The Girlbossification of Sex and Relationships
Are Straight Women on TikTok Heteropessimistic?
TikTok is an all-encompassing social media platform which enables users to make, share or consume short videos. Akin to other digital media platforms, TikTok uses algorithms to capture the categories that content users interact with most. Users are then recommended videos based on their digital footprints within the app, which are filtered through onto a ‘ForYouPage.’
The use of hashtags, likes, and share features concoct an algorithm that accommodates the evolving nature of its users' content preferences. This unfortunately doesn’t always work as smoothly as we’d like. Often, you’ll hear TikTok users complain of accidentally getting themselves on “ParentTok," or perhaps, rejoicing in being added to “PotatoTok.” But this lack of control over the media we’re being drip-fed isn’t always benign.
Unsurprisingly, TikTok algorithms appear to be sensitive to co-option and often produce rabbit holes. Hashtags such as #feminist or #feminism are frequently co-opted by accounts which seek to disseminate anti-feminist sentiment. More generally, they infiltrate or disrupt the circulation of socially ‘progressive’ content to redirect users towards alt-right pipelines or men-only, ‘anti-feminist’ echo chambers within the app.
However, feminist algorithms on TikTok have sweepingly moved away from meaningful discussions or helpful political praxis anyway, regardless of such internal infiltrations. #Feminist videos now filter through harmful and outdated strands of feminism, which ultimately disguises privilege or which neatly rebrands and repackages misogyny, whilst claiming to be ‘empowering’ women. Most importantly, self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ on TikTok often engage in discourses which are pessimistic, or which engage abusive outlooks and attitudes. These are often conversations surrounding heterosexual sex, dating and relationships.
This became most notable following the transnational condemnation of ‘Couch Guy’ and West-Elm Caleb. For those unaccustomed, these were two men, who in an unrelated sequence of events became vilified by women on TikTok. ‘Couch Guy’ went viral following a video of him remaining seated upon a surprise visit from his girlfriend. Here, heterosexual women on TikTok claimed that his apparent apathy towards his girlfriend in the video was indicative of infidelity, and signalled that he ‘didn’t really like her’. Heterosexual women acclaimed that ‘Couch Guy’ was proof that men could not be trusted. TikTok users even saved and slowed down the original video, watching and dissecting his body language, and those of the girls who were captured sat next to him.
In other words, Couch Guy failed to live up to the heterosexual fantasy of how a boyfriend should behave in a hypothetical situation and, without context, nuance or empathy, was publicly vilified for it. Shortly thereafter, ‘West Elm Caleb’ experienced similar digitised animosity. He was subject to verbal attacks and even doxing, upon women in New York City finding out they had each dated and been ghosted by him. Essentially, these men were placed at the epicentre of a nightmarish court of public opinion, which they were wholly undeserving of.
Yet, the facade of online humour that berated these men perfectly encapsulated how belonging to a carceral state trickles down into our interpersonal dynamics. That is, we are socialised into upholding certain ‘moral’ or ‘social’ codes. Thus, when someone appears to be in breach or fails to adhere to these enshrined doctrines, the populace feels permitted to punish people upon such transgression. It also revealed a level of pessimism through which heterosexual women view sex and relationships with men entirely.
Media outlets were quick to capture these men as being subjects of ‘cancel culture.’ Perhaps we ought to consider that these men had instead become objects for which heterosexual women could collectively cast a performative disaffiliation with heterosexuality upon. These men had become caricatures for a larger cultural phenomenon which has been brewing on TikTok for a while, and one that permeates within wider socio-political culture. A phenomena Asa Seresin captures as ‘Heteropessimism’.
According to Seresin, Heteropessimism is a phenomena that “consists of performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.” Whilst it is often heterosexual women who engage in this pessimism, Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán have argued that online incel subcultures can also be considered as heteropessimists too, since they vocalise dissatisfactions with the state of contemporary heterosexuality, which they frequently acclaim as ‘forcing’ them into both relational and sexual celibacy.
Nonetheless, disaffiliations with heterosexuality by heterosexual women are usually made under the guise of humour. Heterosexual women often employ distanced irony to produce a literal distance from their sexuality. Often this has been captured through their invoking or mobilising of an imaginary ‘queer’ that they ‘could have been.’ Flirting with the possibility, yet, the inherent unavailability of queerness, heterosexual women make problematic jests towards having a ‘secret’ or ‘deep desire’ to be anything ‘but’ straight. This can be captured in sentiments such as:
“I know being gay isn’t a choice, because I would not have chosen to be attracted to men.”
“Ugh, I wish I was gay.”
“I can’t be bothered with men anymore.”
“Men just don’t know how to communicate like women do, I wish I liked women.”
“Fuck it. I will be a political lesbian.”
