The Straight Women Who Actually Find Men Attractive

Phoebe Maltz Bovy's Book, "The Last Straight Woman" identifies something I've always wondered: maybe that "universal" female experience of finding men bothersome and gross isn't so universal.

I just finished reading The Last Straight Woman by my friend, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, and I have to admit, the first feeling I had upon reading a couple chapters was intense fury that I had not written this book myself. Everything she said, I couldn’t help but nod and say, “Yes, YES!! This is what I’ve been SAYING!!!” (Except she’s been saying it longer and much better than I could have, and, so on.) She also made some points that never even occurred to me, but as soon as I read them, I was like Oh my God, I’m such an idiot that I never thought of this. It was like watching the most compelling horror movie ever (the horror being, I suppose, feminist manifestos insisting straight women could simply choose not to be straight the same way one could choose to stop buying one particular type of apple—yes, she cites this) where every plot twist feels like something you should have seen coming, but foolishly didn’t. And to make it worse? She’s hilarious.

There is a joke to be made here about Hot Squilliam looking like the men on the cover of the book, but I can’t quite figure it out.

When I first heard that Phoebe was writing a book about straight women, years ago, I had a brief moment of non-judgmental but confused curiosity where I was like, “Okay, what about them? The fact that they’re straight?” Thankfully, I did not have the standard Bluesky reaction of “STRAIGHT women? Existing and writing about themselves? a MONTH before Pride? How distasteful!” But anyway, “the fact that they’re straight” is actually…pretty compelling, at least the way she writes about it. Phoebe is not writing about how all women should be straight, nor is she writing about how straight people are oppressed. Just that most women are straight—and that a key part of being straight is (and I kid you not, hold onto your seats) actually being attracted to men.

Some of you unfamiliar with Phoebe’s beat might still be like, “Okay, and?” but there’s actually so much interesting content here that I found myself dog-earing nearly every page of her book.

In particular, the part that got me the most—and what most of this article will cover—was the way straight womanhood was presented during what Phoebe aptly calls the era of “Ban Men Feminism.” In particular, she references supermodel/activist Emily Ratajkowski’s Ban Men feminist book, My Body, and the entire Ban Men (but be hot while doing it, but NOT for men, in fact, it’s IRONIC, even if nobody can tell the difference) ethos. Emily Ratajkowski frames all men and all male attention in general as predatory and annoying, with this implicit assumption that all women could relate to such a plight. And she’s hardly the only one. Many straight feminist writers have theorized that we would all be much happier in women-only dance parties, indefinitely, deriving zero pleasure or arousal from men ourselves. While I think I can safely go on the record to say that most women do not look like Emily Ratajkowski, Phoebe points out that plenty of non-Ratajkowski-appearing women, like Lena Dunham, considered her book a great example of what “every” woman experiences—basically, yes, we’re “straight” but also, we’d be very happy to see all men disappear tomorrow so we could just sit around and drink wine together in peace.

Not to go all Tumblr on you, but I did not realize that female heterosexuality was apparently aromantic asexuality. To quote Taylor Lorenz, “People learn things on their phones every day!”