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livThis is quite a week for the calendar providing blogging topics, with Chinese New Year, Pancake Day / Mardi Gras / Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and the dreaded Valentine's Day all in succession. I really do not know what to do with VD. I don't approve of it politically, though I do like going out for nice meals with people I love, and I keep vacillating between (pointedly) ignoring it, attempting to subvert or reclaim it, and just going ahead and celebrating it anyway.
I mean, part of the problem with VD is the honking great cultural message that relationships like mine are important and precious and worthy of celebrating. I really, really don't think I'm in any way superior because I got married to a man and thus have a publicly visible, primary, romantic, dyadic relationship. Indeed I don't even think that relationship is more important than other key relationships in my life, though by the nature of what it is, it takes up a fair amount of my time and has major effects on my lifestyle choices. But society as a whole thinks I'm a winner because I have this relationship. It is absolutely true that I get many direct benefits, as well as meaningless social status, from being married tojack (otherwise I wouldn't have done it!) and to a lesser extent from being married in general, from having a partner who makes me and my desires a high priority in his life.
But this being the case, if I speak disparagingly about VD, if I complain that the idea of Romance puts too much emphasis on heterosexual, public, dyadic relationships, it comes across wrongly because I do in fact have all these benefits. Bothjack and I have toyed with the idea of having anti-valentine parties, but it just feels weird to do that when we do in fact have a romantic primary partner. OK, so we don't live together, so we're usually (as this year) physically apart on Valentine's Day, and in some ways I do want to make a point of saying that this is not in fact a tragedy, it's a choice we've made. That's still not really helpful to people who really wish they had someone to send them flowers on Thursday, or people who are forced by dire circumstances (as opposed to pursuing well-paid, satisfying careers) to live apart from their partners.
Because I've been unclear about this before, I want to state upfront that I know full well that getting married was a choice I made, it wasn't just a random piece of luck that "happened" to me. It feels like luck in the sense that it was never my life ambition to get married, I never made any particular effort to look for a partner who would be interested in that kind of relationship. And I take no particular credit for the fact that I found someone who wants to spend his life with me, so in that sense it was lucky; I say this as a counter to the idea that married people are somehow morally superior or more mature than single people or people with other relationship structures. But it was still my choice, a choice I could have rejected.
I seriously, seriously considered not getting married; if you've been reading this journal since 2010 whenjack proposed to me you'll have seen me angsting about it. In the end I decided that my relationship with jack looks enough like the socially approved model, being heterosexual, publicly declared, romantic and sexual, dyadic and with the intention of being a lifelong commitment, that choosing not to go through the ceremony wasn't in fact going to do much for equality. I've been debating on Twitter with ![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
nanayasleeps about the value of politically asking for opposite sex Civil Partnerships. She takes the view that CPs were just a way of fobbing off Queer people and are nothing but a second-class version of marriage. I feel emotionally, though I can't entirely justify this, that I would like to convert my legal relationship into a Civil Partnership, and therefore I would like the option to be available. nanayasleeps has sort of partly convinced me, though; there isn't a huge amount of benefit in giving up international recognition of my relationship for the sake of nebulous emotional advantages. And I must admit that now same-sex marriage (if not yet fully equal or gender-neutral marriage, grrr) is seriously on the table, it feels a whole lot less like being married is making a big statement about my gender and sexual orientation (and possibly even relationship structure) which I don't necessarily want to be making. That is vastly less important than the rights of all couples to have access to full marriage, of course. Still, my feeling is that making a big fuss of dyadic, romantic, monogamous, lifelong, household- and nuclear family-forming relationships is itself a problem, even though it's an extremely good thing and worth fighting for for that particular relationship structure is increasingly open to same-sex couples.
The same with VD. You're supposed to have one person you want to give traditional love tokens to and go out for a romantic meal with. It's great that we've now realized collectively that that person may be the same sex as you! But that doesn't necessarily fix things for people who are single by choice or by necessity, people whose relationships don't fit into that particular model of Romance, people who in relationships of three, four or more people, people who have more than one partner, people whose sexual partner(s) aren't their primary life partners, people who can't afford to draw the general public's attention to their relationships and I'm sure there's a whole bunch more I've left out. It doesn't help to value friendships and family connections and close-knit communities and online relationships and all other kinds of love. It doesn't help people who are single as adults beyond the age where this is seen as acceptable, people who actually don't have any person as intimately involved in their life as society expects a romantic partner to be.
