I’m going to expand on yesterday’s post about the new idea I have for NaNoWriMo. I may not specifically say what I plan to do, but in talking around it, I’m sure you’ll get the general gist. I mentioned that Ask A Manager thread in the weekend forum about if it was possible for a single woman to be friends with a married man. Like I said, most of the responses were dispiriting, and there was one that blew my mind. So much so, I could not stop thinking about it. I’m paraphrasing, but this was the general gist:
I am the QUEENof my marriage and my husband better not even DARE think about another woman for even a second. She definitely said she was the queen, which made me sad for her in the first place. Then, however, she said that nonbinary people could not have an opinion because it wasn’t the same!
Um, hello? We were raised in this deeply sexist society, too. She did not mention agender, but I’m sure she would think even less of us than she clearly does of nonbinary people.
Her basic gist was that she was so insecure in her marriage, she couldn’t bear the thought of her husband even talking to another woman when he absolutely didn’t have to (like a coworker as a suggestion of when he had to talk to another woman). I wanted to find out who her husband was and tell him to flee, but he was either codependent or abused, so it wouldn’t have done any good.
Also, I couldn’t help thinking how pathetic she was. To be that insecure must be hell. Forbidding her husband from having any female friends is just…sad. Not just for her husband, but for her as well. But she was just at the extreme end of a very dispiriting spectrum.
This is one reason diversity is important. Those of us in the queer world have a diffreent perspective on this. Because same-gender attraction has not been a focal point of anything or scrutinized in the way opposite-gender attraction has been*, wo don’t carry the same ‘it’s the only thing that matters’ attitude that straight pople have.
That’s my amateur psychologist thought about it. To put it plainly, when you’re already on the fringes, you can see the bullshit for what it is. And all these rules saying what you should and shouldn’t do–will not stop two people who want to bone. That’s really it plain and simple. If two people want to do the nasty, they are going to do the nasty. You can say no emails or no one-on-ones. You can add that they can only speak in semaphores and with one eye shut. They can’t look below the neck or reference anything even vaguely mention anything sexual.
People. Will. Bonk. I mean, if they’re determined to bonk. You can put all the rules and restricitons in place that you want to, and people will go around them. I’m not saying this as a resigned ‘well, everyone cheats’ kind of way. I really am not. I just want people to think about maybe monogamy isn’t the be-all, end-all they think it is.
I have realized in my lifetime that I’m bisexual, agender, aromantic, and very sexual. I have realized other things about myself, but these are the ones that are relevant to this post. They are all default labels except ‘very sexual’. This is me ‘best-guessing’ myself. I would rather just say I’m sexual and don’t care about gender. Nor about romantic relationships. But I know how that sounds, especially the latter. And the latter is more about how fucked up I am as a person rather than anything about romantic relationships.
I would not mind a romantic relationship or three, but I know how I get when I’m in one. I become someone I’d rather not be (hint, my mother). It’s funny and sad. I am a good friend. I am patient, kind, and caring. Supportive, too. But in a relationsihp, all of those traits become negative. I’m obsessed, laser-focused on my partner (I wrote parent first, which is telling),, and petulant if they don’t return the attention. I also put them first all the time, to the detriment of myself.
It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. I know why it’s that way, but I don’t want to go through what it would take to make it not be that way. Also, I am much better at sex than I am at emotions. I can do sex–I can’t do intimacy.
This is all relevant to my NaNoWriMo project. I don’t like anything romantic in any media because I find it so poorly written. I find queer relationships to be better portrayed with all the nuances, but that’s because they’re written by queer people, obviously. Life is a rich tapestry, and I’m better engaged with media that portrays that richness. I get bored with most mainstream shit because it’s so…mainstream.
I can’t do American romantic movies. Or British ones, really. The only reason I watched Love, Actually is beacuse Alan Rickman is my favorite actor. Still. And as I wrote in the last post, his marriage to Emma Thompson produced the best storyline in the movie (though probably notfor the reason it was included in the movie). That’s such a shit movie, but I’m not going to get into that again.
I know that I’m just really hard to please. I know that my tastes are so different than the norm–except in music. I like a lot of very mainstream pop. Other than that, though, I just don’t relate to much if any of it. It’s not even when I get to the granular of who I am–it’s just in general, it’s so not interesting to me.
This is why I do what I do. Why I write what I write. I simply do not see anyone who writes what I do. I’m not the best writer. I am not the most creative by a long shot. But I am very unusual in my background that by default, there are no voices like mine. Period. I can say that with confidence.
Fat old Asian American? Yeah, there are plenty of us. Bisexual? That cuts it down by quite a bit. Agender/AFAB? That’s most of the other people gone. Areligious, tattoeed, and interested in Taiji weapons? There may be a few dozen of us, if that. That’s without even adding my black cat and my interest in FromSoft games.
Then, throw in my medical crisis, and we’re done. I can confidently say that there is no one else like me. This is why I write what I do. And I will not stop.
*I don’t mean the gay scare or making it seem evil or bad. I just mean that it often flies under the radar if not specifically pointed out, and straight people don’t get it. At all.