Do you have a boyfriend? …

Evening, ladles and jellyspoons, how’s it hangin’?

This week: M’lord, I OBJECT.

Do I have a boyfriend?

“Do you have a boyfriend?” – or even worse,  “Do you have a boyfriend yet?”

Ooh, you.

This question can be phrased perfectly innocently; however it can also be a needle jab or an attempt at humiliation or full of poison. I don’t like this question. I have problems with this question.

A nice lady at church asked me this. Perfectly reasonably. There’s no law against it. Even I was a bit surprised when a whole gubbins about being very happy on my own, being independent, and not needing a man or in fact any partner, tripped out of my mouth in a rather belligerent tone.

I mean, she was only asking.

But this question can be – and frequently is – so loaded. When anyone asks me this question, this is what I hear:

“So, you’re still single then, a single little loser, unlike me, with my superior elevated relationship status. Poor you.”

“Have you found anyone who fancies you yet, or are you still waiting?”

“Have you decided anyone is good enough for you yet?”

“What’s wrong with you, that you haven’t got a boyfriend?”

“You don’t have a boyfriend, so you must have issues with your sexuality/identity/self-confidence.”

Et cetera.

My brother asked me this yesterday. Except he did it in a slightly different way. He knows I don’t have a boyfriend. He said, in a nice-but-joking way, “You don’t have a boyfriend yet then? I’m quite surprised, if I’m honest. You’re all right.” This is the sort of sibling kindness that is tolerable. And here is how I responded:

“So am I. Because I am friggin’ AWESOME.”

And so, my dear, are you.

And now I shall spiel the feminist viewpoint.

When you ask me that, I feel like you’re implying I’m not enough on my own. I feel like you’re saying that I’m deficient in something. I feel like you’re telling me I must belong to a man to have any worth in your eyes. I feel like you’re assuming I’m straight! I might not be! What an irritatingly heteronormative question.

My grandma used to ask me All. The. Time. I got really annoyed. She used to say, “What’s wrong with the boys around here?” like she was paying me a compliment. No, no she is not. Because this means it is only a boy’s choice to be in a relationship?? Don’t I get a say? What if – shockingly – I don’t like any of said boys?? And male entitlement is still INSANE, honestly, this whole thing where girls say they have a boyfriend or even wear a fake wedding ring on a night out because the only way they avoid harassment is by telling their new-found stalkers that they’re already taken. TAKEN!! Like PROPERTY. For Pete’s sake.

One of my friends has had issues recently with two guys chasing her. It is bordering on harassment. She has told them both time and again she is not interested. But they don’t care about what she wants – they only consider what they want. My suggestion was that I would come with her and be her lesbian girlfriend. However, this is not solving the problem of those lads treating her like a prize, rather than as a woman with an actual brain she grew her very own self. They have no respect.

Another friend from a Christian family seems to have had it thoroughly impressed onto her that she will only be a woman in Christ when she’s married to a man who looks after her, is the head of the family and earns all the money, and she has had his babies. *Bangs head against wall*

There’s also the issues that are a bit less deep. Less embedded social imbalance, more… bitchiness. The people who genuinely believe that one can only be truly happy and satisfied in a relationship, and feel pleased and smug when they have one and you don’t, because they are shallow and not very nice, and probably not very happy themselves either. And those same people would reply to your assertion of single confidence and happiness with “Methinks the lady doth protest too much!” You can’t win with those folks.

I’m no psychologist, but I think if you have that desperate a need, or yearning, to be in a relationship, purely for the sake of having a relationship and not because you love the other person, there’s probably something a bit not right. But sadly, the message is literally surrounding us 24/7 that you should be in love, and love should feel like A, you should have exhibit B as a sign of your love, this is what romance is, this is how it’s done, you should have reached point C by this age… It’s all BOLLOCKS. BIG, UGLY, BOLLOCKS. (But not literally. There are no actual bollocks around here right now.)

TV, film, music. Hell, music. Sodding love songs. Empty, vacuous love songs. Usually focussing on sex. You are not a loser if you are not in love like they say it should be in a pissing One Direction teen-pleasing, factory-produced, sickly, insincere and unoriginal cliché-haemorrhage.

You be YOU. YOU are important and cool and you are ENOUGH. But it takes a strong person to stand against the tide and say that when it’s like you’re surrounded by klaxons wailing “WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND (OR GIRLFREND OR PARTNER OR EVEN A CAT), WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???”

NOTHING is wrong with you. If you have a relationship, hell yeah! Go for it! As long as you are happy.

But when you try and insult me by asking if I have a boyfriend yet, and I tell you I’m independent, satisfied, and happy just as I am, maybe you should listen. Because maybe I’m telling the truth.

