Jane Ward's book argues heterosexuality creates power imbalances where men avoid responsibility while women handle domestic labor and childcare. The speaker contrasts this with queer communities, where despite trauma, people find joy and solidarity, like during the AIDS crisis, though contemporary culture struggles to talk openly about pleasure and care.
much rather the gay than the straight. Mm-hmm. Um, and there's Jane Ward who has a brilliant book called The Tragedy of Heterosexuality. Um, and she says, actually, heterosexuality is this really problematic cultural way of setting up sexuality where men have a lot of power, very little responsibility, treat women in— not all men, but there is a culture of really badly treating women, even in quite subtle ways about domestic labor and childcare and things like that. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, yeah, I just thought this doesn't reflect like queer joy. I know there's queer trauma and sorrow, that's absolutely there. But even, you know, if you speak to, speak to my uncle and he knows crisis, he will talk about great times going out clubbing in the middle of the AIDS crisis. And I think many people would talk about that, um, and the solidarity that was found. And I don't think we know, even, even in the problematic times of Chemsex, I think, I think it's become really hard to talk about the joy and the pleasure, um, even of caring for each other. Yeah.
