When writer Jessica Bennett told the editors at New York that the first ever “straight studies” course was going to be taught this semester at UC Santa Barbara, we were surprised: A vast world of scholars has been studying sexual identity for more than a century. But it seemed to be true — straight life hadn’t really been approached head-on as a primary subject. And the time was definitely ripe for reconsidering “hetero culture,” as the class proposed. There was the fact that young men had voted for Trump in huge numbers, yes — that they were now distinctly more conservative than their female counterparts, maybe more so than at any other time in history — but there was also the sort of growing gender chaos one can see playing out online every day. While new weird trends, terms, and memes promoting retrograde ideas about traditional relationships and gender roles seem to appear weekly (see recent discussion of “masculine containers” and “feminine surrender”), women are also loudly fed up with the status quo, declaring themselves “boy sober,” voluntarily celibate, and part of the 4B movement. Divorce memoirs by women, most often stories of liberation, are (does it even need to be said?) flying off the shelves.
So we sent Jessica to sit in on Critical Heterosexuality Studies and learn from professor Jane Ward — in Jessica’s words, the class’s “lesbian sage.” She planned to ask if straight women are doomed to unhappiness. Ward, for her part, wonders how many “straight” women even really need to be with men at all.
—Katie Ryder, features editor, New York