Yours independently,

Georgie

In Other News: Tattoos

Little Bro has a bunch of tattoos, only one of which I actually like, but shh. Anyway, when he came home and we went to visit Granny, I said, “Have you seen his good tattoo?” (It is something called a mandala – which I misheard the first time and was genuinely wondering why he was inking portraits of South African leaders onto his skin. It’s a Buddhist pattern, by the way.) So he pulls up his sleeve to show Granny, and she just has a perfectly blank expression for a second, before she gives me a really cheeky eye and slowly says, “Oh… That’s … pretty…” in the least convincing voice I have ever heard.
“That’s pretty.” Amazing. The best veiled insult ever. We cracked up.

Acceptance

Howdy friends, I hope all is well with you.

Recently, something has been brought to my attention regarding acceptance within your family. I’m back living with my parents again, now. I haven’t been, for quite a while. But subjects have come up in conversation that have made me go, ‘Wow. Mum, Dad, Aunt, Gran – you’re awesome.’ Although I feel like that a lot, because, y’know, they are awesome, all round.

It’s my family’s attitude to being who you want to be. My parents have always been easy regarding my personal decisions – they don’t care if I get piercings or tattoos or dye my hair or whatever. From being old enough to understand these things, really, their attitude has been ‘It’s your body, your life, do what you want.’ They have relied on bringing my brother and I up to be well-informed and responsible enough to make our own decisions, and they are pretty firm believers in the ‘you have to make your own mistakes’ school of thought. And I have been there. When I was thirteen I begged my mum to let me dye my hair black. She said yes, if I was sure, and then even helped me do it. It looked awful, especially with my white eyebrows. Well, I ain’t gonna do that again. Lesson learnt. I’ve got a helix piercing which I know my parents hate, but they just accept that I like it, which is what’s important, and it’s fine. My brother got a tattoo the second he turned 18, and all of us think it’s ridiculous and we all wind him up, but at the end of the day, it honestly doesn’t matter. And he knows that.

But when subjects like being gay or bisexual or transgender or genderqueer come up, I realise how cool my parents are. And they mention, just in passing, about sticking up for various people in their day to day lives. This has only recently occurred to me as unusual, and it makes me realise how accepted and common it is to be, if not directly discriminatory, then still quietly prejudiced.

I’ve always known that it wouldn’t be a big deal to come out to my parents, if I’d had to. I know they’d be just as pleased if I brought a nice girl home as a nice boy, as long as I was happy. They’ve always let me express myself how I wanted, be that playing with a toy dumper truck or Barbie dolls. When I was little, my mum would paint my nails, and my brother cried when she didn’t do his, so she got out the pink varnish for him too. Mum laughed her head off when I put him in a dress (at his request) and tied his curly hair in bobbles. Stuff like this is just not a big deal.

But, having experienced the attitudes of others, I’ve finally realised that having this attitude IS a pretty big deal – a pretty big awesome deal! I have friends for whom coming out to their parents would mean being disowned or punished, for whom sex out of wedlock would mean getting kicked out of the house, for whom virginity is emphasised as the main selling point for the all-important husband-catching. How crap is it, not being able to be yourself around the people who are supposed to love you most? How crap is it to punish or judge you for expressing an interest, for showing an emotion, for falling in love, for creating a style, for experimenting, or even for playing, if what you are doing does not fit rigid social norms?

My parents are all about being who you want. Appreciating people for who they are, not for things beyond their control. And I have only just started appreciating this appreciation, because I was fortunate to grow up with it being pretty much a given. Everyone needs support, friends, love. If you love someone, what is and isn’t important should be pretty obvious. And most things don’t even make their way onto the spectrum. They’re just matter-of-fact. The example my Mum was talking about the other day was when you go on a course and I ask you how it went, I want to know how it went. I don’t want to know that the person running said course was transgender. Is that relevant? Nope. Not unless the course was about gender awareness or equality. Which it wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, my parents have been influenced by gender norms, for sure: my Mum and I do all the cooking and cleaning while my Dad does all the DIY. But we are also playing to our strengths and interests, really; while it would be bloody lovely if Dad were to pick up an iron occasionally, his cooking range extends to beans on toast. I, on the other hand, am much more interested in making an excellent lasagne than a garden shed, which my Dad’s knocking up now, no problem. And if I wanted to build a shed, or fiddle about with an engine, that would be encouraged too. Equally, it’s not like there are no rules in our house; like I said, they expect us to be responsible for ourselves, but if I’d started taking drugs or something stupid like that, there would have been pretty dire consequences.

My parents and I aren’t perfect by a long shot; but I have just been struck by the stunning acceptance that they give to me and to everyone. It’s all about the love, people. All about the luuurve.

So love to you all,

Georgie.

In Other News, but On The Same Topic,

My brother announces, “Stephen Fry has got married!”
“Awww!” we all cry.
“Oh. Well if I’m honest with you, I’m a little disappointed…” says my dad.
Me and my brother look at each other in slight apprehension.
“I mean, if I’m honest with you, I was holding a bit of a candle for him myself,” Dad says rather glumly.
I start laughing so hard. “Dad, please, please can I put that on Facebook, you are brilliant!”
“No,’ he says sternly. “It’s private. I’m dealing with my pain in a very personal way, thank you.”