People whose relationships don't get much social credit, and people who don't have the relationships they want, are likely to find VD upsetting. I'd like to make things better for everybody in that situation, but I don't really have a way to do so, especially considering that I'm part of the problem in some ways. I'm not going to avoid talking about my husband because some people don't have the practical and / or social advantages that I do. After all, one of the big advantages of being in this kind of couple is precisely thatjack is a major part of my life; not mentioning him would be like never talking about my job because some people are unemployed. Conversely, ranting about how VD is awful and promotes massive inequalities based on relationship status is itself rather tactless, coming from me.
What I am going to do is to link tokaberett's Not-a-darkroom-orgy love meme. As they say: kaberett's because I know most of the people involved, and some of them are people I love very dearly in ways that don't get the same kind of recognition as loving jack does. People have said incredibly touching things in my thread, but that's not why I'm linking, I just wanted to signal-boost a chance for people to get some love and respect and admiration and positivity that's not full of the subtext that you fail at life if you're not in the right kind of couple situation. I should also note that kaberett is moderating incredibly carefully and sensitively, so it's a lot less of a minefield than anony-memes can be.
I mean, part of the problem with VD is the honking great cultural message that relationships like mine are important and precious and worthy of celebrating. I really, really don't think I'm in any way superior because I got married to a man and thus have a publicly visible, primary, romantic, dyadic relationship. Indeed I don't even think that relationship is more important than other key relationships in my life, though by the nature of what it is, it takes up a fair amount of my time and has major effects on my lifestyle choices. But society as a whole thinks I'm a winner because I have this relationship. It is absolutely true that I get many direct benefits, as well as meaningless social status, from being married to
jack (otherwise I wouldn't have done it!) and to a lesser extent from being married in general, from having a partner who makes me and my desires a high priority in his life. But this being the case, if I speak disparagingly about VD, if I complain that the idea of Romance puts too much emphasis on heterosexual, public, dyadic relationships, it comes across wrongly because I do in fact have all these benefits. Both
jack and I have toyed with the idea of having anti-valentine parties, but it just feels weird to do that when we do in fact have a romantic primary partner. OK, so we don't live together, so we're usually (as this year) physically apart on Valentine's Day, and in some ways I do want to make a point of saying that this is not in fact a tragedy, it's a choice we've made. That's still not really helpful to people who really wish they had someone to send them flowers on Thursday, or people who are forced by dire circumstances (as opposed to pursuing well-paid, satisfying careers) to live apart from their partners. Because I've been unclear about this before, I want to state upfront that I know full well that getting married was a choice I made, it wasn't just a random piece of luck that "happened" to me. It feels like luck in the sense that it was never my life ambition to get married, I never made any particular effort to look for a partner who would be interested in that kind of relationship. And I take no particular credit for the fact that I found someone who wants to spend his life with me, so in that sense it was lucky; I say this as a counter to the idea that married people are somehow morally superior or more mature than single people or people with other relationship structures. But it was still my choice, a choice I could have rejected.
I seriously, seriously considered not getting married; if you've been reading this journal since 2010 when
jack proposed to me you'll have seen me angsting about it. In the end I decided that my relationship with jack looks enough like the socially approved model, being heterosexual, publicly declared, romantic and sexual, dyadic and with the intention of being a lifelong commitment, that choosing not to go through the ceremony wasn't in fact going to do much for equality. I've been debating on Twitter with The same with VD. You're supposed to have one person you want to give traditional love tokens to and go out for a romantic meal with. It's great that we've now realized collectively that that person may be the same sex as you! But that doesn't necessarily fix things for people who are single by choice or by necessity, people whose relationships don't fit into that particular model of Romance, people who in relationships of three, four or more people, people who have more than one partner, people whose sexual partner(s) aren't their primary life partners, people who can't afford to draw the general public's attention to their relationships and I'm sure there's a whole bunch more I've left out. It doesn't help to value friendships and family connections and close-knit communities and online relationships and all other kinds of love. It doesn't help people who are single as adults beyond the age where this is seen as acceptable, people who actually don't have any person as intimately involved in their life as society expects a romantic partner to be.
