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.
thoughtsunqualified 