heteropessimism

English

Etymology

From hetero- +‎ pessimism.

Noun

heteropessimism (uncountable)

1. An unhappiness or embarrassment about one's own heterosexuality and romantic experiences or prospects.
   • 2019 October 9, Asa Seresin, “On Heteropessimism”, in The New Inquiry‎^[1]:

     What I now see is that Nelson’s caveat is typical of heteropessimism, a mode of feeling with a long history, and which is particularly palpable in the present. Heteropessimism consists of performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.

   • 2020, Bonni Rambatan, Jacob Johanssen, Event Horizon: Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism‎^[2], John Hunt Publishing, published 2021, →ISBN:

     Yet, they both remain invested in feelings of heteropessimism, because of its inhibiting, numbing, and anaesthetising effects. Moving beyond heterosexuality or embarking on changing it, Seresin argues, means potential disappointment, instability, and uncertainty.

   • 2022, Calum Lister Matheson, “Mogged by the Market: Science, Subjectivity, and the Rationalization of Sex”, in Molly A. Wallace, Concetta V. Principe, editors, From Cogito to Covid: Rethinking Lacan’s “Science and Truth”, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 117:

     The blackpill—or even “scientific blackpill”—is perhaps the single most defining rhetorical figure of incel discourse, distinguishing this group from other male-centric or chauvinistic Internet communities as an ideology of hopelessness supposedly based on an objective encounter with scientific reality, a kind of self-avowed masculine heteropessimism.

   • 2022, Jane Ward, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 162:

     Through a queer lens, heteroresignation or heteropessimism appears to be a rite of passage for straight women.

   • 2022 April 7, Christine Emba, “Straight People Need Better Rules for Sex”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN:

     But today, the general outlook among heterosexual daters has come to take on a less playful, more depressive tone — manifesting in what the writer Asa Seresin calls “heteropessimism,” a mode of feeling “usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment and hopelessness about the straight experience.”