The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, winner of the 2021 PROSE Award in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, is Jane Ward’s third book. In it, she explores what is wrong with heterosexuality in the 21st century and what straight people can do to fix it. She compares straight to queer relationships, pointing out where straight couple could learn from queer culture, takes a look at the self-help industry (and how it’s not helping at all) and ultimately wonders how straight women (and to a lesser extent men) have survived the tragedy of heterosexuality. Ward offers us a map of the complex and shifting landscape of heterosexual desire in the era of #MeToo, sexual harassment, and Title IX.
In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, queer feminist scholar Jane Ward reevaluates the question of whether heterosexuality is easier than queerness. She reverses the usual story of queer suffering to instead portray the hardships of heterosexual life, especially for women, and the positive queer alternatives. Heterosexuality has been shown as the epitome of happiness in western societies but, Ward argues, that could not be further from the truth. Heterosexual relationships, connected to structures of capitalism, misogyny, and white supremacy, have been acting as ways of controlling women, their bodies, and their desires. The author announces herself as an ally to heterosexuals and goes on to present why straight culture, as it exists now, is hurtful to straight people. She compares it a lot to queer culture, which she portrays as more positive since while of course it contains a lot of examples of violence, manipulation, identity pressure and unhappy relationships in its own right, this is not “a default mode” as is the case with heterosexual culture according to Ward. To build and advance her argument, Ward uses quotes from queer people (survey), and compares the experiences of straight and queer people (causal-comparative methodology). Especially, in Chapter 4 titled “A Sick and Boring Life: Queer People Diagnose the Tragedy” where Ward incorporates into her writing the quotes of more than fifty queer people and they are all talking negatively about heterosexuality.
Jane Ward is an American scholar, feminist, and author. She is a professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses in feminist, queer, and heterosexuality studies. Ward received her PhD in sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2003. She has published work which focuses on a broad range of topics (for example, the racial politics of same-sex marriage, the social construction of heterosexuality and whiteness).
In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward states her position in the human spectrum (queer) and her background as a teacher of gender studies as her qualifications for writng this book.
Divided in five chapters, Ward tells us about the issues about heterosexuality, how it grew to be our society’s norm; the misogyny paradox, or how come straight men hate women so much?; pickup artists and the seduction industry; self-help books; the opinion of queer people on straight people’s life; and deep heterosexuality, basically an “it gets better” for the straights. Maybe. If they allow some things to change. And if men learn to actually respect women, mainly (the chapter is subtitled “Toward a Future in Which Straight Men Like Women So Much That They Actually Like Women”). Ward also incorporates into her writing quotes and ideas from other scholars, like Gloria Anzaldúa and Michelle Wallace.
The Tragedy of Heterosexuality has quite a few strengths; its writing is engaging (and at times, however few, quite funny) and it presents a new look on heterosexuality and its history. The book’s biggest strength, however, is its accessibility; you don’t need to have read any gender theory whatsoever in order to read and understand this book. Any specific terminology the author uses is from queer culture rather than academia, and in every instance briefly and clearly explained. Ward succeeds in making sure that anyone will be able to read and understand her arguments in the book, which she supports with quotes from other scholars and queer people or even images and memes relevant to the topic (e.g. #notallmen memes which emerged in 2017).
While the book has parts that are extremely well-written and offers a new perspective on certain topics, it has quite a few weaknesses. First of all, most of text feels like it has an air of superiority and arrogance over anyone who is heterosexual. Ward’s writing felt like it switched from informative to “holier than thou” from a point on. Being queer and being straight is just different, each with its own unique challenges. We should not attempt to compare them, as Jane Ward does in the majority of this book, and get into a “privilege-discrimination” fight. Second, there is a chapter filled with repetitive quotes from a group of 53 queer people’s negative views on straight culture. If I wanted to trash-talk about straight people I would just go hang out with my queer friends. Finally, another issue I have with the book was Jane Ward’s use of transphobic writers (for example, Adrienne Rich and Cherie Moraga) without acknowledging them or considering how their mention in the book might affect trans readers.
In conclusion, anyone, queer or straight, female or male (or any other gender, but these two are specifically used in this book as case studies) will be able to gain something from The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. It may be new knowledge on the history of straight culture or the billion-dollar self-help industry, or a few laughs here and there from the author’s queer culture jokes. At least, this is what I gained from it. But I also felt uncomfortable by Jane Ward’s arrogance and superior attitude as a queer woman towards heterosexual people (especially women, who she essentially encourages to “be gay”). Her mention but not acknowledgement of transphobic writers, quite early in the book, made my reading experience uneasy. All in all, this is a solid read to be taken though with a lot of grains of salt.
Ward, Jane. The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. New York University Press, 2020.
Ooh I’m so intrigued! You do a great job of highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this book and provide great advice for the best way to approach reading it. At first, I thought this book sounded very entertaining and quite funny in the way that it mocks straight people in an educational way. But from what you’ve said here it seems as though the author takes this a bit too far, which is unfortunate as it could detract from the value there is to be gained from her content. It seems like there’s a lot of great potential here but the author might’ve gotten distracted by her own biases. I definitely want to read it now!