SEPTEMBER | 2019 | LOVE & RELATIONSHIPS
HOMONORMATIVE
Credit : ACEOFDIAMONDS2 via Instagram with permission.
Our analytics page does a pretty decent job at tracking our audience. From what we can see from our analytics page and from our interactions with readers across our social media platforms, the majority of you reading this right now are somewhere between the ages of 27 and 45. That’s a pretty broad range. This tells us that you probably grew up watching shows like The Cosby Show, Fresh Prince (of Bel Air), Family Matters, and Living Single. Shows like these were a part of our heteronormative programming, and that programming was reinforced by the romantic relationships between he-who-must-not-be named and Phylicia Rashad, uncle Phil and both aunt Vivs, Will and Lisa, Harriett and Carl Winslow, and Sinclair and Overton.
For the most part, many of us learned about love and dating from the things we saw on T.V. We grew under the impression that heterosexual love was the only kind of love. It was not only what we saw in our real life interactions, but in what we saw on the television as well. Although we’re not quite certain, we’re almost sure that this is one of the many reasons we tend to base our relationships off of those we saw both on television and in real life, and why we find ourselves stuck in the ideal of heteronormativity.But what if we dared to be different? What if we dared to create an ideal that best suited our own romantic narrative?
The first televised gay relationship is alleged to have been the one existing between Jodie and Dennis from the 1977 sitcom “Soap”, but let’s be honest, we weren’t watching that either because we weren’t born, or because our parents didn’t let us. While those of us who could watch probably felt more seen then they’d felt in years prior, the relationship between the two was superficial at best, and didn’t give viewers any real insight to what SGL love really was. Despite Jodie’s sexuality, many of his story lines focused on his relationship with women, and Dennis’ character, along with the relationship existing between he and Jodie, didn’t see much development. As time progressed television viewers were introduced to SGL relationships between Steven and Luke in 1984’s Dynasty, Doug and Clayton in Golden Girls, and through Scott and Leon in Roseanne.
We don’t want to diminish the importance of these relationships because they provided representation, and you all know how big we are on that. However revolutionary these fictional relationships were they didn’t give any context to what SGL relationships really were, which is probably why a lot of us still aren’t getting it right. But this isn’t due entirely to any fault of our own. We were socialized to believe everything we were taught about gender roles, sexual roles and norms because it was believed that we would one day uphold them in our own romantic relationships. But that didn’t quite work out, did it?
Credit : ACEOFDIAMONDS2 via Instagram with permission.
Unlike our breeder brothers and sisters, our relationships aren’t about gender roles or any of the rest of that stuff. Sure, roles exist as they exist in any relationship, but they’re not based on our dicks. We don’t have to decide which one of us should open the door for the other, who should do the dishes or cut the grass, or fight about whose turn it is to be aggressively assertive or passively docile. Why? Because our round gay doesn’t fit into a square straight box. Hell, square straight boxes don’t fit into square straight boxes, but you can read about that somewhere else.
Our relationships, and the roles we hold within them are egalitarian, at best. Our roles aren’t based off of gender or sex as much as they’re based off of complementing personal preferences. Such, if you were to encounter a Beaux who demonstrated a higher aptitude for cooking and other household chores than you did, and the two of you became involved and started living together, the expectation might be that he takes care of the things he’s best at. Conversely, if you find yourself more interested in doing the dirty work of keeping up the lawn, taking out the trash, and changing the light bulbs, the expectation might be that you do those things...because let's face it, you never use enough dish detergent and your fitted sheet folding game is trash.
Another difference in our kind of love is the attraction that puts it into motion. There have been numerous studies dedicated to heterosexual attractions, and many of them produce results proving that while our traditionally attracted brothers and sisters have worn themselves thin by trying to escape the sources of their dysfunctional childhoods-they’ve actually managed to recreate them by coupling with someone who acts just like their mother or father. The root of this lies beneath layers of attachment theory and unconscious mental models that we’re not qualified to talk about, which is a good thing, because we weren’t going to anyway.
Credit : ACEOFDIAMONDS2 via Instagram with permission.
Attraction works differently for us--and it shows. Some of us are attracted to “masculine” Beauxs, while others are drawn to those who are more “feminine” in nature. The phrase “variety is the spice of life” was a truth brought to us by William Cowper’s “The Task”, and the same can be said about our attractions to each other. Our attractions can be triggered by a combination of his scent, the sound of his voice, his personality, his hard edges or his soft curves, or by the fact that he’s thirty five and still reads comics.
They are as versatile as they are variable, and that’s what makes us different from our heterosexual brothers and sisters. Unlike them, our attractions aren’t specifically limited to the masculine or feminine, and can freely roam throughout the spectrum. Most heterosexual like their women soft and pink, and most heterosexual women like their men strong and rugged. Such, we may be less likely to find love in someone who reminds us of one parent, but both. Our preferences tend to be more varied, and that’s our normal.
A lot of us have wasted spent a lot of time shaping our romantic relationships from a mold that wasn’t meant for us, hell they aren’t even meant for 2019, yet here they are… Our relationships aren’t meant to be function on gendered interests. We don’t have to rely on our biology to determine which one of us is going to take out the trash or do the laundry, just like we don’t have to rely on them to determine who’s gonna be on top. There are no women here, and one of these dicks has got to do the damn dishes.
Credit : ACEOFDIAMONDS2 via Instagram with permission.