Jane Ward

Oh, absolutely.

I think it's changing.

I mean, even subjecting heterosexuality to analysis is a big change.

Certainly, to have such widespread attention be paid to what's troubling about heterosexuality or to the way that heterosexuality is failing people is a huge transformation.

In fact, I've actually been really kind of surprised by how quickly these sorts of conversations about heteropessimism, a tragedy of heterosexuality, really penetrated the culture.

And I think that's thanks to social media in many ways.

And I think there's still tremendous hunger for conversations about, you know, what are we going to do with heterosexuality because it isn't working?

So heteropessimism is not my concept.

Asa Saracen coined that term in an essay in 2019, and it's such a useful term.

And basically what they were getting at was the way that many straight people performatively express their embarrassment, their dissatisfaction, their resignation about heterosexuality.

They pretty much do this thing where they're fully into you and then they pull back.

And then also, none of them can communicate for shit, let alone even say, I'm sorry.

And what Saracen says is, you know, it's performative, not in that it's, like, fake.

It's performative in that that's all it does.

It's just an expression.

These are not people who are actually going to stop being straight because of it.

And so it's very popular on social media, for instance, for, you know, young people to talk about like, oh God, I wish I wasn't, you know, I wish I wasn't straight.

This really is, you know, kind of out there in the atmosphere and it's such a useful concept that I think is part of what people are thinking about on TikTok that then is like a building block for Shante's article.

I think these are broad trends, and it makes sense that we see people doing things that seem quite different on the political spectrum from women saying having a boyfriend or a husband is embarrassing to women who want to be trad wives.

I mean, I think, you know, not to get, like, too theoretical, but... Hit us with it.