Since i was the first persyn to sign up for Blog Against Heteronormativity day and i didn’t write anything the day of, many of you may be wondering, “what’s up with that faggot vegankid? what? zi’s too good for us Queers?” Yup. Pretty much. While ending my 1800-mile drive on sunday, i realized something. I love heteronormativity! Love it! It make me tingle all over. Seriously, though, i haven’t had internet access. So here is my contribution (a few days late).
I’m having a difficult time deciding what it is that i want to write about. I keep wanting to go back to the topic of marriage, but i’m finding myself at a loss of words. In short i can tell you this - i don’t really give a fuck about same-sex marriage. Sure, if hets can get married, all other loving relationship should be allowed to do the same. I’m not going to argue there. But as someone who has no desire to get married whatsoever, how does this benefit me? I’m not saying that i can’t forsee myself in a lifelong relationship. I can. But i can’t think of any reason why i would need a government body to tell me i’m in love. The only things i can think of are tax breaks, adoption rights, health care benefits, and hospital visiting rights. Let me know if i’m missing any others, but lets look at these for a moment.
Why is this “new civil rights movement” focused on a heteronormative achievement of love and commitment as opposed to getting rid of a heterosexist system that favors married couples? I know hets that are also pretty committed to not getting married. They are as fucked as i am when it comes to adopting children, filing taxes, or visiting loved ones in the hospital. Ok, they may be a little less fucked when it comes to adopting children because their gender identity doesn’t classify them as mentally insane, but they will still have a more difficult time than a married het couple.
For awhile, the same-sex marriage movement was also pushing for domestic partnership benefits (largely because members of government seemed more likely to vote for domestic partnership laws). That’s a small step, but it still doesn’t really get to the core issues of the heterosexism and heteronormativity that are inherent in our government structures. Let’s look at the four issues i brought up.
Adoption: Anyone who is able and willing to take care of a child should be given the opportunity to do so. How can we honestly say that it is better that we just let half a million children sit in foster homes? If you want to be a fiscal conservative and look at the numbers, the US government spends over $3 billion a year on foster children. If adoption laws weren’t heavily tilted towards married hetero couples, that number could be significantly smaller.
Tax breaks: can anyone tell me why married people get tax breaks? What is the logic in this? They have combined incomes, so they are already paying less in bills, rent, morgage, etc than if they were living on their own. Shouldn’t we be giving single people tax breaks? What about single mothers? Shouldn’t they be tax exempt or something? Granted, the regressive tax system that we have in the US makes absolutely no sense to me, but that doesn’t mean we should just let it be and fight so that we can get the best piece of a shitty pie.
Hospital visitation rights: for years, homophobic families have been able to keep their child’s/sibling’s/parent’s loved one out of the hospital without having to give any reason other than “you’re not family”. That’s fucked. I’d say we need to take a closer look at hospital visitation rights. They shouldn’t depend upon marital status. I have a friend facing life in prison who is getting married to his partner not because they really feel its any sort of testament to their love, but because she was unable to visit him while he was in jail because, you guessed it, she’s not family.
Last but certainly not least, health care benefits: Since when do governments and corporations get to decide how we spend our money? There seems to be a common myth floating around that corporations are benevolent gods who decend upon us common folk with great gifts like benefits packages. Allow me a moment of heresy. Corporations don’t give workers shit. Never have. Never will. Workers - brace yourselves, yall - work for those benefits. More often than not, the benefits packages come directly out of the individual worker’s paycheck. Therefore it is workers who are paying for the health care benefits and i see no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to say who does and doesn’t get to benefit from them. Its not like we are going to just start handing out copies of our benefits cards. If we did that, we’d never be able to cash in on our own benefits and we’d be paying outrageous premiums. We are workers, we are not stupid.
That’s all i have the energy for right now, but i’d also like to leave you with a link to a great post by papa_will who also looks at heteronormativity within the same-sex marriage movement. And don’t forget to check out Blac(k)ademic’s, the creator of this blog action day, great summary of why we are coming together on this deliciously special day.
And thanks to Bitch | Lab for the graphic.
