It's Not That "It Gets Better," It's That Heterosexuality is Worse

A few months ago I facilitated a discussion about queer parenting at a Moms Club meeting in Altadena. The gracious hosts were a lesbian couple (the only other lesbians in the club--though I have been delighted to find out that many of the lovely straight moms in the club have far more complex sexual desires and histories than their hetero-married suburban lives might suggest, but this is a delicious subject for another post).  So we arrived at the topic of children’s sexuality, and one of the lesbian moms in the room made a comment I have heard many times before, a comment that lesbian and gay people are perhaps more likely to share openly than lefty straight parents:  “If I am to be totally honest, I would prefer, for our child’s sake, that he isn’t gay.  We don’t want him to have to deal with the challenges that come with being gay.”

It is little wonder that parents—even (and perhaps especially) gay and lesbian parents—feel this way.  We have been encouraged by the mainstream gay and lesbian movement to spread the word to straight people (and then internalize for ourselves) that being queer is very, very hard, and that this fact is very, very sad.  One of the most popular gay and lesbian retorts to the homophobic assertion that gays should quit their shenanigans and choose heterosexuality is: “my god, don’t you think I would do that if I could?  Who would choose a life of discrimination and homophobia?  No rational person would do that, and ergo, I must have been born this way.”  Blah, blah, blah.  But despite the realities of homophobic bullying, violence, and discrimination (which I will speak to in a moment), this logic simply doesn’t ever ring true for me and I suspect it is more of a discursive habit than anything else.  It certainly bolsters heteronormativity, by implying that heterosexual lives are free of gendered violence and suffering (which they are not) and by obscuring the profound forms of queer joy that accompany, and sometimes compensate for, queer suffering.

To return to the Moms Club meeting, I then asked my fellow lesbian mom, “But do you really feel that way?  Do you feel like your own life has been so terrible that you wish your parents could have saved you from it?  Do you feel that being straight would have been better for you?”  The lesbian mom and her wife both smiled somewhat slyly, smiled at each other, laughed, and said: “no.  I see your point.”  I didn’t probe further, but what I imagined those sly smiles were reflecting was their instantaneous flashback-montage of their lesbian lives—sure, there was probably some trouble with family, jobs, etc., but there was also hot sex, protest marches, and freedom from some workaholic dude who doesn’t do the dishes and tells you how to spend your money.  Ok, so this is projection.  I have no idea what they were thinking, but the point here is that I suspect most adult queers love (the queer part of) their lives, even when they have been trained to rehearse a narrative about how hard and tragic it all is.

Let me be clear.  Homophobic violence happens--to young people, to adults, to women, men, and trans people. It happens to straight people when they are gender-variant and/or are presumed to be queer.  And it happens most harshly to queer people of color, and poor and working class queers.  In all cases, it is tragic.   The ideas that undergird the “It Gets Better” campaign—namely that queer kids can expect to grow up, make money, buy fine things, and discover their entitlement and civil rights— elide the race, class, and gender disparities that shape the lives of queer people (see Laura Logan’s excellent empirical documentation of this at http://thepublicintellectual.org/2011/07/18/the-case-of-the-killer-lesbians/). 

But here’s the thing:  gendered, classed, and racialized violence happens to straight people too, and in many ways, gendered and sexualized forms of violence and suffering are much more unrelenting for straight women.  When I teach “Introduction to Women’s Studies” at UCR, I show a series of films about gendered violence and suffering: V Day: Until the Violence Stops, Dreamworlds, Senorita Extraviada, Tough Guise, Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus.   These are films about the horrific violence (sexual, physical, emotional) that women endure at the hands of men and the state; about the incredible toll that masculinity takes on men’s bodies and mental health; and about the tedium and unfair division of labor that destroys, or threatens to destroy, an astounding number of marriages in the U.S.  Even though I have seen these films a dozen times, I still cry when I watch them, and I have always assumed that I am crying feminist tears.  I have assumed I am crying for women.  But something shifted the last time I taught the course.  After watching the films, rereading the numerous articles about gender oppression I had assigned, and listening to countless stories from straight women students about their shitty male partners, I got in my car and breathed a huge sigh of relief that I am queer.  I went home and told Kat, “thank god we are queer.”  And I realized that I was crying queer tears for straight people.  All of a sudden it became clear to me.  Their lives are very, very hard, and this fact is very, very sad.  My god, I hope my son isn’t straight.  Because who would choose that?

