Straight women's dating pessimism isn't melodrama — it's political rollback and economic dependence
Sarah Jones argues that straight women's awkwardness and pessimism about dating men is both genuine feeling and performance, sitting on top of political rollback, economic dependence, and a reality that social media amplifies.
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Straight women hold fewer rights now than they did at birth
Asked whether straight women are okay, Sarah Jones answers flatly: no. Women have made progress over the decades, she says, but in post-Dobbs America that progress looks fragile, and is in fact being rolled back. This political reality has knock-on effects for all women, straight women included. Women now hold fewer rights than they were born with, she argues, while the Trump administration and the broader right actively embrace misogyny and racism, openly setting out to strip women and people of color of their civil rights.
— Sarah JonesHeteropessimism is a real feeling, not an online abstraction
Sarah Jones explains why the column focuses on straight women rather than women in general. She is bisexual herself but married to a man, which gives her a first-hand vantage point on heterosexual relationships. She wrote the column to join a wider conversation about ‘heteropessimism’ or ‘heterofatalism’, a conversation happening among her friends and online alike. She wanted to know whether these feelings were genuine or merely an abstraction — and if genuine, where they come from and what to do about them.
— Sarah JonesPutting up with it isn't weakness — she can't afford to leave
Asked why women put up with it, Sarah Jones says the reasons are complicated. Economically, a woman may simply not be able to afford to leave; emotionally, leaving is never easy either. Women still carry most of the childcare, she notes, and a husband may not share the housework — grievances that get flattened online, when the reality is far more tangled than it looks on the surface. She admits she has wondered the same thing herself, but she understands how hard it is.
— Sarah JonesStraight women's self-mockery hides a kind of exceptionalism
Sarah Jones takes up the point that LGBTQ people might roll their eyes at straight women's self-deprecation. Straight women's self-mocking pessimism, she says, can carry a kind of ‘exceptionalism’ — an obliviousness to their own relative privilege. The same forces pushing men to mistreat women, she points out, are also anti-trans and anti-queer, so the joking has to come with an awareness of the larger context, rather than cutting one's own predicament off from broader oppression.
— Sarah JonesHope isn't optimism; it's believing things could get better
Sarah Jones offers ‘hopeful pessimism’ as a way through. She distinguishes optimism from hope: optimism is believing things will get better, while hope is believing things could get better. That stance sits closer to reality, she argues, and it carries an obligation — not just to acknowledge what is, but to ask what you yourself can do. She calls for building a society where it is ‘easier to love’, with fewer economic and institutional obstacles in the way.
— Sarah JonesThis gender backlash isn't the first; history doesn't move in straight lines
Sarah Jones reads the current trouble in heterosexual relationships as a symptom of an era of gender backlash. This is not the first gender backlash America has lived through, she notes, and it will not be the last. Romance is difficult to begin with; now it carries the added weight of economic inequality and political rollback. History does not progress in a straight line, she says, and people are working to make sense of that fact.
— Sarah JonesEconomic dependence makes moving out not a real option at all
Sarah Jones spells out how economics blocks women from leaving unhealthy relationships. Her examples: moving in together sooner than planned because rent is unaffordable, marrying for health insurance, becoming disabled after marriage and needing a caregiver. Structural facts like these make ‘moving out’ a decision women can barely make — down to whether they can find a job, or take the pet with them. Economic inequality, she stresses, is central to why women can't get out.
— Sarah JonesMen and women aren't opposed; the opposition narrative is the danger
Sarah Jones warns that reducing the heterosexual predicament to men versus women is dangerous. Men and women are not really in conflict, she says; they are facing the same unfavorable cultural, social and economic reality together. That adversarial framing feeds the manosphere's zero-sum thinking — the belief that women's gains must come at men's expense. She worries that heteropessimism could inadvertently reinforce exactly that mistaken idea.
— Sarah JonesIn their own words · checked verbatim
No, I mean, to be fair, I'm not sure any of us are okay, but No, I really don't think so.
Sarah Jones1:52
It's kind of an attitude. It's kind of like things aren't going well for straight women. And there's almost a feeling not maybe of shame, but also a little bit of embarrassment around dating men wanting to date men.
Sarah Jones4:18
Glossary
- heteropessimism
- A pessimistic, embarrassed stance toward heterosexual relationships, usually voiced as self-deprecating humor.
- hopeful pessimism
- A position that concedes a bleak reality but believes change is possible, and acts on that belief.
How to listen
Readers who follow gender issues, straight women baffled by contemporary dating culture, researchers working on gender politics, and anyone curious about the state of heterosexual relationships.
The ad breaks (roughly 25:00-26:23 and 43:13-44:27) can be skipped.