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Not Gay Sex, Queer Erotic Worlds: An Interview with Jane Ward
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0:10
Hello and welcome to the latest
0:11
installment of Being Human from the
0:12
University of Pittsburgh.
0:14
This series is devoted to exploring
0:15
the humanities, their connections to
0:17
other disciplines, and their value
0:18
in the public world.
0:20
I'm Dan Kubis, assistant director of
0:21
the Humanities Center at Pitt.
0:23
My guest today is Jane Ward,
0:25
professor of Gender and Sexuality
0:26
Studies at the University of
0:28
California, Riverside.
0:30
Professor Ward's CV looks
0:31
unsurprising for a mid-career
0:33
academic.
0:34
It lists two books published by
0:35
university presses and dozens
0:37
of essays and articles in scholarly
0:39
journals.
0:40
Readers also get a sense for
0:41
Professor Ward's dynamic approach to
0:43
teaching through course titles like
0:44
Critical Approaches to
0:45
Heterosexuality and Freaks,
0:47
Sluts and Perverts: Sexual Others
0:49
in the U.S. Imagination.
0:52
What readers can't see on her CV is
0:54
the sensation that her last book
0:55
became when it was published in
0:56
2015.
0:58
That book, Not Gay: Sex Between
1:00
Straight White Men, was widely
1:02
discussed on the Internet, reviewed
1:04
in places like Newsweek, Forbes, and
1:06
The Guardian, and was the top seller
1:08
on Amazon's gay and lesbian
1:09
nonfiction list for a time.
1:11
I suppose it also didn't hurt that
1:13
occasional grad student James Franco
1:14
put a photo of himself holding the
1:15
book on Instagram.
1:17
The book earned Professor Ward much
1:19
praise but also criticism and even
1:21
hate mail from people who objected
1:22
to her argument that sexuality is
1:24
culturally constructed rather than
1:26
determined by bio-evolutionary
1:27
processes.
1:29
In the fall of last year, she
1:30
published a follow-up essay in which
1:32
she discussed reactions to her book
1:33
and reasserted what has been a
1:35
fundamental commitment for her
1:36
throughout her career.
1:37
That is, liberating sexual practices
1:39
from narrowly understood categories
1:41
and opening up more space for queer
1:43
ways of life.
1:45
I began by asking Professor Ward
1:46
about what she was arguing in Not
1:47
Gay, and why it made so many people
1:49
so mad.
1:59
I started thinking about this
2:00
project about 20 years ago
2:02
when I was an undergrad
2:04
at a university in Southern
2:06
California, and
2:08
a straight white male friend
2:10
of mine shared with me
2:12
about a hazing ritual that
2:14
he had witnessed called the elephant
2:16
walk.
2:17
And in this ritual, which
2:19
I describe in the book,
2:22
fraternity pledges
2:23
take off their clothes, and
2:25
they walk in a circle
2:28
like circus elephants.
2:29
But rather than connect to tail to
2:31
trunk, they have their thumb in the
2:33
anus of the guy in front of them, or
2:34
they have their hand on the penis of
2:36
the guy in front of them.
2:37
There are different iterations of
2:38
this.
2:39
And when my friend told me about
2:40
this, I was
2:43
21.
2:44
I was absolutely shocked
2:46
because I had certainly
2:48
never done anything like that with
2:49
women. And
2:51
I knew that if I had
2:53
done something like that with women,
2:55
that would be perceived as sexual.
2:57
And yet he was telling the story
2:59
to me as if
3:01
this was just
3:04
like tomfoolery.
3:06
Like it just it didn't have any
3:07
sexual content.
3:08
And so I was really struck by
3:10
the
3:14
disparity between
3:16
the kinds of intimate contact
3:19
that men can make-- that straight
3:20
men can make with one another, and
3:22
the kinds of intimate contact that
3:23
straight women can make and the
3:26
very different stories we tell
3:28
about that. And so,
3:30
fast forward to
3:32
the early 2000s, when
3:34
I started thinking about this book,
3:37
there was a lot of commentary in the
3:39
media about men of color on
3:41
the down low.
3:42
And at the same time, that
3:44
there was a bit of
3:48
a public health panic
3:50
about that or a moral panic
3:52
about black men having sex with men
3:54
and possibly spreading HIV
3:56
to their wives or girlfriends.
3:58
There was also a lot of interest
4:00
in girls kissing girls
4:02
and female celebrities doing
4:04
this and what this means.
4:06
And so, who is
4:08
absent in these
4:10
very high-profile stories
4:12
coming out in The New York Times
4:14
about these two phenomena?
4:16
White men, straight white men.
