My Valentine

A lot of people don't like Valentine's Day. I can kind of take it or leave it, myself; you know, there are objections and crass consumerism, and I'm really against taking it too seriously, but there are certain things I really like. My family always takes the time to be affectionate on Valentine's Day, and on a personal level I like being reminded to appreciate the good people in my life. And it's a reminder to me to be good to myself, and take care of myself.

One thing that annoys me is the stigma attached to "taking care of myself" on Valentine's Day. You know, I've taken myself out to dinner and to the movies (hell, I've taken myself to a weekend in Paris), so maybe myself and I just have a bizarre relationship. But one of the tricky things to me about having an adult outlook is the apparent dichotomy between taking responsibility for a variety of things -- i.e., not being a slacker -- and saying no to overcommitment and putting one's health, including mental health, first. I struggle with this, and I know others do too.

So I like that there's a day when I'm reminded to not be hard on myself, and to appreciate the work that I put in to making myself happy. And yes, I agree with those who argue that you should remember to do that every day, instead of a greeting-card-mandated holiday. And I try. But there's nothing wrong with a special occasion, and there are only a few days a year when I make the extra effort to have that attitude.

Some of the ways I take care of myself are High Minded and Intellectual. Some aren't. I wish there weren't so much stigma surrounding the second kind.

I don't have a significant other right now, and I haven't for quite awhile. One of the ways I respond to Valentine's Day is by wearing one of my favorite T-shirts, the one that says "Explain to me again why I need a boyfriend." But that doesn't mean I don't like and appreciate romantic love, and if there isn't any in my life (and there's no rule that there should be) I can appreciate it in fiction. (Well, I appreciate it on behalf of my friends who have it, but there's a creepy line there.) So I like certain kinds of romantic entertainment; there's a lot I don't like but I enjoy the occasional romance novel or rom-com, and you know I'm all up in Castle and Beckett's personal lives.

Which brings me to the stigma thing. I'm allergic to cats, but otherwise I fit a lot of the "pathetic single lady" stereotypes. That T-shirt, that I love -- a character in a movie wearing that t-shirt can be assumed to be a man-hater (or maybe a lesbian, which is awesome, but which I'm not), or someone deep in denial about needing a romantic partner, or both. The Jennifer Crusie novel on my bedside table would signify being shy, awkward, and in need of a makeover. The amount of enjoyment I take from certain TV shows or movies -- well, that's a geek who will never interact normally in the world. And don't get me started on the fact that I knit.

I don't think those stereotypes apply to me. But the fact that they spring to mind immediately with a lot of the activities that give me pleasure -- and in hyper relief on this particular day, as opposed to any other day -- means I have spend some time defending my own fun even to myself. And that is un-fun.

I've been reading a lot about gender (and racial) stereotyping recently -- go nab yourself a copy of Fine's Delusions of Gender; it knocked my socks off -- and one thing that I find interesting is that the more mental energy you spend suppressing your worries that you may fit a certain negative stereotype, the more likely you are to fit it inadvertently, because you're uncomfortable and prone to mistakes. (In studies, men and women were given the same math test in two groups. One group was merely given the test. The second group was told that women often do worse on math tests than men, but that this test was specifically designed to compensate and women scored just as well as men. The tests were the same, but the scores of women in the second group were significantly higher. Interesting, no? While you're up, grab yourself a copy of Steele's Whistling Vivaldi.)

So I love that I'm reminded to take time for myself on this day, and I love that I am reminded to tell the people close to me that I love them and that they're special. And I love that I have really supportive people in my life, who do the same for me. And I don't like that as I take care of myself, the things I do to make myself happy stereotype me in nasty ways, and on this day of all days, I have to fight doubly hard to not let those stereotypes bog me down.

I fight it by taking care of myself anyway, and it teaches me a lot about owning the things that make me happy. And I can be happy about that, too.

(Of course, fighting it by ignoring the day all together is another solid strategy.)

