). Why do men feel entitled to women’s emotional, sexual and domestic labor? It’s as if men don’t really like women all that much. A case could be made that they don’t. As author and activist Stanley Fritz writes: Looking in on heterosexuality as a queer outsider and ally, Ward rejects the commercialized self-help tactics she examines and proposes a more radical approach, adapted from queer and feminist writers and personal conversations, which she calls “deep heterosexuality.” Straight couples don’t need to learn cleverer and more subtle ways to manipulate each other. They need to find ways to relate that don’t depend on patriarchy and misogyny. This raises a final question: What does deep heterosexuality mean for women? Ward’s proposal is asymmetrical—it provides recommendations to men, but is largely silent about women. There are plausible reasons for this. Perhaps, insofar as Ward’s proposal is a corrective prescription, women do not need such correction; perhaps they are already appropriately oriented toward men. From a more structural perspective, it is men who hold power in our still-patriarchal social context, and so perhaps the onus lies on men to change it for the better. The writing is a bit dense, as is common in academic work. It's not my favorite, but it's good so far.

When I started this book and it started with a history of heterosexuality and straight culture, I was here for it. I kept nodding and having "AHA!" moments that explained so many things. It was well researched, the points were made clearly, I was here for it.It was also very interesting to see the history from which this current social paradox arose, and the circumstances under which the idea of heterosexuality being about love between a man and a woman (rather than just a partnership, alliance, or business arrangement) began to arise. People always say the nature of gayness was different in the past... It was interesting to see how the nature of straightness is similarly transient and sometimes difficult to discern. So there's value in this exercise for me, a cis white American male, a scion of almost godlike privilege. I was also here for the chapter about "Dating Coaches" because what in the... And I loved the field study. It was great. It was interesting. It was eye opening. Solid 4 star read for me until here (because some of the transitions were a bit forced and it didn't read as elegently as I would have hoped). Men need to learn to genuinely like women and situate loving and pleasing women at the center of their sexual attraction to women. Men can learn from lesbians how to desire and have sex with women and love them as true equals. They can identify with women, share women’s interests and concerns, and still find women as thrilling as lesbians do. Despite all my criticism of the book, I want to end on the note that there’s a reason a book such as this gets published. All is not well in relationships. The solution isn’t to dump all the fault on one half as the author does, nor is the solution for all of us to “choose” turning queer or homosexual. But all is not well. In the end, Ward is right after all (sort of), the key to a lot of our problems (so prevalent in all relationships, heterosexual and not) is arguably communication, empathy, and sympathy.

Perhaps this is better understood through the perspective of the revelation. The revelation of queer sex, especially for those of us socialized as women, is seeing that things you learned to loathe—the things about which you were told that people who love women find them disgusting—are actually sexy. It is the visceral experience of the falsehood of those lies. By contrast, Ward’s analysis and prescription revolves around “sameness” and For Manne, it’s a prime example of male entitlement, an aspect of misogyny that prioritizes what men believe they deserve and what women should give them, which is, obviously, problematic. Straight culture promises women the world, but, in reality, offers women very little,” Ward said. “Queer culture, on the other hand, is a source of joy for most queer people; it’s homophobia and straight culture, not queer culture, that is the source of most queer suffering.” I’ll be honest, folks. I’m part of the LGBITQA+ community. In particular, I identify as a bisexual woman, and I’m currently in a longterm relationship with my girlfriend (also a bisexual woman). The subjects of gender and sexual diversity had been an important part of my research as a Social Anthropologist, and those are basically my two main areas of professional interest. That being said, when I saw that a book with this title A) existed and B) was available for request, I ran to press that button hard. And I was not disappointed. As moving as this example is, however, I wonder whether the promise of men’s woman-identification can be a genuine parallel. Centering women’s pleasure is a good thing, and Ward is certainly correct that many heterosexual relationships would be vastly improved by this alone. But, if we take this superficial content as the lesson of the stone butch example, we miss its rich texture. We miss the transgression-in-authenticity of butch identity. We miss the vulnerability of opening one’s queerness to another person, especially as it was during the era from which Ward draws this chapter’s inspiration. We miss the illegibility of stone sexuality from a straight perspective. If decades of feminist standpoint theory have taught us anything, it is that these contextual trappings are essential—the masculinity acquired when we pass this experience through a heterosexual sieve is simply not the same.He estado leyendo muy poco pero escuché a la autora hablar de este libro en un podcast (tierneytalks) donde tocaba los puntos principales de este libro, y el título me llamó mucho la atención. Advertencia: mi reseña es larguísima porque este libro me puso dio mucho en que pensar. The author puts the blame for the unhappiness squarely on men and their misogyny. The institutions men have built are designed to reinforce straight white male supremacy. Gay men, too, if white, participate in the male-designed system of woman-degrading misogyny. To their detriment, of course; to all male beings' detriment. Mlotek, Haley (9 October 2020). "Are Straight People OK? And Other Questions About Love and Sexuality". The New York Times. She lives in Southern California with her partner Kat Ross. Ward's published work focuses on a broad range of topics, from feminist pornography, queer parenting, and the racial politics of same-sex marriage, to the social construction of heterosexuality and whiteness.