4:18
And I knew from
4:20
this past experience that straight
4:22
white men had their own version of
4:23
this kind of complicated, fluid
4:25
sexuality that no one was talking
4:26
about. So this becomes the
4:29
initial question for the book, and
4:31
I start out interested in
4:33
the kinds of loopholes that are
4:34
available to straight white men
4:37
to make sexual contact with other
4:38
men and still retain
4:41
their straightness-- their status
4:43
as heterosexual.
4:44
And so that's the driving question
4:46
of the book.
4:46
One of the central points in
4:48
it, I think, is that it does not
4:50
make sense, you argue, to
4:52
look at these acts and conclude
4:55
these are all closeted gay men.
4:56
Right.
4:57
Well, one of the misconceptions
4:59
about this book - I think
5:01
on the part of people who maybe have
5:02
read a blurb but haven't actually
5:04
read the book - is that this
5:06
is a book that
5:08
is about a particular
5:10
subset of straight
5:12
white men or some subgroup.
5:14
It's actually really about all
5:15
straight white men. It's
5:18
about hetero-masculinity in
5:20
particular or white
5:21
hetero-masculinity. And so
5:23
the reason I say that is that
5:25
the case studies that I'm looking at
5:27
are-- they're
5:31
examples of straight men
5:34
touching one another in sexual
5:36
ways as part of
5:38
the everyday life of
5:42
hegemonic masculine institutions,
5:45
fraternities, the military,
5:49
places that all men circulate
5:51
in. Of course, not all men are
5:53
in fraternities or in the
5:54
military, but we would be wrong to
5:56
say that those institutions
5:58
are populated only by closeted men.
6:01
So many
6:03
other scholars have looked at this
6:05
kind of behavior and
6:07
have called - mostly psychologists -
6:09
and they have called it situational
6:10
homosexuality or
6:13
deprivational homosexuality.
6:14
And they have all these theories
6:15
that men do this because they don't
6:17
have access to women sex
6:19
partners in prisons or in
6:21
the military.
6:22
But when you take all of that
6:23
research together, you find
6:26
that the
6:28
same logics that are at work
6:30
in the prison that
6:32
justify men touching each other
6:34
are also circulating
6:36
outside of the prison in
6:38
fraternities where men
6:40
certainly do have access to
6:42
sex with women and circulating
6:44
in public restrooms and in living
6:46
rooms. And so part
6:48
of what I do in the book is look at
6:49
all of this research that has
6:51
presumed that it was--
6:54
that makes conclusions based
6:56
on the particularities
6:58
of the specific institution
7:00
being studied.
7:01
And then raise-- when you look
7:03
at it all together, it raises some
7:05
other questions.
7:06
The main one, I think, or the most
7:08
important one, being what's going on
7:10
with straight men that every chance
7:12
they get to put their finger in each
7:14
other's anus, they basically
7:15
take it. That these opportunities
7:17
are manufactured across such a broad
7:20
range of institutional environments.
7:21
Yeah, well, one of the points that
7:23
you make in the book
7:25
was that the story
7:27
of heterosexuality in the 21st
7:29
century, you say, is about the rise
7:31
of bio-evolutionary accounts of
7:32
sexual desire. Right?
7:33
Yes.
7:34
And this is a very important point.
7:35
Why have those accounts
7:37
gained in popularity in recent
7:39
years?
7:40
Right. Right. So what we do see from
7:42
General Social Survey is that
7:44
the number of Americans who
7:46
believe that people are born with
7:48
their sexual orientation intact
7:50
or that sexual orientation is
7:51
congenital has
7:53
increased dramatically.
7:54
It started increasing in the 1950s
7:56
and has just gone up since
7:58
then.
7:59
I think the
8:01
reason for that is
8:03
that is the message
8:05
that has been promoted by
8:07
the mainstream gay and lesbian
8:09
movement. And so belief
8:11
that people are born
8:13
with a sexual constitution
8:15
and that they have no control over
8:17
that sexual constitution has
8:19
become associated with
8:21
being a good person, with being
8:23
an ally to gay-- to having
8:25
an open mind.
8:27
And so I think most people,
8:29
both gay and straight,
8:30
anyone who imagines themselves as a
8:32
straight ally, for instance, think
8:35
that that's the right thing to
8:36
believe. But interestingly,
8:39
what this biological turn
8:41
has also made
8:43
possible is for straight
8:45
people to imagine that
8:47
their heterosexuality
8:49
was also present at birth and that
8:52
it's fixed. There's nothing that
8:53
they can do about it.
