It is the question du jour – and a lot of people are teasingly interrogating it
Are heterosexuals OK? The question is in the ether, with the New York Times interrogating the phenomenon of “heteropessimism” or even “heterofatalism” – women, specifically, viewing their heterosexuality as a misfortune and lifelong disappointment, given the flakiness and apparent commitment-phobia of the men they encounter. Women online have also been deploring the amount of “mankeeping” (shouldering the “structural burden of men’s declining social networks” as the research team who coined the term put it) in their lives.
But it has being posed most entertainingly by the French Instagram account @le_trema, created by Maël Coutand. Posts follow a standard format: in faux-reportage style, Coutand says: “Today we’re asking: are heterosexuals OK? (Est-ce que les hétérosexuels vont bien?)” Then there’s a horribly catchy jingle and a clip of some egregious online machismo or manosphere discourse that makes Sinitta’s So Macho look sophisticated – think men thumping each other with tyres, or shaving their eyelashes to look more manly; one tests his “self-control” by trapping his fingers in mousetraps; another crawls along railings to avoid stepping on a rainbow-painted staircase. Women aren’t spared: there’s a mother and daughter proudly pregnant by the same guy simultaneously, and a mind-bogglingly OTT gender reveal ceremony. The conclusion is inevitably: “Non!”
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