Being queer hardly means we are saved from state violence, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, crappy relationships, or tragic breakups.  But what being queer does mean is that we are, at the very least, immersed in a political subculture that does not normalize or celebrate these things.  Our relationships, unlike straight relationships, aren’t presumed to be antagonistic, or in structural conflict from the get-go.  We are not always already set up in such a way that someone risks being an old ball and chain, or a nagging wife, or getting trapped by an unwanted pregnancy, or needing to buy self-help books like He’s Just Not That Into You, or worrying about how to catch a man and keep him, or retreating to a manspace or sports cave, or becoming a husband-with-his-oh-so-important-job-he-can’t-be-bothered-with-parenting-or-housework, or needing to convince our dating pool that we aren’t bitches, whores, stupid, weak, or liars, and so forth.    

Often anger is the dominant mode of relating to heterosexuality among radical queers.  But might I suggest that it is more appropriate to worry about heterosexuals, to feel sympathy, to wish better for them, and ideally, to support them to do better and help them come up with a plan?  It is time to reconfigure the direction of the “ally relationship,” such that queers become allies to the heteros down the street and in the supermarket, especially the women who may be experiencing just as much gendered suffering as we are, but without the hot sex, gay humor, political unity, or good music to which we have access.  You can volunteer to help straight women at hetero resource centers--these centers go by names like “Moms Club.” 

*This fall, I am teaching a course ("Critical Approaches to Heterosexuality") organized around this theme.   For folks who might want to design a similar course (or just a section), the syllabus is below.  I'd LOVE feedback, especially ideas about alternative or more readings I might use in the future.

Women’s Studies 128/LGBS 128:

CRITICAL APPROACHES TO HETEROSEXUALITY

Fall 2011

T/Th 2:10-3:30 Humanities 1503

Professor Jane Ward                                                           

Office: Interdisciplinary Building 2025                       

Email: janew@ucr.edu           

Office Hours:   Tuesdays & Thursdays 1-2pm and by appt

Introduction to the Course:

In 1991, queer scholar Michael Warner coined the term heteronormativity to refer to all of the ways that heterosexuality is taken for granted in both cultural and institutional life.  To investigate heteronormativity is to place the spotlight on the specific ideas and practices that make heterosexuality seemingly ubiquitous and invisible, exalted and mundane, unchanging and universal, and, natural, normal, and right.  In this vein, this course critically examines the late 19^th-century origins and 20^th-century evolution of the meaning of heterosexuality in the United States.  We will undertake this project from a queer perspective that views heterosexuality not as a sexual “orientation,” but as a set of contested sexual, cultural, and political practices. 

In contrast with a dominant script that celebrates heterosexuality’s apparent seamlessness and success, this course is also organized around the argument that heterosexuality—as a system bound up with misogyny and reliant upon the gender binary—is ultimately unworkable and in need of queer intervention. 

The course is organized around three themes: 1) The Invention of Heterosexuality (weeks 1-3); The Failure of Heterosexuality (weeks 4-7); 3) Hope for Heterosexuality? (weeks 8-10).  Welcome to the course!

Required Texts

1. Jonathan Ned Katz. 2007. The Invention of Heterosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  (available on Amazon for $16, or used for less!)

2. Numerous Articles posted on Ilearn

See reading schedule below.

