Small Strokes Big Oaks

This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships.  If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.

Ms. Wizzle founded her blog, feminsthemes.com just over a year ago as her feminist conscience outgrew her self-consciousness.  After spending a few years in the west following a midwestern upraising, she realized how easy it is to take your beliefs for granted and began more closely examining her own understanding of what it means to be a young woman in America today.  She is currently completing a masters program in psychology, and is constantly striving to integrate her investment in matters relating to women, gender and sexuality into her work.

Last week my partner and I went out to dinner to celebrate the six-year anniversary of our first date.  I wore grey jeans and a black, short-sleeved blouse with my short dark hair up in a pompadour.  He wore khaki shorts and a long sleeved pale-blue dress shirt.  And after we finished eating, our waiter asked us if we wanted two checks or one.  And I loved it.

Seated at the next table was a proudly married couple.  She was dressed in platform wedge sandals, a pastel skirt past the knee, and a pale pink shirt.  He was dressed in frat-boy plaid shorts and a navy blue polo.  They held hands over the table, shiny wedding rings sparkling, and asked for an alcohol-free wine list.  Ahh… I thought to myself, we are so different here.

You see, we are both midwestern transplants out here in Utah, and we don’t really blend in with the majority culture out here.  I mention this because I think it’s relevant to the way that I am comfortable “displaying” my relationship in public.  Which is to say, I’m not.

Along with “feminist,” one of the most important pieces of my identity is “ally.”  And this means that I try to examine my apparent heterosexual privilege as much as possible.  It wasn’t easy moving across the country with my partner and trying to find a place to live as an unmarried couple here, but it was a lot easier than it would have been if we weren’t One Man and One Woman.  I am privileged by the fact that the person that I fell in love with portrays the opposite gender to the word, and so we look like people expect us to look.  We could hold hands in public, we could snuggle at the movies, we could kiss outside the restaurant and most people wouldn’t comment. But I spend a lot of time wondering how different that would be if I happened to be partnered with a woman.  I don’t think that it’s okay that I would suddenly have to consider my own safety and the safety of my partner just to express affection outside our home (which here, I would).  So I don’t engage with that privilege in public. Maybe if I lived someplace where that didn’t feel like an in-your-face flaunt of hetero privilege things would be different.  Maybe not.

Add to those two pieces of my identity “independent.” I am one person.  I am one whole person.  My partner loves that whole person that I am.  He’s his own person, too.  We’re committed to each other (three years long distance followed by three years living together and we’re still doing fine, thank you), but we’re not married.  We don’t need to be in order for our relationship to be meaningful, in order for our promises of fidelity to be taken seriously, in order for our friends and family to recognize our commitment.  I don’t wear a wedding ring, engagement ring, or promise ring and neither does he.  For me, this is about the fact that my relationship status isn’t the business of, well, anybody.  It’s not something I need or want people to know just by looking at me.

So when the waiter asked if we wanted separate checks, I felt a little proud in addition to greatly amused.  We gave the impression of two independent people out to dinner to enjoy one another’s company and some good food.  We weren’t one couple, we were two people.
Oh, and if you’re curious, my partner paid for dinner since I bought the tickets to the play we went to later.

This article is cross-posted today at feministhemes.com.