A professor at the University of California-Riverside believes heterosexuality is “very tragic,” especially for straight women.
Professor Jane Ward, who teaches her students about gender and sexual studies, argued in an explicit December article for Insider that the “tragedy” of heterosexuality is it advances misogyny, pushes men toward embracing toxic masculinity, and leaves women utterly unsatisfied.
“It really looks like straight men and women don’t like each other very much, that women spend so much time complaining about men, and we still have so much evidence of misogyny,” she told the website. “From an LGBT perspective, [heterosexuality] looks actually very tragic.”
The educator explained to Insider’s Julia Naftulin that she feels “sorry” for straight people — particularly straight women, whom she said “typically report some of the lowest sexual satisfaction in society.” She does, however, save some of her despair for straight men, whom she suggested “are pigeon-holed into toxic-masculine culture that teaches them they both need, and yet should also demean, women.”
Ward, author of the book “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality,” went on to argue the pandemic has revealed the calamity of male-female romances.
In her book, the professor said she finds it “depressing to see what my straight female friends put up with regarding treatment from men.” She went on to write that she “really sympathize[s] with these women, but, at the same time, it makes me feel alienated from them,” according to Campus Reform.
Ward said she interviewed nearly 100 men, women, and “non-binary” people of differing sexual orientations during her research for her book. One of the “common threads” that emerged, according to Naftulin, was that “straight women put straight men on a pedestal, even though it doesn’t benefit them to do so.”
One of Ward’s interviewees, who described herself as “queer,” told the professor: “Our lives become som different when theirs [the lives of straight women] revolves around attachment to a cruel, insensitive, self-centered, or simply boring man.”
Some of that projected phenomenon, Ward explained in her book, is the result of what she dubbed the “misogyny paradox,” which she said leads men to struggle to respect and admire women. Men, she reasoned, are seen as “more masculine” by our collective society if they objectify their female counterparts.
“I think that if men could recognize that equity and feminism are actually really central to a health and happy relationship, if that’s something they want, then they might be able to more further in that direction,” she explained.
Ward told Campus Reform she endeavored to write the book because she “loves” the straight couples in her life and wants the best for them.
“I wrote this book because I love straight people,” she said. “And because the research on heterosexual marital satisfaction over the life course shows that straight couples are struggling to balance work and family obligations and this leads to frustration and resentment for many straight women, in particular.”