The Heteropessimists

This in-depth discussion between Samantha Pinson Wrisley and Jennifer Hamilton provides an unexpected but perfect coda to volume one. Wrisley’s research on misogyny focuses on the "feeling" of hating women, and on articulating how those feelings shape relationships and social worlds. In Wrisley’s work, the consequences of widespread heteropessimism are examined for their connections to misogyny, which are less banal and more pernicious. They look at how this same (or adjacent) feeling t...

Our team member, Dr Christina Kenny, a sociologist at UNE talks to strong man coach, sex worker and professional dominant, Sir James, to unpack some of the ways that ‘desire’ and ‘taboo’ can undo and perhaps even challenge some of the constrictive, heteronormative expectations which can produce heteropessimism and, in turn, heteropessimists.

In this episode, we ask the question: 'Just how pessimistic should we be?' Jane Ward is a professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses in feminist, queer, and heterosexuality studies. She has written on a wide range of gender and sexuality topics, but it was her 2020 book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality that caught the attention of Dr Felicity Joseph - the existentialist-minded philosopher on our team. In this in-d...