Comments | fanbeatsman: we are gathered here today

fanbeatsman

we are gathered here today

Jul 24, 2009 23:14

Back from spending today at my cousin Adam's wedding. This has left me thoughtful and rambly and maybe a little melancholy, because, well.

( it may not surprise any of you to learn that... )

thoughts on yaoi, my family and other weirdos, random personal crap

Comments 8

sarahofcroydon July 25 2009, 01:31:34 UTC

That haircut is very sweet. :D

And *hugs*. I hear you completely... when I was younger I wanted my wedding to be televised (hurr) but now, when my friend asked the other day what I want a future wedding to be like, I couldn't say. Apart from the obvious assumption that I'd be married at all, there was the issue of the white dress (as if I'd be virginal), the giving away by the father (as if, ew) the reception, the price, the expectations...
I think I said I'd elope in the end, or just live de-facto. Or just live. :/

fanbeatsman July 26 2009, 07:31:41 UTC

I know the kind of feeling you mean, definitely - Hazel and I have been together 5 years now, and my family all adore weddings, so on Friday I got a lot of "so when are you guys going to get married, HMM?", and when I thought about it...thought about having to get our families together in the same place (LOL NO), trying to figure out who to invite, what the hell I'd wear, the horrors of things like a stag or hen night (and don't even get me STARTED on how much I loathe all the ideas bound up in that), and even joking around with Sis about how we could switch all the gender roles round (get my dad in a mother-of-the-bride twinset and hat :D) and fuck with the traditions, in the end I just think, well, fuck that noise. We don't need it to be happy ( ... )

tellezara July 25 2009, 10:08:16 UTC

Wow, that haircut is awesome! :D And you know, I was reading that bit you wrote about remembering your relatives back when you don't really know about all the messy undercurrents, and I totally agree. As you're growing up and you learn more about them you kind of grow to accept those other aspects, and gatherings with them are still fun, but it's like they're on a different level because you're aware of all this additional information, and that kind of taints it a bit because like you say, you know x shouldn't have really been invited and y isn't a very nice person a lot of the time ( ... )

fanbeatsman July 26 2009, 07:43:30 UTC

*nods* I hear you, definitely. You still care just as much about them - it's just not the same kind of...I guess almost adoring kind of love you have for them as a kid. I think the biggest revelation for me recently has been coming to realise that I don't actually have as much in common with a lot of them politically and ideologically any more - as I was growing up, I always thought of all my family as great role models in terms of progressive, leftist thinking, especially wrt feminism, and although they are still liberal thinkers now I'm old enough to actually have conversations about this kind of thing with them I'm seeing more and more that they do have a lot of prejudices that I'm not comfortable with. And that's sad, and frustrating, and at times actually makes conversation difficult for me ( ... )

trenchkamen July 25 2009, 19:18:04 UTC

Pictures?

God, I agree with you so much on this. Even though I'm currently in a heterosexual relationship (physically, anyway; I consider myself an androgynous soul), I loathe the concept of the trappings of the patriarchy that are attached to marriage. I don't feel comfortable being in an "acceptable" relationship--I almost wish it was gay. This society's approval is almost unnerving.

fanbeatsman July 26 2009, 08:05:00 UTC

IKWYM - it's funny, despite the social forces that you'd think would act otherwise, I'm much, much more comfortable with the queer side of me than the straight side of me (not that there's really all that much of it, tbh, but there's always been some). Idk, although obviously I'm not trying to say that queer relationships are some kind of magical island of freedom from social expectations, I feel like there are just so many social and cultural forces that construct heterosexual relationships in ways that frustrate me and from attitudes that I don't like...ugh, I feel like I'm approaching Manifesto For Political Lesbianism or something here, which isn't something I believe in and isn't what I want to get at at all :/ I suppose it's just another aspect of generally wanting to say to the dominant attitudes towards gender and sexuality and relationships, fuck that shit and how pervasive it is. Which obviously can be just as easily achieved by individuals redefining heterosexuality in their own terms, so ( ... )

naive_wanderer July 25 2009, 23:12:57 UTC

I have the same sort of feelings about marriage, though I've never been in any relationship that even lasted long enough to call a guy my "boyfriend," haha. I kind of want to get married one day, but in my head it's more along the lines of just meeting someone I'll fall in love with that much, and I certainly can't see it happening any time soon. And then I'll think, well, I wouldn't ever want to change my last name. But I'd like to have kids some day -- what would their last names be? And I know these are all things that people negotiate around and find ways to work for their relationships, but it's bothersome that it's even an issue in the first place, to me, you know? That, and so many relationships aren't taken seriously by others unless the couple gets engaged/gets married -- which I suppose might also happen with homosexual couples as their marriage rights are passed (though I absolutely think they should have that right ( ... )

fanbeatsman July 26 2009, 08:17:15 UTC

Don't apologise! I live for blathering :D

I guess, wrt the issues about name-changing and so on, you can go two routes - you can either try and change the institution of marriage from the inside, try and make it into something that you're comfortable with and maybe even try and effect larger-scale transformations, or you can just buy out completely - and even though I tend towards the second, I think it is good and important that there's people doing the first.

In the UK, we've got Civil Partnerships established now (bit of a separate-but-equal thing, but progress is progress), and I think you might well be right that with this attitudes like not taking relationships seriously without marriage (I couldn't agree more, btw, that this is SUCH a frustrating corollary to how important marriage seen as being - that attitude really annoys me) are going to get transferred onto same-sex relationships as well. Like I said to sarahofcroydon, I'm gutted that now that Civil Partnerships are a possibility, I'm getting the "so when are you two going to get ( ... )