I’m still fucked up in my head about finding out my fake-hubby, Yutsy died last December. In addition, it’s my fifth re-birthday, so I’m meditative about that as well. It feels both much longer and much shorter than that. Simultaneously one year and ten years. I have some thoughts on that as well. Yesterday, I talked about Yutsy and how we became a thing. I want to talk more about that and what it means to me now.
I hadn’t talked to Yutsy in some time, but I knew he was having health issues of his own from the last time I talked to him. He was always in my heart because he is my fake-hubby! Where else was he going to be? We met on a political blog and clicked because we shared a wacky sense of humor, were queer, and a few other reasons. Mostly the queer thing, though. He was gay, and I’m bi. We both were passionate about advocating for our civil rights and pushing for equality.
I think we became fake-married during the debates asinine arguments fucking bullshit about marriage equality. During that time, I was mad a lot. Not only because we queers acutally had to debate our humanity, but that the bigots acted like the injured party when we weren’t as “civil” as they demeed proper. I can still remember a Vikings player mewling about how people should be respectful as we debated the issue. We could agree to disagree, blah, blah, blah. (And, yes, I remember who it was. I just don’t want to dignify his bullshit by naming him.)
It makes me see red when someone in the majority wants to tone police someone being actively hurt by their bigotry. They want to act as if they’re the aggrieved party when they’re the ones deny our humanity. I said at the time, “You want us to speak civilly to you while you do uncivil things to us” to highlight the hypocrisy. Oh, your feelings are hurt? Well, tough shit.
This bullshit has been thrown at minorities my entire life. “Yes, we’re doing atrocious things to you, but you raised your voice at us!” Tone policing has been used to put minorities in their place probably ever since time began, and I’m not having any of it.
Here’s the thing. There’s no argument that is good enough in their eyes to change their minds. Let’s take marriage equality since it’s coming under threat once again. (BIG sigh.)
Oh wait. Before I get into that, I wanted to say the other thing that really rankled me about the marriage equality debate–it wasn’t something I personally cared about. I realized in my early thirties that I did not want to get married and that I had many issues with it. Actually, it wsa earlier than that, but it was my early thirties that really solidified that marriage was maybe 972 on my list of things I gave a shit about.
What I do give a shit about, though, is equality. That’s probably in the top five if you were to press me about it on that same list (of things I give a shit about). If straight people can be miserable yoked to one other person, then queer people should be allowed to be just as miserable!
So it made me angry that not only were the bigots bigottng as hard as their bigoted hearts could bigot, but that I had to care about an issue (marriage) that I didn’t care about at all because it affected an isssue (equality), I did care about.
You can probably tell that I have many negative thoughts/feelings about marriage, at least as how it’s usually defined as in America. Monogamous one-to-one union of a man and a woman for their whole lives to the exclusion of all others.
Back to tone policing. People trot that out when they don’t have an actual argument on the issue itself. When it came to the issue of marriage equality, no matter their high falutin’ words, it came down to, “Ew gay sex ick”. Or that it was against the Bible.
Ahem. America is purportedly not a Christian country. There’s this little thing called the separation of church and state. Also, if you are a Christian, then you should believe that it’s up to God to judge–not you. Yeah, I know that’s only certain brands of Christianity, but it’s a general tenet of many branches/sects/divisions.
“It’s slap in the face of traditional marriages!” How? That one made no sense to me. They are completely separate things. Or rather, the existence of one does not lessen the existence of the other. In fact, I would say that queer people marrying only shows that it (marriage) is an ideal to which many people aspire. (Even if I don’t myself.)
“It cheapens the concept of marriage!” I hate to break it to you, but straight people have done that all by themselves. About 40% of first marriages end in divorce (not quite the oft-cited 50%, but not that far off, either), and the percentage climbls for each subsequent marriage. This makes sense because if you don’t fix what went wrong in the first marriage, you’re probably going to repeat it in the second, third, fourth, and so on. Also, remember that doesn’t include the people who stay in a loveless/broken/abusive marriage.
I’m doing my Googling, and 20% of married men cheat whereas 13% of married women do. Women initate divorce 69% of the time (which makes complete sense to me). Studies have consistently shown that men benefit more from marriage than women do. I knew most of this when I was in my twenties which was a big reason I never wanted to get married. It’s not the only reason, but wnhen I looked at how stacked marriage was for men in a het-normative society (read, deeply sexist), well, I bailed from that early on. Also, I really, really, really like being alone. K mentioned that I could be creative if I got married and live in duplexes or have an upstairs/downstairs situation, but why bother? Might as well jsut do FWB at that point.
Anyway. All of this shines a light on the lie that letting queer people marry would harm the pure and pristine ideal of marriage. I think that’s why Yutsy and I decided to get fake-married. We had the society-approved bits that fit together in the ‘right’ way–so why the hell not? Our point was that the two of us could marry that day just because of our assigned gender at birth, even though he was gayer than anything/anybody that/who is really gay, and I was bi (and not attracted to him).
It never made sense to me that whom I could marry was predicated on what their genitalia was. I’m not saying that’s what makes a man or woman (the two gender categories at the time), but that’s how marriage was de facto designed in that time. If one person had a vagina and the other person had a penis, then they could get married. Simple as that.
That’s all for now. I will probably write one more post tomorrow.