Same-sex relationships, straight people, and Facebook
Last month, Daisy posted about straight people – usually women – “in a relationship” with people of the same gender. From the comments:
I’m quite sure that these women aren’t trying to trivialize lesbian relationships — I just think that’s the result. In order to have people I don’t know well take seriously my listing on FB as “in a relationship” with my girlfriend, I need to also list myself as “interested in women.” I find this annoying, because I’m not interested in anyone but my girlfriend. If the majority of female/female relationship pairings on FB weren’t jokes, no one would assume mine was a joke too.
While I hadn’t really considered the nature of Facebook relationships before, I agree that placing non-romantic same-sex relationships on Facebook on the same footing as romantic relationships has the ultimate effect of diluting those actual romantic relationships.
Earlier this week, I was at a bar with some friends and one of them had to go outside for a few minutes for a phone call. Someone asked who she’d been talking with and she said, “Oh, my wife.” She and I had talked about this a while ago, before Daisy’s post, because I noticed on Facebook that she and this friend were listed as “Married.”
She’d said that their relationship was really that close, that they were much more intimate than mere friends, and that – no – the weren’t actually romantically involved; they both identify as ‘straight.’
I didn’t really give it much thought at the time but, because of Daisy’s post, I’ve reconsidered. This friend and I are actually on pretty close footing in terms of how we view feminism and sexism in American culture, and have had good discussions about how to deal with sexist jokes made by friends (or friends of friends). I’d kind of like to bring this discussion up, and maybe I will when I see her this weekend, but I’m not sure how, or what specifically I’d hope to accomplish.
Themocracy
Ha, I recently wrote a post based on Daisy’s post also. When talking to your friend, maybe consider bringing it up casually and mentioning “oh I read this great article that made me think about it in a much more meta way” and then link her to Daisy’s post. Because it’s one of those inadvertent privilege things, it’s much harder to talk about, especially to someone who identifies as straight and might not have any person in their life for a frame of reference on how problematic it is.
Thanks for the post, and for stopping by, pieceofstring! I think that’s a great idea, and exactly what I’m going to do: Just put it out there and see how she responds, and go from there, rather than starting from a position of confrontation.
They aren’t doing anything wrong. Not even unintentionally. Humans reshape the meanings of words and social constructs as they go about their daily lives. Keep in mind that marriage can have NOTHING to do with sex. For these women, they are as close to their friend as they could possibly be, the woman does all the things a wife would do, barring sex, so to them, their friends are “wives”.
There is no harm here. So you have to explain it more. So what? You already have to explain it more because it’s already outside the norm.
Stop WHINING.
::Shrug:: We may have to agree to disagree. Yes, there is obviously a level of fluidity to words and social constructs. This is particularly true in languages like English, where there is no central authority on the language.
But language doesn’t magically change, and individuals can ultimately make choices about whether or not they support or accept a possible shift in language – take using “gay” as an insult.
In the case of “marriage,” I’m arguing that the word has a specific, useful definition concerning the romantic (not necessarily sexual) relationship between two consenting adults. As such, I don’t want to see it change to “a deep connection between two people” because A) we already have words like “friend” which can describe that and B) it leaves a gap in the language where “marriage” currently exists.
If there’s another word or concept that can describe this in-between space between “friends” and “married,” I’m all for it. But I think the possible exclusion of people who fall into that place, by not using “married” to describe it, is a better alternative than the dilution of “married” at the expense of gay couples.
(Note: This applies to “dating,” too, as that’s often used on Facebook as well.)