8:54
And so, almost paradoxically,
8:56
what that means is that straight
8:58
people can engage in
9:00
homosexual behaviors
9:02
and think, "Well, you know,
9:04
I know I'm
9:06
biologically straight.
9:08
So that was just a circumstantial
9:09
aberration." And so part
9:11
of what I'm tracing is the way that
9:14
the the rise
9:15
of bioessentialist theories
9:17
of sexual orientation have actually
9:19
created more spaciousness
9:21
for straight people to temporarily
9:24
stray or to imagine that
9:25
they are acting
9:28
temporarily out of accordance with
9:30
their innate sexual constitution.
9:32
Yeah, but that's innate.
9:33
That's not going anywhere.
9:34
Exactly.
9:35
So there's no concern for it.
9:37
Yeah. Whereas in the past, your
9:38
homosexuality was
9:41
signaled simply
9:43
by your behavior.
9:44
So if you had-- if you had any
9:46
homosexual encounter, that meant you
9:48
were gay, whether you wanted to say
9:49
so or not. And now, we understand
9:51
most people believe that context
9:53
matters. So most people believe that
9:55
if a straight woman has a threesome
9:57
with another woman and her boyfriend
9:59
for his birthday, for instance,
10:01
that's not a sad story of her being
10:02
a closeted lesbian.
10:04
Instead, people take into
10:05
consideration all of the contextual
10:06
information, and they say, "Oh,
10:08
she's straight." Or maybe they say
10:10
she might have bisexual impulses or
10:12
something like that. But for the
10:13
most part, we provide
10:15
straight people now with many
10:16
loopholes that help to
10:18
preserve their heterosexuality even
10:20
as they make homosexual contact.
10:22
My favorite chapters in the book is
10:23
where you argue for an embrace
10:25
of queer erotic worlds.
10:27
Right? This is the thing that you
10:28
want your argument to be in service
10:30
of intimately.
10:31
And I wonder if you can say a little
10:32
bit about how your work complicating
10:35
heterosexuality here works
10:37
in service of embracing those
10:38
worlds?
10:39
I think part of what's
10:41
complicated about straight
10:43
white men's,
10:46
admittedly, kinky interactions
10:48
with one another is that,
10:50
at first blush, they do seem queer.
10:53
These are really
10:55
often very fantastical scenarios
10:57
in which men are topping other
10:59
men.
11:02
I'm often very impressed with how
11:04
elaborate these rituals are.
11:06
And I have a chapter that's about
11:07
Craigslist ads in which straight
11:09
men are seeking sex with other men,
11:11
and often these ads read
11:12
like very detailed porn.
11:15
They're just with costumery and
11:17
all that stuff.
11:18
So, again, one could
11:20
say, "Well, what's queerer than
11:22
this?" But the point
11:24
of the book is
11:26
that all of this is happening
11:28
in the service of heteronormativity.
11:30
These men are deeply, deeply
11:32
invested in being perceived as
11:34
sexually normal and
11:36
deeply invested in
11:38
living a heterosexual life.
11:40
They know that there is a queer
11:41
movement or an LGBT movement.
11:43
They want nothing to do with it.
11:44
It doesn't feel like home to them.
11:46
Being straight is where
11:48
their heart is, and it's certainly
11:50
where their politics lie.
11:53
So
11:55
for me, as a queer
11:57
person and as someone
11:59
who understands queerness
12:01
not as a
12:03
synonym for
12:05
homosexuality but as a political
12:07
orientation, a refusal of
12:09
gender and sexual normativity,
12:11
this, I think, helps to
12:13
push us.
12:15
I mean, already, we've been engaged
12:16
in this project of delinking
12:18
queerness from homosexual sex
12:20
practices.
12:21
And I think it helps to
12:23
illuminate the significance of that
12:25
even more that
12:27
there's no end
12:29
of sex practices
12:31
that can be folded into
12:33
heteronormativity or used in the
12:35
service of heteronormativity.
12:37
So what that means is that
12:39
the power of queerness-- it's
12:43
certainly about sex practices.
12:44
I'm not saying it's not, but it's
12:45
about the meaning of those sex
12:46
practices, and
12:48
what their use is, what
12:50
the context is in people's lives.
12:52
And so it's in that last chapter
12:53
that I'm reflecting on that.
12:55
Hearing you talk about this now
12:56
makes me recall the value
12:58
you put on sincerity in that
13:00
last chapter. It sounds now like
13:01
that's kind of what you're talking
13:02
about, like looking for a kind of
13:04
sincere queerness.
13:05
Yes.
13:06
Yeah. And I shocked myself
13:09
to even be saying that word
13:11
because, of course, you don't
13:12
think-- when you think queer, you
13:13
don't think sincerity.
