Features/Valentine’s Day: Valentine’s Day: The straight guys aren’t doing well

What do you do if you, as a woman, desire men but at the same time find them unpleasant? Asa Seresin gave the resulting unease the term “heteropessimism” in an essay for the online magazine “The New Inquiry” in 2019. Since then, the slightly modified form “heterofatalism” has made waves in feminist circles. Both terms primarily describe heterosexual women’s shame about their own sexuality and their desire for romantic intimacy with men. Shame because desire persists despite a series of unsatisfactory or invasive experiences in heterosexual relationships. Catchy slogans like “It’s not you, it’s men” or “How to date men when you hate men” that are reflected in this Internet ghosting is further evidence of the same phenomenon. They indicate where the source of the problem could be found: in poor male relationship and love behavior.

The mocking question “Are the straights okay?”, also often read online these days, can be clearly answered in the negative. She alludes to the desolate state of the heterosexual love life, which quite a few disillusioned women would like to say goodbye to as well as their own desires. So how would it be if men, especially cis men, seriously asked themselves what they could have to do with this situation and followed the feminists’ suggestions? With red roses, chocolate and sappy expressions of love distributed once a year on Valentine’s Day, the problem is not gone. Instead, these tend to contribute to a simplistic idea of ​​love, which must be a lie under patriarchal and capitalist conditions.

The fundamental skepticism of women towards men contained in the term “heterofatalism” is a more than understandable reaction to the patriarchal violence carried out by men. The numbers speak for themselves: a femicide occurs about every third day; women are predominantly murdered by men from their close relationships. Perpetrators are husbands, ex-partners, sons, brothers, fathers or friends. Against this background, heterosexuality that is not permeated by male violence seems almost unthinkable. This is the dilemma that Asa Seresin also pointed out in her text: When heterosexuality is so often and seemingly inextricably linked to misogyny and violence, it becomes difficult to even imagine any other form of mutual desire.

What way out could there be? In her book “The will to change: men, masculinity, and love” (2004), the American feminist bell hooks (1952–2021) speaks out against feminism that one-sidedly declares men to be the enemy. Instead, she is convinced that ultimately the patriarchy can only be challenged with the help of men. Hooks takes up the problem formulated in the concept of heterofatalism, but does not content himself with stating male inadequacy, but develops a radical political demand: she insists on the reality of the female desire for male love and combines this with an appeal to men Desire to finally do justice and learn to love.

Of course, learning to love does not mean a purely spiritual or individual process, even if every single man must be willing to do so. On the other hand, men’s current inability to love is closely linked to the social unequal distribution of wage work, which tends to be male, and care work, which tends to be female. In order to learn to love, men from all parts of society must increasingly be given (and take advantage of) the opportunity to take on unpaid care work such as childcare and housework or to carry out paid care work, for example in the care sector, whereby they could develop tenderness, patience and empathy. The problem between the sexes is also – as numerous feminists have already pointed out – an economic problem.

Not only women suffer from patriarchy, but men too. With this quite correct statement, attempts are often made to win men over to the feminist cause. However, this ignores the fact that men, despite their possible (compassionate) suffering, benefit massively from maintaining their hegemony. In this context, the sociologist Rolf Pohl points out that the construction of heterosexual masculinity per se is based on the defense against femininity.

Even men who are not violent benefit, intentionally or unintentionally, from the general social tendency to suppress, threaten and devalue women. Men must first and foremost recognize and reflect on this connection in order to resolve their complicity with this system – that would be the first prerequisite for learning to love. If understood as a radical political demand, learning to love for men would also mean foregoing economic, social and cultural privileges in favor of an equal distribution of care work. Or to help change this system from the ground up.

The Beatles already knew “All You Need Is Love” – men, it’s high time to get serious about it.