I honestly think relationships in general would be healthier, in general, if we didn’t believe they should last forever.
When the default is “forever” and shorter relationships are seen as a failure, we miss out on a lot. We stay in relationships that don’t work because they’re not “bad enough” to leave, as though not wanting the relationship anymore isn’t a good enough reason. We deny ourselves happy memories, saying “If it doesn’t work now, our love then wasn’t real.” We pass on relationships we know would be short, because if it doesn’t last forever, what’s the point in joy in the moment?
An ending isn’t a failure. It’s an ending. Most relationships have them. What would our relationships be like if we stopped focusing on our fear of endings and started focusing on what we - and our friends, partners, and family - need right now?
Thinking about compulsory heterosexuality as it applies to wlw is so interesting to me because women’s heterosexuality is built on so much more than just “you must be attracted to men” because it’s often really tightly bound up with “you must be attractive to men.” And the thing is that those two things are so closely associated that they kind of become interchangeable with one another?
It’s why women who don’t put in the work needed to meet heteronormative standards of beauty are called lesbians and it’s also why some lesbians are told they’re too pretty to be lesbians because it’s assumed that if you are attractive to men then you must seek out that attraction because you like them and vice versa.
But the need to look pretty (for men, it’s implied) is reinforced on so many other levels besides that; like men will dismiss your opinions by saying you’re probably not attractive, you learn how to do makeup from this super early age, you’re told that you wont get a job unless you show up to the interview emulating a really specific type of femininity.
And eventually this becomes so automatic that you don’t even know that you’re doing it; for a long time I would meet a guy and immediately wonder if he liked my hair or if my makeup looked too overdone or if my shirt was too tight. And because attraction and a desire to be attractive were so linked in my head, I just assumed for a long time that I was more attracted to men and attracted to a lot more of them than I am. Because if I was worried about how I looked around them that must mean I was attracted to them, right?
It’s taken me a really long time to sort through that impulse, and I still reflexively do it when I meet some guys. This isn’t because I find them attractive; it’s just that I’ve grown up in a society that’s told me over and over and over again that my worth is measured in my appeal to men.
To add another layer to this, heteronormativity is tightly bound to Whiteness, especially when it comes to White femininity. I wrote an entire paper one this once, but what it comes down to is that to be feminine/a beautiful woman, you must be White, heterosexual, able-bodied etc. And it’s not even strictly heterosexual for its own sake; White women’s heterosexuality must make them available for White men. That’s why interracial couples featuring a White woman will have people comment “But you’re too pretty for him!” or “You’re wasting your looks on him!”
This is pretty damn harmful. I mean what you said above is absolutely true and damaging on its own, but when you add race to it, it’s disastrous. “[T]o be truly feminine is, in many ways, to be white.” (Markowitz 2001:390 in Deliovsky 2008:56). This means that all non-white women tend to fall outside of beauty and femininity altogether, and that’s where all the “she’s beautiful despite being black.” and “She’s so exotic.” comments come from. Non-White, non-heterosexual (for White men) women are simply denied femininity.
Reference:
Deliovsky, Kathy
2008 Normative White Femininity: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Beauty. Atlantis, 33(1): 49-59.(I honestly suggest people read this bc it’s super on point).
it’s me, your sleepy lavender dream girl
So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate’s response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner… Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend Fumi Onda, a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos, and is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget? What if my roommate knew about the heart procedure that was performed in the Lagos hospital last week? What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music, talented people singing in English and Pidgin, and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo, mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela to Bob Marley to their grandfathers. What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer who recently went to court in Nigeria to challenge a ridiculous law that required women to get their husband’s consent before renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, full of innovative people making films despite great technical odds, films so popular that they really are the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce? What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider, who has just started her own business selling hair extensions? Or about the millions of other Nigerians who start businesses and sometimes fail, but continue to nurse ambition?
Aidan Koch
Anonymous: Taobao is in chinese! :(( is there a english site?
no taobao is a Chinese privilege
my mother.
Even, 2014