Egalitarian Relationships: You have to put the work in!

I have been thinking a lot about how a couple goes about establishing an egalitarian romantic relationship. I have been in many unequal, unhealthy and damaging relationships with men in my life - some more damaging then others. I always lived under the assumption that I would have to just settle for some man and he would be "good enough" and living the heterosexual, "normal" little life would make me sooo happy.

When I was growing up, I was told that "All men do ___" and "All men want ___ from you, so just grin and bear it" I felt as though my role in life was to find a man, keep the man and somehow find happieness from the man. How sad. Of course, when you find a man, you realize how fucked up everything can be - how totally ridiculous and absurd it all can be. Growing up, after I hit about 13, All i wanted to do was think about boys and boyfriends. I always had this romantisized view of being swept away by some amazingly perfect man. Sadly, I ended up meeting men who never considered a woman's struggle or anything beyond mundane bullshit. I always based my self-esteem on how males viewed me growing up, and since I wasn't "pretty" until a dude told me i was after i was about 15, I had a bad self-image.

Now, when i think about the possibility of children (which is 0% in my life) I always think about what i would not do, or say to a daughter...So many young girls base their self-worth on what men think of them, and it's not a conscious choice, it's something that is slowly constructed over a period of time. It wasn't until I met the man i am living with now, that I realized that he and i both had a responsibility to maintain equality and abolish all gender roles in our relationship. Now, again, this didn't happen overnight. This happened after I started to discover myself and what i wanted. I began to look at women as a class, and their struggle in and out of relationships (since intimate partners account for a shitload of crimes against women). When i began to dissect my idea of "normal", i began to realize how i didn't fit into the hetero-normative idea of "love" and also how i didn't want to fit into it. Why? Because hetero-normativity is constructed socially and it is damaging.

So how do you have an egalitarian relationship with anyone? either gender, whatever...? It's fucking work. It's hard work. You have to be willing (and your partner) to dissect yourself, your intentions and almost every aspect of your life. You have to be willing to change, to revolutionize your relationship to avoid exploitation, objectification and power struggles. That's fucking hard. So many women are in relationships with men who believe exploitation, objectification and power struggles to be natural and thus will not change. Is it worth being with someone who isn't willing to throw away gender norms like masculinity to be with you? I mean, really. I'm not saying that women need to pair up with men, or with anyone for that matter...simply that if you do want to, i think it's important for feminists to make the private egalitarian, too. As everyone knows how we love to bring the private and expose the shit out of it to the public. So, if you are inclined towards men, educate them. If they are unwilling to look and examine their privilege, than it's not worth losing yourself.

And just to add, I realize that this post is a bit all over the place, but that's what blogs are for sometimes....