13:15
And yet
13:20
one of the common threads for
13:21
straight men,
13:23
when they are touching other
13:25
men, is that they want it to
13:27
be made really clear that it is
13:29
meaningless and
13:31
that there's nothing--
13:33
not just nothing identitarian
13:35
happening there, like, what they're
13:37
doing should not be a reflection of
13:39
their identity, but also that
13:41
there's nothing of political
13:42
consequence happening there.
13:44
And I think queer people when
13:46
we fuck, we're pretty sincere
13:48
about the queerness and the
13:50
political nature of those
13:52
encounters. And when I'm talking
13:53
about queer, I'm not talking about
13:54
gay. I'm talking about queer.
13:56
So, yeah, I did want to
13:58
mind that
14:01
idea or that concept of
14:02
sincerity for its queer potential.
14:05
Yeah. I want to also ask you about
14:06
the reaction to the book.
14:07
There's been negative reaction to
14:09
it. You published on the negative
14:10
reaction, but also, we should say a
14:11
lot of positive reaction.
14:12
It's been nominated for awards.
14:13
It's been already translated into
14:15
German. I mean, I'd join
14:18
the people who think very highly of
14:19
it. But I want to ask you, even
14:21
before we get into kind of the
14:22
positive and the negative, I want to
14:23
ask just about the size in general.
14:25
What are your thoughts on why the
14:27
readership was so big?
14:28
Yes.
14:28
It was not unexpected for you?
14:29
It was unexpected.
14:31
I love projects
14:33
in which the main finding
14:36
of the project seems so obvious,
14:38
and yet no
14:40
one had talked about it yet.
14:41
And I think this book sort of
14:43
falls into that category that,
14:45
of course, this is happening.
14:46
It's happening all around us.
14:48
Straight men, sexual contact with
14:49
one another is everywhere and
14:50
nowhere.
14:52
And so I think it resonated on that
14:53
level of people wanting a framework
14:55
to make sense of it.
14:56
Also, it's
14:58
about sex.
14:59
And one of the
15:02
surprises for me is
15:04
that somehow
15:06
this book circulated
15:09
among gay men, nonacademic
15:12
gay male readers, with the hope
15:14
that it would be titillating,
15:16
that it would be-- that it was sort
15:17
of like gay porn.
15:18
And I think many of them were
15:20
disappointed to discover
15:22
my feminist analysis running
15:25
through this book alongside the hot
15:26
images.
15:27
It's a buzzkill as you write in your--
15:28
Yes, yes.
15:29
So yeah, I mean, I heard--
15:31
setting aside the academic
15:34
responses, which were mostly
15:36
positive and constructive, I
15:38
heard from many
15:40
gay men, who are
15:43
outside of the academy, and
15:45
straight men and
15:46
straight women.
15:48
And the nature of those
15:50
responses were all very different.
15:52
I heard from many gay men who hated
15:54
this book and who
15:55
expressed their outrage,
15:58
often in quite misogynistic
16:00
terms. And then, many
16:02
straight men who loved
16:04
this book and wrote to me with
16:06
detailed and very juicy
16:08
confessions of their
16:10
sexual encounters with other men.
16:11
And then, many straight women
16:14
who were partnered
16:16
with men that they thought might be
16:18
having sex with men
16:20
and who, for the most part, were
16:21
quite heartbroken about it.
16:23
And so,
16:26
the intensity of the feelings
16:28
around this book,
16:30
I wasn't quite prepared to deal with
16:32
it, in part because many of the
16:33
people writing to me what they
16:34
really needed was psychotherapy.
16:37
What they needed was some sort of
16:39
emotional healing.
16:41
So, yeah,
16:43
it was really fascinating.
16:45
That reminds me, you were actually
16:45
invited to go on television shows,
16:48
right? In the role of a therapist
16:50
after this.
16:51
Yes. Yes.
16:53
I don't watch TV, so when
16:55
I got these requests, I'd have to
16:57
Google and find out what on earth is
16:58
this. But one daytime talk
17:00
show called The Doctors asked me
17:03
if I would be
17:05
on the show to talk to wives
17:07
about how to relate to their
17:09
husbands or boyfriends--
17:11
how to relate to the discovery that
17:13
their husbands, their boyfriends
17:14
were having sex with men.
17:15
Of course, that is really out of my
17:17
wheelhouse.
17:21
Well, so you published an article on
17:23
the reactions in
17:26
fall of last year.
17:28
And one of the things that I found
17:30
really interesting that you did in
17:31
that piece was reflect
17:33
on your method of
17:35
writing in the book.