People whose relationships don't get much social credit, and people who don't have the relationships they want, are likely to find VD upsetting. I'd like to make things better for everybody in that situation, but I don't really have a way to do so, especially considering that I'm part of the problem in some ways. I'm not going to avoid talking about my husband because some people don't have the practical and / or social advantages that I do. After all, one of the big advantages of being in this kind of couple is precisely that
jack is a major part of my life; not mentioning him would be like never talking about my job because some people are unemployed. Conversely, ranting about how VD is awful and promotes massive inequalities based on relationship status is itself rather tactless, coming from me.What I am going to do is to link to
kaberett's Not-a-darkroom-orgy love meme. As they say: with the message that monogamous heterosexual relationships are the most important kind of relationship [...] a healthy dose of respect and love might be no bad thing. I am a bit scared of love memes, they seem like a fandom cultural thing that I don't fully understand. I signed up to
kaberett's because I know most of the people involved, and some of them are people I love very dearly in ways that don't get the same kind of recognition as loving jack does. People have said incredibly touching things in my thread, but that's not why I'm linking, I just wanted to signal-boost a chance for people to get some love and respect and admiration and positivity that's not full of the subtext that you fail at life if you're not in the right kind of couple situation. I should also note that kaberett is moderating incredibly carefully and sensitively, so it's a lot less of a minefield than anony-memes can be.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-12 03:36 pm (UTC)I can't say much about having the wrong sort of relationship; on being single, the way I see it, there are two problems. One problem is lacking a partner and the benefits that brings, the second is feeling hurt by the thought of being single. The second... it turns out there are things you can do about that that, beyond shedding your single status. Talking to counsellors helps; it turns out that in at least one case it was possible to do this on the NHS.
With the first problem; well, there are some people who do seem to be better off being single, good luck to them. Artificially inflating the first problem, making it into a complete disaster or a sign of your failure as a human being, is clearly problematic. ISTR seeing a Daily Mail article making the first sort of error. OTOH, denying that there are benefits, asserting that you're better off being single, etc. doesn't help either; some people (often of the non-single variety) seem to think they can make things better by having sour grapes on your behalf. Likewise, it is not reasonable to expect people to react well to being told "it's not a big deal". When a single person points to evidence that being single is associated with unhappiness, trying hard to explain away that evidence is not necessarily the best thing (I know that being unhappy, and many of the causes of unhappiness, contribute to being single); sometimes, validation is required; sometimes, it is all that is required. In short, I think what is required here is an actually realistic sense of proportion about the matter, rather than trying to fix things by artificially inflating or deflating the problem; inflating or deflating the problem for some agenda other than the happiness of single people is really not a good thing, and is unfair.
Personally I think it is best for people to have their celebrations - I never did believe in levelling down. The slightly flippant side of me would like to promote the idea that it is unreasonable to expect people to forgo these things; people should be able to get married even if it is politically inconvenient for them to (be able to) do so. However, this is taking things too far: some people must be expected to forgo these things with something approximating good grace. Otherwise it is possible for a sense of what you are missing out on to degenerate into an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Worrying about whether you have one of these, or might be accused of having one of these, is not fun.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-12 10:24 pm (UTC)Regarding celebrations, I think you're right in general. People shouldn't be expected to forego all pleasures just because some (possibly hypothetical) people might be envious, but I think equally sometimes it is right to forego something otherwise enjoyable because it causes harm. It feels to me like VD is somewhere in the grey area between the two; in the best case it can be a relatively private celebration between individuals which they ought to have the right to enjoy, but at the same time the whole media circus around it and the expectations that a certain kind of coupledom should be everyone's life goal really does make the world worse for some people.