Ladies, is being straight a choice??? Heterosexuality has tended to be studied only as the background condition of other phenomena — in the context of sexual assault, domestic labor, sexual satisfaction — and there was a brief period, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when some feminists demanded it be studied as a political institution, one they believed upheld the patriarchy. But as the study of LGBTQ identity and relationships has continued to expand and deepen, the world of heterosexuality, among academics, has remained largely unexamined: It’s the wallpaper against which other exhibits are hung; it just is. Sociologist Jane Ward wants to change that. As the University of California Santa Barbara’s chair of feminist studies, her area of expertise is straight studies. At the link in bio, jessicabennett visits Ward’s Critical Heterosexuality Studies class and talks to her about everything from heteropessimism to #CompHet and whether we can ever learn to do things differently. ...