Ain’t ideology grand? Laura Kipnis:
Heterosexuality always was the Achilles heel of feminism because the asymmetries involved usually took the form of adequacy for one sex, inadequacy for the other. And so things seem to remain: You may hear a lot of tough talk about empowerment and independence in women’s culture today, except you hear it from women shopping for baby-doll outfits or getting Brazilian bikini waxes and double-D cup breast implants. (“I’m doing it for myself.”)
Wouldn’t you think that if heterosexuality is your Achilles heel, you’re in big, big trouble. This isn’t far from saying, “My ism would work out great, if only people didn’t like eating and laughing.” Anyway, the asymmetries between the sexes have nothing to do with adequacy and inadequacy, unless you understand inadequacy as kind of dependence, in which case, we’re all inadequate, just asymmetrically so. Men need women and women need men. More controversially, men need women to be women and women need men to be men. And if you don’t know what that means, or know and object to it, then life among the humans may turn out to be tough for you.