Security junkies
To be a feminist of the security junkie variety:
Cohabitation, splitting bills, chores.
To want to live as wife and man, to want babies, maybe, to want to be in an exclusive, monogamous relationship for as long as it makes sense but ideally forever because who wants break ups.
To want all these things and to also throw your* likes enthusiastically at all the sexual freedom posts on Instagram, to proclaim polygamy and polyamory as the way things ought to be, so obvious, probably the way it was for millions of years on the savannah, probably the key to staying together forever—I mean, look at gay marriages, they last longer! They get it!
To want all these things and meanwhile to wonder if all these things (security, monogamy, exclusivity) are really just a relic from times past, and what if you’re just one of the “old school” ones, one of the ones the younger generations (your future maybe babies) will roll their eyes at, you dinosaur, you propagator of patriarchy.
To want all these things and wish you didn’t, even though you do.
To want all these things and question why. Do you want them because of culture, the brainwashing of the films you watched growing up (and in which case, should you—can you—train yourself not to want them)? Do you want them because something biological, because deep down, of course you want to reproduce, isn’t that what all living things really want deep down anyway, the continuation of life, and so your human brain looks around at the time and culture it finds itself in and subconsciously tries to surround itself with the best circumstances under which to replicate itself (which also happen to depend on culture)? Do you want them because you’re scared of the alternative, because you’re scared of who you might become in a world where you had to redefine all the roles and make up all the rules? Do you want them because it’s the path of least resistance, because it’s practical, because everything from architecture to Spotify Premium supports “couples under one roof” over every other possible constellation? Or do you want them because of something that happened to you, a childhood, an event, whatever, that once upon a time made you feel unsafe in the world or unsafe around other people, and therefore, security as a survival strategy (and/or as a sexuality) makes the best overall sense for you, even if you wish it didn’t?
To want all these things and to want all the other things, too, just maybe not for yourself but for… everyone else? For the future?
This is, I guess, the Vanilla essence. The reason I started writing these. To try and understand—and perhaps tiptoe out into—the chasm between what I seem to want for myself and what I almost definitely want for society. To be in, and in support of, a world moving on with its norms, and yet, for some reason or other, to be stuck in the previous norms, not wanting to leave.
To grow old?
To be boring?
To stop looking at what other (seemingly less vanilla) people are doing and constantly comparing my own choices and doings to theirs?
To abstract from what other people are doing and attempt to abstract from culture and all brainwashing of all films seen growing up and figure out what I, deep deep down, but not quite so deep as the biological desire to reproduce, want?
The impossible.
I celebrate the new norms. The more norms, the merrier, I say! The more norms, the further we get from norms, until there are no norms at all. Just a big, wonderful mush of freedom to be.
What I no longer want is the other side of the coin that I seem to have ingested alongside my celebration of norm-defying: shaming myself for every norm I’m not currently defying, including all of the above wants, however indecisive I might be about them (still haven’t decided how I like my eggs). An internalised shame that probably comes from the notion that “if they are like that and that is a good way to be, I should be like that too”. Which sounds ominously similar to the rhetoric of all successfully-implemented cultural norms (*cough* Christianity).
I hope the (often wonderful) things we defy the norms with don’t go and become the new norms by way of shaming everyone who’s not following them into getting in line.
Which they aren’t, really. Most of the shame seems to be internal, learned, based on a binary: “one thing can’t be good unless its opposite is bad”.
I’d prefer a freer world. A world where marriage is just a valid choice as babies as suburbs as a free and roaming sexuality as a one-room apartment in the city as a 10-year stint at a monastery as an utter disinterest in all of the above. And where it’s possible to drift between those and other choices within the space of one lifetime without anyone raising an eyebrow.
The choice, not the norm-defying itself, being the “free” part.
I vow to no longer confuse the two, even as I continue to confuse myself with all this roundabout self-interrogation.
But then again, a choice is a choice is a choice. Argh!
Optional toppings
👼 Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters: believe the hype and, even if you’re not a reader of books (you know who you are), read it anyway—this is addictive chick lit at it’s best
💍 Scenes from a Marriage (the 2021 but also the 1974 version) is a mini-series that deftly unpicks the perfect marriage recipe
🎬 Porn Actress interview: Luna by Soft White Underbelly is a raw and beautiful interview that doesn’t have all that much to do with the above apart from provoking some thought about how childhood and culture can shape our sexualities without us really having much say in the outcome
🧚🏼 Dan Savage on Polyamory, Chosen Family and Better Sex on The Ezra Klein Show is a great chat with the American love guru credited with bringing queer wisdom to heterosexual love, and also where I heard the aforementioned stat about gay marriages lasting longer than het’ ones
♟️ One More time with Feeling particularly for Nick Cave saying: “Most of us don't want to change. What we do want is sort of modifications on the original model.”
🍑 @peech_dk on Instagram
(Translation: “It’s ok to only want to be sexual with someone you’re in love with.” Swipe for: “It’s also ok to [{only} want to] be sexual with someone you’re not in love with.”)
* When I say “you”, I really mean “one” and, in most cases, “me”. I just didn’t want to sound like the queen or a narcissist.
— H. E.