The
Requisite Valentine's
Day Essay
2/14/10
This is one
of two
titles
shared by both an original
Rolling Stones song and an original Led Zeppelin song.
Can you name the other?
No,
this isn’t a review
of the movie Valentine’s
Day. Just a few
thoughts on the day itself. Although I really should mention
that Taylor
Swift is in the movie Valentine’s
Day, because a lot of people do
Google
searches for the name “Taylor Swift.”
Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift, Taylor
Swift. Don’t worry, I’m not making fun of
Taylor Swift. I think
she’s an excellent role model for young girls, teaching them
the valuable
lesson that all their dreams can come true as long as they first become
phenomenally attractive and then afterwards write a few songs that
people think
are sort of okay if they try hard enough to convince themselves that
they are. Valentine’s
Day isn’t quite on the order of a truly brilliant holiday
like
Hallowe’en. Sure, they both have apostrophes in
their names, but
Valentine’s Day has a mere possessive apostrophe,
as opposed to Hallowe’en,
which has the kickass “letters omitted”
kind. What’s that — you don’t
spell Hallowe’en with the apostrophe?!
Dicknose. Yeah, I called you
a dicknose, as in a t-shirt that says “What are you looking
at, dicknose?” You
will now be bugged for the rest of the day
because you can’t think of what you remember that from. Anyway,
Valentine’s Day. As most of you are aware, all
types of people have
started movements — some more serious than others —
to turn Valentine’s Day
into something else. For the last decade-plus, the wing of
feminism led
(or at least symbolized) by Vagina
Monologues author Eve Ensler has
worked
to redub it “V-Day,” a day of awareness about
violence against women.
More recently, the Bros of the pick-up community have moved to style it
“Hershey Highway Day,” a day when girls are
encouraged (obliged?) to give up the butt. I think the two
(neatly diametrically
opposed)
movements are both fairly stupid ideas, for different reasons. It’s
not like it offends me so much when people “mess
with” Valentine’s Day.
It’s kind of stupid to begin with. But I still
don’t see how it makes
things any better for a stupid holiday about love to turn into a war
between
feminists who want to make it a stupid holiday about rape and bros who
want to
make it a stupid holiday about buttsex. Seriously,
can’t we every
once in a while have something that’s just, you know,
not stupid at all?
Instead of having to choose between stupid girl things and stupid boy
things? Please? I
certainly don’t mean to imply that a day of
awareness/dialogue/education/whatever about sexual violence is a bad
idea. It’s a great idea (as, for that matter, is
anal sex). But I
think — and keep in mind I’m trying to help out the
feminists here — I think
setting it up to “compete” with
Valentine’s Day is a bad strategy. It is
just one more thing that makes it look like heterosexual women have to
be
feminists instead of
having happy relationships with men. And you
would create more feminists — which, again, I think would be
a good thing
— by not making
people think that. People of either gender will
always prefer to have dinner and sex with their significant other, if they
have
one, than to go to some rally. All
“V-Day”
does is frame feminism as the
consolation prize for the “leftover” women (and
men) who aren’t in
relationships. Can anyone think of a worse way to promote
feminism?! (Similarly, the pick-up Bros are shooting
themselves in the
foot by framing anal as something that only men like and that women do as a
favor
to
them.) And
even in the rare cases where the Ensler wing manages to convince a
woman in a
relationship to ditch her boyfriend for the rally, all that
accomplishes is
getting the man pissed at feminism, when he may not have been
pissed at it before. I
realize lots of women, especially in the Ensler wing and wings like it,
think
feminism is more “fun” when men are the
“enemy” — but in addition to being
childish, this is also a terrible strategy. Feminism is not
going to
achieve what it needs to achieve until a sizable portion of men are
also
willing to call themselves feminists (as I proudly do, albeit
accompanied by a
laundry list of qualifying statements,
thanks to the type of feminists
I
feel I need to distance myself from, see
above). If
you are a lesbian, fine. But feminism needs to invite hetero
women in,
not push them out. After all, a lot of the biggest feminist
issues
(abortion rights, birth control access/affordability, maternity leave)
primarily concern heterosexual woman. And a lot of
heterosexual woman,
especially among those born in or after the late 80s, hear the word
“feminism”
and picture a bunch of sad bitches trying to ruin everyone
else’s fun.
I’m not saying I think that, you understand, but many people
do. And
let’s just say that telling them they should be going to an
anti-rape rally
instead of to dinner with their boyfriends isn’t doing a
whole
lot to convince
them otherwise. In
fairness, I also have a rebuttal to the pickup guys who want to make
Valentine’s Day into buttsex day, but it is slightly
shorter: “Shut up,
you’re an idiot.” (Plus, if
you’re really so cool, how come you’re not
dating a girl who likes anal
sex and is therefore willing to do it more than once a year?) You
know what I think people should do on Valentine’s
Day? If you’re in a
relationship, hang out with the person you’re dating, and
maybe get them a
little gift, or not if you both decided not to. My girlfriend
had to work
today, but I still got her something. And if you’re
not in a
relationship, who gives a shit? Do something else.
And not some
stupid official “thing for people who are single on
Valentine’s Day where you
bitch about Valentine’s Day” thing.
Seriously, do you also get all
freaked out on Arbor Day if you don’t happen to have a tree? Oh, and
if you’re wondering what I got my girlfriend, it was
a
bunch of porn.
P.S.:
The other song title is “Good Times, Bad
Times.” And yes, I realize in the
first case technically the name of the Stones song is “Doo
Doo Doo Doo Doo
(Heartbreaker).”
P.P.S.: "What
are you looking at Dicknose?" is
from Stiles's t-shirt in Teen Wolf. |