17:36
And you write a little bit
17:38
about the-- or you defend
17:40
the humanistic and
17:42
cultural studies approaches that you
17:43
take against approaches that
17:45
are based in biology or quantitative
17:47
social sciences.
17:48
Did you expect to do that?
17:49
Did you expect to have to defend
17:51
that method in that way because
17:52
you're trained in sociology?
17:53
I mean, how did that come about?
17:55
I did.
17:56
And I didn't expect that
17:58
sociologists would love this book
18:00
precisely because of
18:02
its cultural studies
18:04
methodology. Often
18:06
in the social sciences, truth
18:08
comes out of the mouths of people
18:10
that you interview or who fill out
18:12
your survey. This is the
18:13
presumption. And so,
18:15
you're going for reproducibility
18:19
and generalizability.
18:21
And so there's
18:23
not a lot of nuance.
18:25
It's also very difficult with
18:28
social science methods to capture
18:31
contradictions
18:34
in the way that people understand
18:36
themselves.
18:36
Because if you're relying on
18:38
self-reporting--
18:40
had I had gone out and said,
18:42
"I want to talk to
18:44
straight-identified men who have sex
18:46
with men, or I'm looking for men
18:48
having sex with men," I
18:50
would have been sitting in gay bars
18:51
with no one talking to me.
18:52
It would have been very challenging.
18:55
And so, instead, I made the decision
18:57
to look at
18:59
a number of case studies,
19:01
some historical, some
19:03
contemporary.
19:05
So the book has
19:07
a very eclectic archive.
19:09
I am looking at personal
19:11
ads and media
19:14
coverage.
19:17
I chose those methods because
19:19
it really gave me the long view
19:21
on this question: how
19:24
have a broad
19:27
range of stakeholders, not just men
19:29
themselves, engaged in these sex
19:31
practices, but how have sexologists,
19:33
psychologists, sociologists,
19:35
filmmakers, how have we
19:37
collectively
19:39
come to understand what
19:41
sexual fluidity is
19:43
and how it's different when we
19:45
are thinking about
19:47
women's sexuality and men's
19:48
sexuality, white people's sexuality
19:50
and men of color's sexuality.
19:53
And those questions
19:55
really lend themselves to
19:57
humanistic methods.
20:00
Another kind of method question that
20:02
I was interested in has to do with
20:03
your investment in post-structural
20:04
theory. Some of the negative
20:06
reactions that you got specifically
20:08
reacted to that.
20:09
Called you a minion of Judith
20:11
Butler? That example is one of the
20:12
many things you got.
20:14
Sure. I'll take it.
20:15
Yeah.
20:17
I'm wondering whether you
20:19
think at all that some of the
20:21
reaction to, especially from
20:23
gay men,
20:26
who you see as being
20:28
upset that they've been decentered
20:30
by this work in queer studies.
20:32
Is it possible to see negative
20:33
reaction to your book as part of a
20:35
broader reaction to
20:36
post-structuralism based on the fact
20:38
that if we take post-structuralism
20:40
seriously, then nobody's at the
20:41
center?
20:42
Sure, absolutely.
20:43
I mean, I think people like
20:46
accessible and legitimizing
20:48
scholarship. And
20:51
sometimes, it's white people
20:53
who want that.
20:55
Sometimes it's men who want that.
20:57
Sometimes it's gay men who want
20:58
that. I think that many people
21:00
don't understand the tenets
21:02
of post-structuralist theory,
21:04
and they don't understand the
21:06
methodology that people might
21:08
use to
21:10
work in and through a
21:11
post-structuralist frame.
21:12
And so I understand the feeling
21:14
of it being inaccessible.
21:16
Certainly, as a sociology graduate
21:18
student, I felt that way myself.
21:20
And so I actually feel
21:22
like part of my work or one of my
21:23
aims in my work is to translate
21:26
humanistic queer scholarship
21:29
for a broader audience.
21:31
And I think I
21:32
do that fairly well.
21:33
I try to do that.
21:34
So in that regard, I was actually
21:36
disappointed that people had
21:39
the reaction that they had
21:40
because I felt like I
21:42
was working
21:46
in a liminal space
21:48
between a more humanistic framework
21:50
and a social science framework.
21:52
I also think gay men, in particular,
21:54
were angry because
21:56
there's still a sense among many
21:58
gay white men that
22:00
they are entitled to the privileges
22:03
of white masculinity, and they've
22:04
been denied those privileges as
22:06
a result of being gay.
22:08
And so any framework
22:10
that will help to restore
22:13
their male privilege and
22:14
any scholarship that does that, they
22:16
would prioritize that over
22:19
scholarship that deconstructs
22:21
sexuality or deconstructs gender
22:23
or puts women or people
22:25
of color at the center.
