I was gonna write a blog about being pissed off at some antifeminist fat hating men on facebook using someone's picture to be dickheads, but on the way I was reading some Tumblr and I saw a gifset of Sailor Moon's wedding to that Tuxedo dude, and it hit me.
I was raised by a feminist mother, I was raised by a single mom, I have been to two weddings in my whole life, TWO! Yet I have been totally taken in by the media's pressure to aspire to a white wedding. I always toyed with the idea of getting married one day. When I realized I was a lesbian I switched to aspiring to having a commitment ceremony, until the laws in Canada changed and it was legal to get married. Then I aspired to a wedding with diamond rings (which are fraught with bad politics!) and I guess a cake and shit like that. It would be my happy ending, even though realistically it should be a new beginning and the start of something. But I understand that the narrative arc of even the contemporary woman ends with marriage, EVEN for lesbians. Maybe especially for lesbians because we have been reduced to being all about Gay Marriage. Maybe it ends with children, but I never really saw myself as the child raising type. But yes, I have been suckered into the wedding dream.
I can't even pinpoint when it started. So many stories of women in pop culture have this be all end all wedding thing show up. Or the suggestion at a future wedding which will finally bring this girl fulfillment.
And my Mom never had a serious relationship while I was growing up, besides the one with Dad which ended before I can remember. And I never really put the wedding dream onto my Mom's life, I never thought she would be finally fulfilled when she had a man and walked down the aisle. She seemed fulfilled without all that junk. She had a career and her kids and her community and did a lot of work in the art world often voluntarily. That seemed good enough for her.
But for me, no! It had to be a wedding! With people dancing and a cake and a reception and a small service which obviously can't be in a church because Christians are squicked by homos, at least officially. Maybe in a garden? Or if I was really daring, during an elopement at city hall, followed by a honeymoon in Hawaii or something.
Ironically, I didn't give a great deal of thought to the kind of woman I wanted to marry. I mean, I think once in my early twenties I made a list of characteristics I wanted my girlfriend/future wife to have, but I've since then lost the list and also NONE of my girlfriends met all the requirements, even though some of them had serious marriage potential. I haven't made a list in a long time. They say it's a good exercise, you learn what you are looking for in a partner at least.
I'm sort of glad gay marriage wasn't legal when I was in my early twenties. Not to disparage my girlfriends, it's just that I could see us making a rash decision to get married within a week and then having to pay a whole bunch of money to be properly divorced later on. There was even one really sweet girlfriend who used to call me her wife, and now has a wife, who is not me, and so I sometimes wonder.
I am terrified of divorce. I am terrified of having to give half my stuff to someone, garnish my wages for alimony, paying over a thousand dollars in legal fees to do the legal equivalent of ripping my marriage certificate in half. I don't really think all divorces are like that, I just know if I marry the wrong person, I will also be destined to win the lottery just before the divorce and have to give half my winnings to them. Even though they probably always made fun of me for the "idiot's tax" I was paying and that's just one of many reasons I am divorcing them.
So I probably already mentioned that my psychic said I have one more breakup before I meet The One I end up with for the rest of my life. She was right about a lot of things, so I feel a little more hopeful that there will be a Forever kind of love in the future. But it also means I have to earnestly have a relationship with someone and fall in love for real AND be aware that a break up is highly likely AND not marry them foolishly. Which seems like a tall order. Like being withholding, which is unfair. She's been telling me about this next break up for seven years. And so I kept finding women and seriously thinking "Yes! I could break up with her! It wouldn't be so bad! Maybe it would be bad, but at least all the bad things between us won't be an issue eventually because we will break up!" Terrible! I have to stop thinking like that.
I just don't want to get married TWICE! That seems tacky. I know it's quite common, it just seems like I want to be really serious when I get married, I want to mean it, I want to be forever! I want our ashes to be mixed together when we die, and shot out into space to orbit for six months and then burn up in the atmosphere and we will be falling stars over New Mexico or something. Or Something. I mean, I'm open to final decisions about our resting places. I just don't want to end up in the Indian Graveyard that turns into a White Suburb.
My friends have been getting married all over the place. I often don't have funds to travel to weddings, well okay I would probably never pay to travel to someone's wedding to be honest. But I see the pictures, and they all seem like good ideas. Really the most interesting part of weddings is that it's a chance to have a party to celebrate your lurve!
But I have a bad history with parties. People don't want to come to my parties. I hope people want to come to my wedding, but I am dubious.
Either way, I think I need to sit down with my feminist values and really contemplate future weddings and if I really want the inevitable let down of post wedding blues, when there are still dishes to wash and dog poop to pick up and hands that go all pins and needles from too much fucking when someone's having a hard time having an orgasm. Actually that last bit doesn't sound too bad. I don't mind fucking for a long time to get my partner off. BUT my point is, it won't be the end of my life, credits won't roll, I will still have a lover who now lives with me and who I have to engage with every day even through the rough times.
I guess then it will just be the sex that keeps us together. Speaking of which, I really need to get better at fucking, I wish I had more practice.
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