Heteropessimism is everywhere, it seems, from our newsfeeds to our brunch conversations — and now, also, in our book clubs. This gender malaise plays out in contemporary literary fiction with…
Contemporaries Essays
Domestic Heteropessimism
Last summer people on Twitter were angrily discussing an Instagram account that was new to me, run by an artist, Mary Catherine Starr, who posts as @momlife_comics. Presented as sincerely…
Sally Rooney’s Love Plot as Gimmick
The novel is, by definition, formally heteropessimist: gesturing towards queerness at the levels of narrative, style, and perspective while resolving upon heterosexual coupledom in the end. This, at least, is…
The Performativity of Heteropessimism as Feminist Complaint
“Females, however, and effeminate men enjoy having people to wail with them” — Aristotle1 Around the time I turned thirty, I was dating the most magnetic man I’d ever met….
Introduction
In season 5, episode 2 of Sex and the City, Carrie meets with publishers who want to turn her eponymous column about sex and relationships into a book. All she…
Abortion’s Poetic Figures
How does poetry figure abortion? Perhaps the most influential and enduring critical examination of this question comes from Barbara Johnson’s essay “Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion.” Johnson’s essay turns to poetic…
Feminist Eugenics: Coerced Sterilization and Mandated Maternity
Towards the end of The Bell Jar, as Esther Greenwood sits in yet another doctor’s office, babies proliferate. In “page after page” of the issue of baby talk she flips…
“Cultural Problems Demand Cultural Solutions”: Performing Abortion Stories for Culture Change
“I’M HAVING AN ABORTION! And I’m going to need some help.”1 Jane’s announcement comes near the beginning of the 2018 play This Boat Called My Body, a production of For…
Labor and Restitution in Emma Campbell’s Abortion-Seeking Art Work
On the morning of October 22, 2019, the people of Northern Ireland woke up to the legally enshrined guarantee that the act of seeking an abortion would no longer be…
Abortion Stories for Accomplices
After decades of defending Roe, the demands issued by abortion rights activists before 1973 may surprise you. What began as a united front suffered an irreparable split. The coalition hoping…