The Heteropessimists

Jul 11 2023 6 ep. 41 mins 11
The Heteropessimists Podcast artwork

A series of interviews that seek to unpack and explore the concept of 'heteropessimism' as well as its travels throughout scholarship and popular culture, with the ultimate goal to find a way forward, towards a 'hetero-optimism'. This is a podcast for straight and queer folks alike interested in thinking holistically about gender, relationships and sexuality today.

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Volume 1 Coda: Misogyny and the Anesthetic Affect

Jul 11 2023 59 mins  
This in-depth discussion between Samantha Pinson Wrisley and Jennifer Hamilton provides an unexpected but perfect coda to volume one. Wrisley’s research on misogyny focuses on the "feeling" of hating women, and on articulating how those feelings shape relationships and social worlds. In Wrisley’s work, the consequences of widespread heteropessimism are examined for their connec

Episode Five: Domestic Ecologies and Family Abolition

Jul 21 2022 40 mins  
In our final episode of Volume One, Jennifer Hamilton chats to author and scholar, Sophie Lewis, about her new book, ‘Abolish the Family!: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation' and how this provocative idea can help us move beyond the emotional and political trap that is laid for people by heteropessimism.

Episode Four: Desire and Moving Beyond Binaries

Jul 14 2022 35 mins  
Our team member, Dr Christina Kenny, a sociologist at UNE talks to strong man coach, sex worker and professional dominant, Sir James, to unpack some of the ways that ‘desire’ and ‘taboo’ can undo and perhaps even challenge some of the constrictive, heteronormative expectations which can produce heteropessimism and, in turn, heteropessimists.

Episode Three: Masculinities

Jul 07 2022 49 mins  
Dr Matt Allen, a historian at UNE, and to date, the only male-identifying participant on The Heteropessimists project, is interested in exploring male forms of heteropessimism as well as the role of masculinities in explaining heteropessimism. Being a historian, his focus here is on the past. Particularly a strain of what he contends might anachronistically be called heteropessimis

Episode Two: Pessimism

Jun 30 2022 28 mins  
In this episode, we ask the question: 'Just how pessimistic should we be?' Jane Ward is a professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses in feminist, queer, and heterosexuality studies. She has written on a wide range of gender and sexuality topics, but it was her 2020 book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality that caught the at

Episode One: So what exactly is heteropessimism?

Jun 23 2022 35 mins  
For our very first episode, you’re going to hear an interview between our team member, Jennifer Hamilton and Asa Seresin - the author of the article that catalysed this project. They’ll discuss the definition of the concept, how it complicates existing thinking about gender and sexuality, how widely it has travelled and what the implications are for research and social justice