22:26
And they basically said
22:28
as much in their responses
22:31
to me that they felt like
22:33
gay and lesbian studies had
22:35
really deteriorated
22:37
with the centering
22:40
of trans
22:42
and dyke theorizing.
22:44
Yeah. I also want to ask you about
22:47
your first book, Respectively Queer.
22:49
In the beginning of Not Gay, you
22:51
kind of look back, and maybe it has
22:53
to do with the sociology-- it's
22:55
a revision of your dissertation.
22:56
So maybe it has to do with that kind
22:58
of disciplinary background, but
22:59
you kind of look back on it and say
23:01
it didn't really feel totally like
23:02
it was yours, whereas Not
23:04
Gay does feel more like that.
23:05
You're more excited about it.
23:07
Still, I saw a pretty
23:09
clear continuity in terms of your
23:11
interest in recalling radical
23:13
impulses in queer politics
23:15
there. Do you also see it?
23:16
I mean, is that--
23:16
I do, yes.
23:18
Yeah. So that book is about the
23:19
corporatization of
23:21
queer organizations.
23:24
And I was living in L.A.
23:26
at the time, so I was looking at
23:27
three L.A.-based organizations.
23:29
But the story that I told is
23:31
a story that's happening nationally,
23:33
that as these LGBT-- what
23:35
were once grassroots organizations
23:37
populated by like a ragtag
23:39
crew of queer activists,
23:42
they've institutionalized
23:44
and now they're recruiting from
23:46
the private sector to get
23:48
their development directors and so
23:49
forth. And so you go into these
23:50
places, and they're basically gay
23:52
incorporated.
23:54
You might as well be in a bank.
23:56
And in fact, the L.A.
23:58
Gay and Lesbian Center is in the
23:59
former IRS building, and that's
24:01
precisely how it feels.
24:03
So, yeah, absolutely.
24:05
That project felt urgent
24:08
to me as a description
24:10
of the mainstreaming.
24:12
And, really, I didn't have quite the
24:13
language for this at the time, but
24:14
it's the neo-liberalization
24:16
of the queer movement that I'm
24:18
trying to document there.
24:20
And yet, because I was
24:22
a sociologist, I'm feeling
24:24
compelled to rehearse social
24:26
movement theory and organizations
24:27
theory. And I would have told that
24:29
story differently now.
24:30
One thing that book raised for
24:32
me was about you
24:34
and your existence in a university.
24:35
I assume that UC Riverside,
24:38
your home institution, like every
24:39
university, declares
24:41
diversity to be a
24:43
fundamental goal of what it wants to
24:45
promote on campus and things like
24:47
that. Have you been involved
24:49
in any of the university-level
24:51
efforts to promote diversity on
24:52
campus? Because it seems like you
24:54
would be in an interesting position
24:56
with regard to those efforts.
24:58
On the one hand, you worked so much
24:59
on diversity. On the other hand, the
25:01
particular kind of work that you do
25:03
seems like it might not fit so well
25:04
with that.
25:06
Exactly, yes.
25:07
I'm so glad you're asking me this
25:09
question.
25:09
So, UC Riverside
25:12
is a unique campus
25:14
nationally in that it's about 70%
25:17
students of color.
25:18
And I would say
25:21
an even greater percentage of
25:22
students of color take
25:24
Women and Gender Studies courses.
25:26
And so, on the one hand, it
25:29
means that a kind of
25:31
racial justice framework
25:34
is already
25:37
present in, I think, most classrooms
25:38
because the students bring it.
25:39
They come to the classroom
25:41
with a lot of critical thinking
25:43
skills around
25:45
race and socioeconomic
25:47
class.
25:48
And so the campus has no choice
25:50
but to rise
25:52
to the level of expectation, I
25:54
think, around those issues.
25:57
Queerness, on the other hand,
25:59
I've been really
26:02
fascinated and completely
26:04
depressed to observe that
26:06
the kind of queer
26:08
scholarship that the campus is
26:09
comfortable promoting
26:12
or publicizing in its development
26:14
materials and so forth
26:16
is queer scholarship that focuses
26:18
on a tragic story.
26:20
So if you
26:22
publish work about homeless
26:24
queer youth, if you publish
26:26
work about intimate
26:28
partner violence in queer
26:30
communities,
26:32
that is perceived
26:34
as not threatening because it's
26:36
rehearsing the tragedy of
26:38
queerness. But if you write about
26:40
queer pleasure, God forbid,
26:43
or
26:45
if you want to tell a story about
26:46
the kind of sex practices that queer
26:48
youth are engaged in.
