The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

Winner, 2021 PROSE Award in the Cultural Anthropology & Sociology Category
Finalist, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies
A troubling account of heterosexual desire in the era of #MeToo
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 couple¿s therapy in a search for happiness.
In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the twenty-first century, and what straight people can do to fix it for good. She shows how straight women, and to a lesser extent straight men, have tried to mend a fraught patriarchal system in which intimacy, sexual fulfillment, and mutual respect are expected to coexist alongside enduring forms of inequality, alienation, and violence in straight