Subtle, but insidious inequalities are baked into the foundations of many straight male-female relationships. The gender pay gap remains a real source of inequality for women — on average, working women take home £631 less than men each month – that’s around £7,572 over the year. Not only are women making less money for the same amount of work, in heterosexual relationships, they are usually saddled with the majority of the housework, childcare and even mental load. More often than not, the woman finds herself taking on jobs like cooking, laundry, tidying, while she’s also ends up being the one remembering when to book everyone’s doctor’s appointments, what time that delivery is coming tomorrow, to send his mother a birthday card, and so on.
As a modern, empowered woman, putting up with all of this feels, well, embarrassing. And the fact that so many straight women are putting up with it is only amplified by social media.
“Heteropessimism a very helpful way of capturing a widespread mood,” Kay explains. “Digital culture has changed dating for women, which now operates increasingly like a capitalist marketplace, in which people see themselves as consumers who are looking for the best deal, but are never satisfied.
“Digital culture allows women to share their negative experiences of dating,” she goes on. “This means that these problems become visible and women realise that their experiences are not isolated – this gives rise to a collective feeling of pessimism and despair.”
In other words, when you see the gendered issues you may experience in your own relationship reflected back on a large scale online, you might naturally jump to the assumption that all heterosexual relationships are inherently doomed.
Then there’s the fact that an increasing number of men are, effectively, doubling down. Rather than reflecting on their own shortcomings as partners and trying to find more equality in their heterosexual relationships, some men are turning to the dangerous rhetoric of the “manosphere” to explain their own dissatisfaction with heterosexual dating.
“Arguably digital culture has taken all the worst aspects of heterosexual dating – the objectification of women, their being treated as disposable objects, and so on – and intensified them,” says Kay. “The logics and practices of the manosphere – gaslighting, negging – have become mainstreamed.”
“The prevalence of manosphere logics and practices in everyday life means that it is difficult to advise women to always go into heterosexual relationships without some degree of caution,” Kay says.
But while heteropessimism may often be justified by practical realities that do need to be addressed, it can do more harm than good. Proudly stating that you “wish you weren’t straight” or that you “are done with all men” is not really all that helpful.
“The problem is that it leads to a fatalist way of thinking,” Kay says. “It can also lead to very reductive and essentialistic ideas about men – that they are all bad, or that men are hardwired to behave in a certain way.”
Though the rhetoric of the manosphere and straight women’s version of heteropessimism may look very different, below the surface, they both serve one ultimate purpose: to make our approach to romance more transactional and more fearful than ever. “It can make women increasingly wary of men, and to try and suppress their romantic feelings towards them, as a way to protect themselves,” Kay says. “We see this everywhere in digital culture, where we are encouraged not to ‘catch feelings’ because this will weaken our hand when it comes to the game of heterosexuality. Relationships therefore become more transactional. There is increasingly a sense of ‘what can I get out of this?’”
So, what is the solution? Unfortunately, it requires collective action rather than individual pessimism. “In my view, this isn’t a problem that women can solve as individuals,” Kay concludes. “Historically, feminism has been about collectively organising to change the conditions that oppress and disadvantage women. Rather than fatalistically accepting that heterosexuality will always be awful for women, we need to have a collective vision of a better society.”