26:50
In other words, if you want to talk
26:51
about how young queer people
26:53
live as opposed to how they kill
26:55
themselves, then that's going to
26:56
make your campus uncomfortable.
26:58
And I think we really need to be
27:01
calling them to task.
27:02
I know this is not specific to my
27:04
campus. And so
27:06
why this--
27:08
not just addiction, it's almost like
27:09
a fetish for queer trauma
27:12
that I think is
27:14
one manifestation of
27:16
heteronormativity that we can
27:18
see very clearly at the university.
27:19
Yeah. Well, I want to ask you about
27:21
one other focus of yours
27:23
in your work, and that is parenting.
27:25
You've written a lot about-- you've
27:26
published essays. You also have
27:27
written a lot of blogs that I really
27:29
enjoyed reading about genderqueer
27:31
parenting practices and also, in
27:32
particular, encouraging children's
27:35
right to self-determine gender.
27:37
And you work with-- you work with
27:38
other parents and talk with them
27:39
about ways that they can create
27:41
environments that allow children
27:43
to do that, too.
27:44
What are some of the things that you
27:45
talk to parents about doing to
27:47
create that kind of environment?
27:48
Yeah, so two main things.
27:50
One is gender
27:52
salience.
27:53
So I think often
27:55
there's a confusion about
27:58
whether gender is relevant in
27:59
a particular situation.
28:01
And parents, not just parents
28:03
but also teachers, can get kind
28:05
of stumped around this.
28:07
So when you need
28:09
to take your class of students and
28:11
divide them into two groups,
28:13
do you really want to be saying boys
28:15
and girls? Because part what you're
28:16
communicating when you do that is
28:19
that gender difference is
28:21
so salient, that it's so significant
28:23
in your mind as this formative adult
28:26
that it is the easiest
28:28
and first and foremost way
28:30
that you're going to differentiate
28:32
between people.
28:33
And, of course, we understand that
28:34
we would not say, "All right, kids,
28:36
separate into whites and browns."
28:38
We understand the damage
28:40
that that would do. And yet,
28:41
somehow, that's still quite
28:42
normalized around gender.
28:44
So for me,
28:45
it's important that
28:47
parents recognize that not
28:50
doing that isn't just something
28:52
that's relevant for parents with
28:54
trans or genderqueer children.
28:56
It's vitally important
28:58
for all of us because this
29:00
is where that foundation
29:02
gets laid for
29:04
boys, in particular, to feel quite
29:06
alienated from girls.
29:07
And then, by the time they get to
29:08
college, and they start raping
29:09
girls, we wonder what happened.
29:11
These were great young men.
29:13
Well, what happened is
29:15
that you started separating
29:17
and then dehumanizing or alienating
29:20
boys and girls from one another.
29:21
So distinguishing between
29:23
when it's really, really unnecessary
29:25
to gender children and then
29:27
environments in which gender
29:29
does feel more relevant.
29:30
Like when you're talking about a
29:31
child's body with the doctor, how
29:33
to do that without presuming their
29:35
gender identification if you don't.
29:40
So this is gender salience.
29:41
And I also work with parents around
29:43
genderqueer celebrations.
29:45
So that it's not
29:47
celebrating queerness, queer
29:49
history, queer
29:51
accomplishments, the beauty of
29:53
queerness is not just for queer
29:55
parents. It should be for all
29:56
parents in the same way that we
29:57
introduce children to
30:00
books and things from other
30:01
cultures. I'm an advocate
30:03
that we do that around queerness as
30:04
well.
30:05
Yeah. And one of the points that you
30:06
made on your blog that I found very
30:08
interesting is that if you're not
30:09
proactively doing this, then the
30:11
default is heteronormativity.
30:13
Exactly.
30:14
Well, so your current work is titled
30:16
The Failure of Heterosexuality: How
30:18
Sexism Doomed the World's Most
30:19
Cherished Union and Hid the
30:20
Wreckage. How's it coming?
30:23
Well, one thing I can say is
30:25
that I'm having so much fun writing
30:27
this book.
30:28
Oh that's good.
30:28
It's just been so
30:29
pleasurable.
30:31
It's coming along.
30:32
I mean, I'm in the early stages with
30:33
this book. It's again
30:35
a strange archive.
30:38
So the basic
30:40
argument in this book, it's
30:42
a bit of a rant, but it's that
30:44
despite the story we tell about
30:46
the tragedy or in contrast
30:49
with the story we tell about how
30:50
tragic and difficult it is
30:52
to be queer, that in my own
30:54
life and for many, many queer
30:55
people, we witness
30:58
the miseries, the utter miseries
31:00
of heterosexuality and feel profound
31:02
gratitude that we have escaped them.