THEME #1:  The Invention of Heterosexuality

Sept 22nd: Welcome and Introduction to the Course

Week One

The Heterosexual Is Born (9/27 & 9/29)

·      Katz, Jonathan Ned.  “The Genealogy of a Sex Concept.” (Ch. 1);  “The Debut of the Heterosexual” (Ch. 2); “Before Heterosexuality” (Ch. 3)

Week Two

The Heterosexual Mystique (10/4 & 10/6)

·      Katz, Jonathan Ned.  “Making the Heterosexual Mystique” (Ch. 4);  “The Heterosexual Comes Out” (Ch. 5)

Week Three

Keeping the Dream Alive: True Love, Romance, and Heterosexiness (10/11 & 10/13)

·      Martin, Karin.  “Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in Children’s G-Rated Films” Gender & Society (2009)

·      Collins, Patricia Hill. “Get Your Freak On: Sex, Babies, and Images of Black Femininity” in Black Sexual Politics (2004)

·      Maher, Jennifer “What Do Women Watch?: Tuning In to the Compulsory Heterosexuality Channel.” In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2004)

·      Brancato, Jim. “Domesticating Politics: The Representation of Wives and Mothers in American Reality Television.” Reality Television II · Film & History, Volume 37.2

THEME #2:  The Failure of Heterosexuality

Week Four

He’s Just Not That Into You:  The Heterosexual Contradiction (10/18 & 10/20)

Film:  Dreamworlds

·      Rubin, Gayle.  “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex”

·      Sedgwick, Eve. “Homosocial Desire” in Between Men

·      Pascoe, CJ. “Compulsive Heterosexuality: Masculinity and Dominance.” Ch. 4 in Dude, You’re a Fag (2007)

·      Excerpts from He’s Just Not That Into You, & The Game

Week Five

Gender Entrapment and Compulsory Heterosexuality (10/25 & 10/27)

·      Richie, Beth  “Introduction” and “Trapped by Violence.”  In Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women. 1995

·      Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.”  1980

Week Six

Divorce, Violence, Bad Parenting, and Other Heterosexual Problems that Threaten the Sanctity of Queer Feminism (11/1 & 11/3)

Film:  The Real Housewives of New Jersey

·      Hochschild, Arlie.  “Tensions in Marriage in the Age of Divorce” in The Second Shift (2003)

·      Anderson, Kristin and Debra Umberson.  “Gendering Violence: Masculinity and Power in Men’s Accounts of Domestic Violence” Gender & Society.  2001

·      Martin, Karin. “Normalizing Heterosexuality: Mothers' Assumptions, Talk, and Strategies with Young Children" Gender & Society. pp. 190-207

·      Kane, Emily.  “’No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!’ Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity.” Gender & Society.  2006.

Week Seven

The Heterosexual Repair Industry (or “It Gets Better!”): Managing Hetero-Boredom, Hetero-Sexlessness, and Hetero-Antagonism (11/8 & 11/10)

Film: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

·      McCaughey, Martha.  “Homo Habitus: Evolution, Popular Culture, and the Embodied Ethos of Male Sexuality.”  In The Caveman Mystique (2008)

·      Carter, Julian. “The Marriage Crisis.” In The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940 (2007)

·      Hochschild, Arlie.  “The Cultural Cover-up” in The Second Shift (2003)

·      Excerpts from Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus

Week Eight

Heterosexuality: Just Another Way of Having Homosexual Sex (11/15 & 11/17)

·      Laura Hamilton, “Trading on Heterosexuality: College Women’s Gender Strategies and Homophobia” Gender & Society.  pp. 145-172

·      Benshoff, Harry “A Straight Cowboy Movie: Heterosexuality According to Brokeback Mountain.” in Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness (2009)

·      Ward, Jane.  “The Elephant Chain.” In Not Gay 2012, Forthcoming.

THEME #3: Hope for Heterosexuality?

Week Nine

Heterosexuality’s Feminist Future (11/22, no class on 11/24 HOLIDAY)

·      Risman, Barbara and Danete Johnson-Sumerford.  “Doing It Fairly: A Study of Postgender Marriages.”  Journal of Marriage and Family. 1998

·      Shows, Carla and Naomi Gerstel. “Fathering, Class, and Gender.” Gender & Society. 2009.

·      Schultz, Jason. “Getting Off on Feminism.” In To Be Real. 1994.

Week Ten

Heterosexuality’s Queer Future (11/29 & 12/1)

·      Halberstam, Jack. “Pregnant Men, Heteroflexible Women, Butch Daddies and the Future of Gender.” 2012, forthcoming.

·      Ward, Jane.  “Queer Pedagogy and the Specter of the Maternal”  2011.