are straight people ok
Honestly, this is something I’m very interested in the theory of, just because it shows how society influences different people, and how people respond by projecting their fears onto fiction.
Because as a young woman- not even a straight one, but a young woman period, I grew up very aware of the threat of an unhappy marriage or of arranged marriage. It was in kids cartoons where the villain wanted to marry the heroine as part of his evil plot. It was in books I read in elementary school, historical fiction full of people living in arranged marriage- invariably straight ones. We discussed it in social studies class. Sure, it wasn’t something I ever expected to happen to me, but I knew it was a huge part of history and that a lot of people lived through those experiences to this day. When I got older it was a joke, “Yeah right, we’re going to marry you off.”
And yeah, it was a threat but it was also something that could be worked through. Because all those historical fiction books were full of relationships that blossomed either around or through those arranged marriages. The dysfunction of a bad marriage was something that could not be fully escaped, but it was something that had to be survived.
I think for same sex couples, the ideal is to forge a relationship despite societal conventions fighting against it. For straight couples, you have to acknowledge the fact that you might get pressured into a relationship that you don’t want, with someone you could conceivably be attracted to. And yeah, there is something fascinating about that. Not even in a cheesy romance novel way, I’ve always liked the potential for survival and even strong platonic bonds forged in the face of a forced relationships. It’s comforting, in a way.
Because yeah, it’s a power trip in a lot of ways, the idea that something like arranged marriage or a terrible relationship, something that young people (especially young women) have been taught all their lives to fear and be aware of, can be reworked into something manageable. That it can end well, or that at the least that it can be survived. It’s like apocalypse survival fiction. Sure, it’s a terrible event, but at least people make it through and get a happy ending.
Fiction is about exploring what scares you, for better or for worse. And while there are a lot of Bad Things that come with the genre, especially when they get romanticized, I think it’s still important as a way to work out all that societal baggage anyone growing up with a grasp of history and sociology inevitably has.
A Middleground 