“I heard women can make women cum better, so…”
Indeed, even bisexual women appear to sometimes experience heteropessimism, when discussing their ‘types’. Oftentimes this involves being oddly specific with the ‘types’ of men they are looking for or attracted too. Whereas, when it comes to the types of women they are attracted to, literally all women are posed as desirable, as ‘mommies’ or goddess-like archetypes. Even the infamous TikTok trend of the ‘Ick’ which describes behaviours or attributes of men and women which gross one another out often operates along this gendered axis. Bisexual women often talk getting the ‘ick’ substantially quicker or more with men than they do in their dating or relationships with women. Sound familiar?
Of course, as Seresin notes, these sentiments are almost always only performative. There is an inherent failure of heterosexual women to meaningfully address the structural components or rigid social conscriptions that patriarchy, a culture of heteronormativity or monogamy often necessitate. This is understandable considering that women already do enough emotional labour, but it means that the roots of their dissatisfaction with the heterosexual experience always remains unaddressed.
Worse, the consequences of being socialised in patriarchal gender roles, and how these have contributed to incompatible styles of communication or conflicting desires between heterosexual men and women remain. In turn, heterosexual men and women appear resentful and seemingly do not understand one another. Hence, why many queer people like to jest: “Wow, are the straights okay?”
Instead of heterosexual women offering up a different set of terms for which they could experience sex, dating and relationships more equally, they seemingly opt for making heteropessimistic proclamations and trying to ‘match’ the power of those that benefit from their oppression. Often, their discussions begin to jokingly centre a type of political lesbianism, as if this would exist as a viable option for escaping their feelings of an inherent fallibility of sex, dating and relationships with men.
Here, not only do heterosexual women actively decide to ignore the extremely damaging history of treating sexuality as choice - throwing their queer counterparts under the bus for a five second joke - they fail to recognise the immense privilege they hold through belonging to a heteronormative culture that both necessitates and rewards their heterosexuality. You know, the one that disavows queerness?
Similarly, not only do they fail to see queer people as people through their ultimately fetishised lens, but they also ignore how heteronormative culture is precisely the reason for their pessimism. They do nothing to change the culture of heterosexuality in a way that would benefit both themselves and queer people.
The inescapable parameters of heteropessimism to which heterosexual women arguably maintain, can be captured best through the way they wrestle with the orgasm gap. Heterosexual women on TikTok often make jokes about men failing to make them orgasm, it is often posited as one of the ‘funny’ universal experiences straight, and sometimes bisexual, women go through.
These jokes are heteropessimistic since they provide a level of distancing for heterosexual women from their own sexuality, whilst simultaneously exuding a level of utter melancholy, since there is actually a scientific consensus that proves their jokes to be true. This type of discourse prevails within the comment sections or TikTok videos themselves, and illustrates clear power struggles that operate along a gender axis between men and women and their ability to have healthy sexual experiences.
For instance, proclamations by women such as ‘ha-ha he couldn’t make me cum anyway,’ or the trend wherein women dance to music with a layover that states, ‘when he blocks you with the same fingers that couldn’t make you finish,’ illustrate their clear disgruntlement in regards to having sex with men. However, this is a form of condescension that seems to oddly acclaim the O-Gap as some kind of victory, or ‘girl boss’ power move. How does this distanced irony and humour serve women well? It seems to be a humour that has emanated because of girl-boss feminism, which is obsessed with one-upping men, making women self-gaslight themselves and which does nothing to ensure or actively seek equality.
There is absolutely nothing victorious or boast-worthy about being a human fleshlight for a man, who does not respect you enough to ensure that both your sexual experiences are on equal playing fields. ‘He couldn’t make me cum anyway’ is ultimately a self-gaslighting logic. It enables women to experience a false sense of erotic power, wherein they believe they are sexually empowered through shrugging off their disappointment with the ‘straight’ sexual experience.
It creates a fictional scenario in which the man was trying his best to make her cum but couldn’t due to his ‘lack of masculinity’ or ‘sexual prowess.’ The reality is, he wasn’t trying, and he didn’t care. This is where our focus should be. It’s a form of self-soothing that women do to wrestle with what remains the unequal dynamics of sex within hook-up culture or in their relationships with men. Consequently, these logics seek only to maintain the current cultural overemphasis on male sexual pleasure, which further perpetuates the orgasm gap.
Heteropessimistic aberrations will never create tangible changes to the embodied sexual experiences of being a heterosexual, or bisexual woman.
Written by Natalie Sherriff
Natalie Sherriff has a MSc in Gender (Sexuality) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her undergraduate degree was in International Relations from the University of Exeter. Along side her unhealthy obsession with political podcasts and house-plants, her interests include: current affairs, digital media culture, feminist theory, sexuality and the occult. You can follow her antics on Instagram @nat_a_alie .
