Jane Ward

Jane Ward is an American scholar, feminist, and author. She is Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Ward received her PhD in sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2003. She is known for her book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (NYU Press, 2015), a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Ward's research has been featured in New York Magazine, The Guardian, Forbes, Salon, Newsweek, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, and Vice. Her 2008 book Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations was named a favorite book of 2008 by The Progressive magazine. She lives in Altadena, California with her partner Kat Ross. Ward's published work focuses on a broad range of topics, from feminist pornography, queer parenting, and the racial politics of same-sex marriage, to the social construction of heterosexuality and whiteness. She is the blogger for FeministPigs. She is a cofounder, along with CJ Pascoe and Tey Meadow, of the blog SocialInqueery.com. Beyond her writing, she was a founding member of “The Miracle Whips” burlesque group in 2004. She also started the parenting collective “L.A. Genderqueer Parenting” in 2009. Both groups were based in Los Angeles.

Works

Ward's second book Not Gay has received positive reviews from New York Magazine and many other outlets. New York Magazine states "[Ward] shows that homosexual contact has been a regular feature of heterosexual life ever since the concepts of homo- and heterosexuality were first created -- not just in prisons and frat houses and the military, but in biker gangs and even conservative suburban neighborhoods."

As of 2015, Ward is working on a monograph entitled The Failure of Heterosexuality: How Sexism Doomed the World's Most Cherished Union (and Hid the Wreckage).