I had a similar conversation regarding engagement rings with our mutual brilliant friend and was honestly a bit shook by the fact that I had never examined my own feelings on the topic. There’s a lot of general creepiness in heterosexual traditions around marriage and gender roles that I think we just swallow whole most of the time in the form of neatly curated Instagram posts. Just given human nature, inherently I think power dynamics will always exist across the spectrum of heterosexual, same-sex, transgender, and gender non-binary relationships owing to factors like race, class, socio-economic standings, personality, education, etc. However, my hope for all of us is that by acknowledging that love and relationships are experienced by and between people first and foremost and are not contingent on gender that we’ll start to explode these old expectations of what is “normal,” or “appropriate,” based on something as arbitrary as gender. That being said, I still like diamonds ... but I’m working on it ;)
I loved what you said here: "my hope for all of us is that by acknowledging that love and relationships are experienced by and between people first and foremost ."
That is also my hope. On one hand, I don't love the thought of being contrarian just for the sake of it, but on the other hand I can't imagine gender role reversals (leading to more balance, hopefully!) will ever be "normal" until they start occuring in practice. I feel like I can only ever envision the world the way it is now and then the way I hope it'll be one day, where men will talk about their "ideal engagement ring" with their guy friends, and women will be brainstorming the different creative ideas they have for a proposal. Can you imagine?
"How can we think once a ring is secured and home is purchased and children are born, things will magically become more equitable, despite the fact that our very foundation was built upon haphazard grounds that grant one party the power to choose when and how and where, while expecting the other party to patiently wait?"
As someone approaching my fifth wedding anniversary with the prospect of kids and first-time home-ownership on the near horizon, this sentence hit hard. It also surprised me how little I evaluated the gender norms that guided me through dating, then engagement, then marriage. I think this may be at the core of why so many hetero couples still struggle with equity, even if the male partner is ostensibly a feminist.
I also think it is interesting to consider how the gender pay gap plays a role in shaping norms around romantic relationships. Who has been/who is more able to afford elaborately planned dates, an engagement ring, a house etc.?
Lauren, WOW! Your comment about the gender pay gap in forming gender norms is such an intelligent observation, and I hadn't even thought of that. Backing it up even further to the dating cycle, I would bet that the tradition of men paying for things stemmed from the fact that the men were undoubtedly making more money, at least at a certain point in history.
I had a separate conversation with that same brilliant friend I reference in the essay about maternity leave. I said something about how crazy it is that there is no federal mandate for paid maternity leave, and she said "what about a federal mandate for paid parental leave? If we want to establish equality and balance in the care of a child, then that work has to be shared from the very start." It makes me think of your pay gap point, and how these types of holes in the system have such deeply rooted effects in the way gender roles play out.
I had a similar conversation regarding engagement rings with our mutual brilliant friend and was honestly a bit shook by the fact that I had never examined my own feelings on the topic. There’s a lot of general creepiness in heterosexual traditions around marriage and gender roles that I think we just swallow whole most of the time in the form of neatly curated Instagram posts. Just given human nature, inherently I think power dynamics will always exist across the spectrum of heterosexual, same-sex, transgender, and gender non-binary relationships owing to factors like race, class, socio-economic standings, personality, education, etc. However, my hope for all of us is that by acknowledging that love and relationships are experienced by and between people first and foremost and are not contingent on gender that we’ll start to explode these old expectations of what is “normal,” or “appropriate,” based on something as arbitrary as gender. That being said, I still like diamonds ... but I’m working on it ;)
I loved what you said here: "my hope for all of us is that by acknowledging that love and relationships are experienced by and between people first and foremost ."
That is also my hope. On one hand, I don't love the thought of being contrarian just for the sake of it, but on the other hand I can't imagine gender role reversals (leading to more balance, hopefully!) will ever be "normal" until they start occuring in practice. I feel like I can only ever envision the world the way it is now and then the way I hope it'll be one day, where men will talk about their "ideal engagement ring" with their guy friends, and women will be brainstorming the different creative ideas they have for a proposal. Can you imagine?
"How can we think once a ring is secured and home is purchased and children are born, things will magically become more equitable, despite the fact that our very foundation was built upon haphazard grounds that grant one party the power to choose when and how and where, while expecting the other party to patiently wait?"
As someone approaching my fifth wedding anniversary with the prospect of kids and first-time home-ownership on the near horizon, this sentence hit hard. It also surprised me how little I evaluated the gender norms that guided me through dating, then engagement, then marriage. I think this may be at the core of why so many hetero couples still struggle with equity, even if the male partner is ostensibly a feminist.
I also think it is interesting to consider how the gender pay gap plays a role in shaping norms around romantic relationships. Who has been/who is more able to afford elaborately planned dates, an engagement ring, a house etc.?
Lauren, WOW! Your comment about the gender pay gap in forming gender norms is such an intelligent observation, and I hadn't even thought of that. Backing it up even further to the dating cycle, I would bet that the tradition of men paying for things stemmed from the fact that the men were undoubtedly making more money, at least at a certain point in history.
I had a separate conversation with that same brilliant friend I reference in the essay about maternity leave. I said something about how crazy it is that there is no federal mandate for paid maternity leave, and she said "what about a federal mandate for paid parental leave? If we want to establish equality and balance in the care of a child, then that work has to be shared from the very start." It makes me think of your pay gap point, and how these types of holes in the system have such deeply rooted effects in the way gender roles play out.