“I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”
“I’m not really sure what kind of girl I am.”
From Juno, of course.
Because who ever is really sure. And just what is ‘that’ kind of girl anyway? Of course in Juno it meant a girl who gets pregnant in high school. And most of the time it does mean sexual in some way. It’s a phrase that we all immediately get when we hear it. That kind of girl.
Even I use it, and I hate it. To me, though, it doesn’t mean sexual, it means crossing certain boundaries within sexual behavior that I consider wrong. Lying, hurting someone else, basically. Those are my rules, placed on myself, after years of being considered ‘that girl,’ sometimes warranted, sometimes not.
After years of those situations, I’m understandably wary about men and what they want, and that sucks in itself. Because I’m universalizing a few shitty experiences to a whole gender, and isn’t that what us feminists are fighting? Still, when I talk to girlfriends, I find myself hearing and even saying the same things over again. “Men do this.” “He’s just like this.” Not thinking about unique relationships being unique.
I talk to and link to a whole bunch of bloggers whose personal relationships are definitely outside of the rules of mainstream society (or feminist correctness as posed by some) and I’m OK with that. But I immediately call it into question with men I know. I distrust them because they’re men, and that gets reinforced by friends.
I appreciate honesty and I don’t particularly value rules, so I listen to people’s stories. I don’t file them under “good” or “bad” because I don’t really believe that people are that way, deep down. (Except Dick Cheney. He makes me believe in evil.) I give people second chances when they piss me off and I try to explain to them why certain things they say or do annoy me. I try to forgive, though I don’t forget.
I don’t like labels–maybe that’s why I was so gun-shy about marriage (or maybe I was just right all along). Even when dating I don’t easily fall into the “my boyfriend” language…I’ll use very generic terms like “the boy” or a longer string of modifiers that somehow makes that person identifiable to the people who listen to my rambling conversation on the topic. I could just use names, but I don’t do that often. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, or maybe it springs from explaining the same story over and over to different people–they won’t remember a name but the description sticks.
And I certainly despise labels stuck on by others about people’s romantic/sexual behaviors. Judgments. You can stick those someplace uncomfortable. “That kind of girl,” well, we are ALL that kind of girl sometimes. You can’t pull that out of yourself by sticking it on someone else. There’s an unlimited amount of it.
Sometimes people play semantics with relationships. “Well I never said we were ‘exclusive’ so why are you shocked that I’ve had another girlfriend for XYZ amount of time?” “I’m not your boyfriend.” “I don’t want to get married or anything,” or “We have to get married. I don’t want to be just your boyfriend anymore.” All things I’ve heard in various contexts.
All evasions or excuses or overinvestments in words. What difference would marriage make to a couple who already lives together, shares bills, money, pets? Semantics, right? At least to a non-religious type like me. (Of course, I see the opposite argument as well–when you’re denied the right to the word ‘marriage’ because of who you love, it can be a big fucking revolutionary act to claim it for yourself.)
The difference between “well I didn’t say I wasn’t seeing other people,” and “I didn’t say I was,” is shifting the burden of proof, nothing more. You still weren’t honest with me.
“I’m not your boyfriend,” well whatever you call it, you still lied to me.
But instead I’m “that girl” and nobody wants to be that girl.
And it’s just the vague boundaries of that idea–that girl–that makes it so hard to escape. It’s not a word like slut, whore, bitch, that though it has shifting boundaries, means something specific. That girl means whatever you want it to mean, in whatever context you’re using it, but it sure doesn’t mean anything good.
It puts the burden on us, though. And that’s still wrong. As wrong as it is for me to hate all men or distrust all men because a few people took advantage of my tendency to not put rules on things.
There are a couple of girls that I still hate, though. Personal things. One who was my friend, and then slept with my boyfriend–and it hurt worse that my friend did it than my boyfriend ‘cheating’ on me. (I hate the word cheating, incidentally, because it implies that a relationship is a game and the object is to win–rather than just what the word says, a relationship.) And the other was supposed to deliver a letter from me to someone I loved who was in jail states away from where I was. She never did. All the semantics and rules and everything else can’t change how those girls hurt me. That girl.
So I guess for me, that girl isn’t about breaking rules. It’s about hurting people. Mostly, it’s about hurting women. Because we’re all that girl and I think we owe it to each other to support each other. Not because women are always right (and therefore men are always wrong?) but because these ideas are used to separate us, make us judge each other, make us hurt each other.
“Because we’re all that girl and I think we owe it to each other to support each other. Not because women are always right (and therefore men are always wrong?) but because these ideas are used to separate us, make us judge each other, make us hurt each other.”
Women that routinely attack other women I usually refer to as colluders. Those that cannot see that it is their best interest to ally than to associate with patriarchy. You are right in that it does not make women always right but I think we get enough shit thrown at us daily without other women getting in line behind the men to sling mud as well.
What difference would marriage make to a couple who already lives together, shares bills, money, pets? Semantics, right? At least to a non-religious type like me.
My religion thinks that the appropriate form of marriage is to sort out the contract status (with a lawyer if necessary). Marriage is not intrinsically a religious thing; the fact that Christianity has hegemonial status means that there’s a cultural assumption that it’s religious, but … t’ain’t so.
What marriage is, intrinsically, is a social contract recognised by the community.
That’s why people are much happier to let same-sex couples have “civil unions” than marriage access — there’s no unspoken social contract that the community has to recognise a “civil union”.
(Please pardon my soapbox. This is one of my pet rants, though in abbreviated form.)