No sooner had I posted my response to one essay about a woman’s rejection of “the whole project of straight monogamous marriage” than my DMs alerted me to the existence of another writer, announcing that she will “be taking an infinite hiatus from hetero marriage and monogamy. They are a trap for women, full stop. Sometimes a trap can be cozy. Mine was, until it wasn’t.”
Straight women personal essayists do not get divorced. They question heterosexual marriage.
When I saw that there was a big article about (female?) heterosexuality…
…I first thought crap I’ve been scooped. For after all I personally own this topic.
Then I clicked and realized who wrote it and realized that no, this is not that, this thing is not that thing:
Shon Faye, a trans woman who writes about trans issues, is a woman into men, so yes, a straight lady. Points for #OwnVoices.
But she is not cishet. Why does this matter? Because she’s not one of those people who stand implicitly accused of boringness for being attracted to men, or whose sexual orientation is interpreted as the desire to lead a boring life. This does not mean she has an easier time of it than her cisgender counterparts. (Hardly!!) It does however suggest that the personal perspective she brings to this topic misses something about why straight women generally wince about needing a man.
We are once again in the realm of the queer-studies lens I’ve written about, where the only perspectives on boring straight women as such comes from the outside:
When a trans woman is into men, she faces the not insignificant drawback of most straight men seeking cis women. But it is unlikely that anyone will tell her that her sexual orientation, enthusiastically enjoyed, makes her a bad feminist.