31:05
And so this book
31:07
is about me documenting
31:09
those miseries through a
31:11
queer lens, through my own queer
31:13
lens.
31:14
And to do that, I'm
31:16
looking very closely at what I call
31:17
the heterosexual repair industry,
31:19
which is as
31:22
straightness repeatedly fails
31:24
to function or to deliver
31:27
on the promises of heteronormativity
31:28
as straight relationships fail to
31:30
deliver, we see all
31:32
of these-- an industry emerge
31:34
to help smooth that over
31:36
for straight people or to justify it
31:38
or to distract from it.
31:39
So I'm looking at doing a kind
31:41
of a 20th-century survey of
31:43
self-help books for straight
31:45
people, mostly for married people.
31:48
I also spent three years-- there's
31:50
an ethnographic component to this
31:51
book. I spent three years
31:53
inside the pick-up artist
31:56
and seduction community,
31:58
which started out as a community and
32:00
now really is an industry.
32:02
So whereas the self-help books are
32:03
often-- the target audience is
32:05
women, men now
32:08
are the consumers
32:10
of what are often called seduction
32:11
boot camps. So they'll spend a
32:13
weekend paying somewhere between
32:15
$1,500 and $3,000 to
32:17
learn how to seduce
32:19
women. I also did some
32:21
interviews with queer people
32:23
about what they
32:25
dislike about straight people
32:26
and straight culture.
32:28
And then, I kind of wrap
32:30
the book up with some reflections on
32:32
what I call deep heterosexuality
32:34
or what heterosexual
32:37
justice might look like.
32:39
Talking about writing about the
32:40
positive experiences that
32:42
you've had, being queer reminds
32:44
me of what we were talking
32:46
about on the university campus.
32:47
That's kind of like promoting those
32:49
stories or things that could help on
32:50
those campuses and in a lot of
32:51
spaces.
32:52
I know. And it's amazing.
32:54
I mean, my work has
32:56
been persistently
32:58
unfundable.
33:00
And so I'm just so struck
33:02
by how many people
33:05
seem to like my work and want to
33:07
read my work. But, certainly, my
33:08
university doesn't want to promote
33:10
my work, and no one wants to fund my
33:11
work. And so
33:14
something is going on here around
33:16
what we consider to be
33:19
urgent scholarship
33:20
and scholarship
33:23
that we should throw money behind.
33:24
And I think often the feeling is
33:26
that tragedy
33:29
is where it's at.
33:31
And so, in a way, it's almost a kind
33:32
of cheeky play on a little joke with
33:34
myself to say, "Okay, well, I'm
33:36
going to write about the tragedy of
33:37
heterosexuality because that's the
33:38
tragedy that I see."
33:41
Well, that kind of turning the
33:43
tables worked really well in Not
33:44
Gay. It's a really great book, and
33:46
I'm sure we all look forward to your
33:47
coming book as well.
33:48
Thank you.
33:49
Jane Ward, thanks so much for being
33:50
here.
33:50
It's my pleasure.
33:58
That's it for this edition of Being
33:59
Human.
34:00
This episode was produced by Matt
34:02
Moret, Undergraduate Media Fellow at
34:04
the University of Pittsburgh.
34:05
Stay tuned next time when my guest
34:06
will be Mabel Wilson, professor of
34:08
Architecture at Columbia University.
34:10
Thanks for listening.
In collections
Being Human Podcast Recordings
Order Reproduction
Title
Not Gay Sex, Queer Erotic Worlds: An Interview with Jane Ward
Contributor
University of Pittsburgh (depositor)
Ward, Elizabeth Jane (interviewee)
Kubis, Dan (interviewer)
Date
April 7, 2017
Identifier
20230127-beinghuman-0018
Description
An interview with Jane Ward, professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of California, Riverside. The interview focuses on Professor Ward's life and career, particularly her newest book, "Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men" and the controversy it's caused since its publication in 2015.
Extent
34 minutes
Publisher
University of Pittsburgh. Department of English
Type
sound recording-nonmusical
Genre
interviews
Subject
Men--Sexual behavior
Gay men
Homosexuality
Heterosexuality
Sex--Sociological aspects
Ward, Elizabeth Jane
Source
Being Human
Language
eng
Collection
Being Human Podcast Recordings
Contributor
University of Pittsburgh
Rights Information
In Copyright. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).. Rights Holder: University of Pittsburgh
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Rights Holder
University of Pittsburgh
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