Single Gender Entertainment: Why I Think It Sucks

I’m never going to read Kim. I’ve probably already read most of the Sherlock Holmes stuff I’m going to read in my lifetime, and I’ve read about one novel and maybe two short stories. I can’t really see myself ever getting turned on to Michael Chabon’s works. What do these have in common? They’re books where all or almost all the main characters are men. Often, the men are white, and cis, and straight, and clever, and occasionally they’re well-off. As such they just don’t interest me very much, as I’ve already discussed.

Before I go further, two things for the record. First, I’m never going to read The Language of Bees, either. Nor The Help. I don’t like books about only women, either. They are also boring. Second, I know this is a weakness of mine. Kim is probably an awesome book. (It is according to my mom, anyway, who has read basically everything ever and should know.) I’m defending my viewpoint here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know that I’m missing out. I’m totally missing out. Someday, when the missing out becomes more important than the stuff I’m about to go into here, I may correct this weakness. Meantime, I’ll tell you what is keeping me here.

I talked before about how I don’t like entertainment with not enough wrinkles in it. Specifically I was talking about when the protagonist is given artificial conflict in the plot, because all the natural sources of conflict have been removed. I think that perhaps the most valuable source of conflict and potential growth is male-female interaction. Not because there isn’t any conflict in groups of one gender. (I’ll let everyone ever stop laughing at the idea that single-gender groups are good for avoiding conflict. It’s okay folks. Have some water.)

What’s actually the issue is that men and women have different ways of dealing with conflict within their own gender groups. For example: my father and I had a conversation not long ago where I brought up backhanded compliments, as in: “People who are good at it can make an insult sound like a compliment.” My dad expressed total befuddlement.

I’ve no doubt that if presented with some examples, my dad would catch on quickly, and remember some incidents where he’d seen this, or recognize it in future, or whatever. But the very fact that it was on some level news to him – even if he’d just never heard it expressed in those terms – shows something to me. Now a lot of guys (especially of my generation) wouldn’t have needed an explanation. But I think it’s fair to say that only a tiny percentage of girls and women wouldn’t understand that.

Flipping the idea – I understand intellectually being so angry at someone that you deal with it by taking a swing at them. Whatever, I playfully whack my friends with pillows when they say mean things about fictional characters (as ONE OF THEM CAN ATTEST, ahem). But that’s different. I will stop a conversation, I will lose trust or faith in an individual, I will imagine saying cutting things when I’m angry, but physical violence with the intent to do harm scares me.

Those are two very broad, very stereotypical, very cis examples of men and women handling problems differently. I was going for quick and dirty to help me illustrate a point. Now, thinking in terms of fiction. When all your heroes and your villains are of one gender, they all have in many ways the same approach towards conflict. At least, they have some of the same groundwork and assumptions. They usually have the same definition of “winning.” They assert dominance in similar ways.

Even when that sort of thing isn’t explicitly stated, or acknowledged by the author, I often feel it in the back of these kinds books. Having both male and female (and in rarer cases, trans and queer and asexual and hermaphroditic) characters means that you tend to have people operating under different assumptions, ‘way off in the back. You tend to be able to tackle more. It tends to be closer to how I deal with life.

So there’s the logical side, which I just pretty much pulled out of my ass. You know what really gets on my nerves? In Guy Books, Our Heroes look at each other and just Get It, How Hard It Is to Be a Man. (Only men can really understand that, you know.) If it’s an older book (and often with newer ones too) it doesn’t seem to occur to the characters or the author that women have understandable wants and needs.

In Lady Books, Our Heroines spend a crapton of time bitching about being girls, or else nodding about how Only Women Understand some particular thing. This time, men are there to move the women around, and the women are there to react to it.

Fuck all that shit. People is people, we affect each other, and dismissing a gender as sort of unwitting cosmic marble players is bullshit, and a cop-out. Adults who live in the world and fight crime or are international spies or interact with other human beings ever should really have gotten over that element by now.

And when we can start getting more genderqueer folks in, that’s when things will really pick up.

I will now happily debate any and all examples put forth in the comments; I have managed to refrain from bringing up several billion examples only because I’m not entirely convinced by my own logic.