In the last post, I was talking about a comment in the weekend Ask A Manager forum asking if a single woman and a married man could be friends. I digressed (as is my wont) before gettinrg to my main point about the comment. I was very sarcastic in recapping the comment (it was deleted by Alison) but in essence, it was saying that since Alison was grcious enough to allow LBGTQ+ questions, then we should STFU when straight questions are asked. It was upset by the comments from LBGTQ+ people (including me!), and it finished by asking how we would feel if they (presumably stragight people) dismissed our questions as LBGTQ+ nonsense.
Tell me you don’t consider LGBTQ+ people equal without saying you don’t consider LGBTQ+ people equal. The fact that she dared to drag Alison into the mess is even worse (argument by authority, by proxy). It’s very much ‘This is MY house, and you are lucky that I allow you in it!” energy. The very fact that the commenter thought it was fit to mention that Alison was so graceful to allow us filthy queers to even ask questions in her pristine forum (again, not how she herself feels. At all) told me all I needed to know.
A question for the hets? All the fucking questions are for the hets! This is so fucking irritating about being the minority. There is a quote that is oft-said on this topic, but cannot be attributed (which means it’s probably a minority woman):
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
The finst time I read that quote, it hit me hard. I am a minority in so many ways, and I just dealt with the frustration of trying to explain my position to the majority by mentally shrugging my shoulders and moving on. But it still hurt. It still was frustrating. And this quote perfectly encapsulated why people in the majority push back so relentlessly on equality. They ARE losing something because they had a bigger piece of the pie for so long. It’s natural to feel upset when you get leess. That’s human nature.
In this case, though, as with many cases, it’s laughable. Heterosexual relationships/marriages are still the norm. Yes, being queer is more acceptable these days. We have same-sex marriage (still to my surprise), but that doesn’t mean discrimination still doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that het monogamous marriage isn’t still considered the norm.
The fact that this commenter STARTED by trying to put queer people in their place was very telling. It showed that we were there on the sufferance of Alison (in the commenter’s mind) and that we were outsiders and interlopers. The funny thing is that most of the queer people had thoughtful, nuanced comments. The lesbian who wrote that it was straight people nonsense, well, she wasn’t wrong.
Jealousy isn’t a straight thing, obviously. Neither is navigating friendships with people you’re attracted to/are attracted to you, but the way it was stated was very het. Single woman and married man. Marriage equality has been the law of the land in the States for less than a decade at this point. That means a lot of queer people didn’t have the legal protection that straight people had for much of our country’s existence.
Here’s the thing. Being denied that pro forma way of showing the importance of a relationship meant that queer people had to navigate other options. It’s the same with being any minority and not being able to follow the norms–you had to make it work for you. When I realized I didn’t want kids–which was a big marker in my twenties–that meant I had to think of another way to be a young woman. It’s also a factor in me not wanting to claim the ‘woman’ label, even thirty years later.
It’s easy to go with the status quo. That comes with its own cost, but it’s the path of lesser resistance. It makes sense that someone who never thought about it, but just went down the path that had been laid out for it would be upset and rattled by someone who chose a different path–or a path at all. That’s why I had women get angry at me for not having children. Some accused me of thinking they were stupid for wanting kids. Nope. Someone else’s procreating choices meant nothing to me. Truly. I didn’t care if someone had kids or not. Why would I? It had no effect on me. I did not give a shit about them and their miserable lives.
Let me be clear. These were not close friends of mine or even friends. These were just women I met on a casual basis. The fact that I was perceived as a woman in peak child-bearing years, however, was all that mattered. Let me be even clearer. I would have been fine with asking if I had children or wanted them. That’s just small talk. In my fantasy world, the response to my response of no would have been for them to say, “Oh, cool. What do you do in your spare time?” Or something similar. Anything that indicated they were fine with my barren and not-wanting-children self.
But nope. This was my early life lesson in not being the weirdo. Divert, divert, divert. Give them the bare basic response, but then change the subject as soon as possible. Ask about their kids or their plans to spawn. Then I’m off the hook except for the women who are insecure about following the status quo.
Back to the comment. It shows that they don’t really consider queers equal. That space was THEIRS, and if we didn’t play nicely, then we were going to be kicked out. It wasn’t even their space, and they felt comfortable enough being a jerk by proxy. Honestly, I would not have blamed Alison for deleting the ‘straight couple nonsense’ comment because it was dismissive, but for that commenter to try to flip the script was even worse.
That happens far too often as well. “But what if I said LGBTQ+ nonsense? I would get canceled!” First of all, cancel culture is not really a thing. Secondly, you’d have to flip the entire script, not just the minority and the majority. Many decades ago, I got in an argument with a guy about equal rights. He said, “Would you want to be able to be conscripted?” That was his defense for sexism. That women weren’t forced to fight for their country. I mean….
If that’s your best argumenct, then you are sad and pathetic. I said to him, “If me being able to be conscripted means that I did not have to fear walking the streets alone at night, that I would be paid equally for equal work, that I would be treated as if what I had to say had equal value to what a man said, and about a million other ways in which I am discriminated against was taken away, yes!” He did not have much to say about that.
People in the majority want to play the ‘what if the reverse’ game, but without fully reversing the siuation. In the case of the ‘straight people nonsense’, the reverse simply wouldn’t be to say something was ‘LGBTQ+ nonsense’. It would mean that queers were the majority and were allowed to set the societal norms about how relationships should be. Let’s just say, ENM was the de facto standard and anyone who was monogamous was considered lesser. And you had to be attracted to people of your own gender, even if you were also attracted to people of other genders.
You had to refer to your partner as just that–your partner. You could not get married (before there was marriage equality). If you were straight, then you were considered inferior and just together for the kids. Any time you mentioned marriage or kids, someone would wrinkle their nose and tell you to stop talking about your sex life.Then, maybe, we could talk about flipping the script, but it would be just the beginning.
The problem with comments like that for me was that while I wanted to post a response, I just didn’t have it in me. I was glad that Alison pulled the comment, and I should not have been surprised. She did not brook that shit, and, as I said, she probably was not happy with the commenter putting her name in their mouth. So to speak.
It was instructive. I felt put on notice by that commenter. But it was only that one person–and the one other who agreed with them. Well, and the other person who maundered on about the ‘old saw’ of bisexuals and needing to be the QUEEN of her marriage so no female friends for her hubby! The rest may have had bad opinions, but at least they were not anti-queer.
It’s depressing, though, that the idea that men and women can’t be friends (and, yes, specifically, men and women) still persists. I would have thought it would have been demolished by now.