"[T]he very square fact of being straight"

Oh dear. This again? According to Stephanie Theobald, "it's increasingly rare that you'll meet a cool straight girl who'll admit to being completely straight." Is that so? (I make no claims on "cool," living, as I do, in a place where Point A to Point B requires a used Honda Civic and both points are strip-malls.) It's certainly a convenient definition of cool, if you're a woman into women.

The idea, though, points back to two WWPD topics. First, the notion that unlike men, women can choose their sexual orientation, the implication generally being that women aren't all that sexual in the first place. The new fluidity seems to be less about allowing women who do desire women to pursue them (which is a good thing!) and more about yet another thing straight women might do to please men. Cheery, agreeable, and now, bi-curious. With potentially disappointing consequences for women who are actually gay or bi, and get drawn into whichever nonsense.

And second: the notion that female heterosexuality is the desire of women to become girlfriends or wives of men, as versus the desire for men. I can see how it might look that way to a woman who doesn't have any/much attraction to men, because for them, yes, getting involved with a man would be about conventionality. Also because straight girls are socialized to express interest in boys as interest in getting a date for prom. But, gah!, for the girls who really do like boys, the women who actually do experience attraction to men, it's quite a bit more complicated.