Valentine's day is a much awaited holiday for new couples. Many couples use this day to bask in the glories of gift receiving and explore high end restaurants while they converge over a bottle of wine. Of course, none can forget the desert at the end of the day, taking your lover back and indulging in them.
Who couldn't be excited for valentines day. Aside from those without partners, spouses or some kind of a intimate relationship... right? Wrong. Valentine's day is a holiday that not only promotes heterosexual relationships, but also supports lack of consent.
When you walk down the middle of a busy street on valentines day, what do you see? Probably, a lot of advertisements with girls and guys kissing, hugging, swooning over each other. Whether this be in the newspaper, billboards or social media posts. But in how many of these advertisements we see of couples kissing are they gay or lesbian couples? When's the last time you saw a commercial of a man buying chocolates for his boyfriend, or a woman going to Jared for her girlfriends gift. We know that LGBTQ members are under represented in media already, but Valentines day works alongside this problem to normalize abjection of these members in an unnoticed way. Those who aren't part of the LGBTQ community don't think about there representation in the Valentines advertisement media on a regular basis, but those who are, have no choice but to be reminded of it. Furthermore, if this minority group (LGBTQ) is not represented it is easy for them to feel shunned, isolated and this will only further there oppression.
If we re-examine the first paragraph, it seems wine drinking is largely shared between couples during Valentines day, and this is true. But one problem that comes with a holiday such as valentine's day are, expectations of certain actions. It can be as simple as not giving a gift to your partner and starting a quarrel (which many would agree is a miniscule of problems) or it could be as serious as non-consenting sex between couples. The societal encouragement of having sex on Valentine's day is obvious. And wine drinking adds intoxication to the issue which never helps anything. We see it on social media and in common locker room talk. With such prominence in the act of sex, one should question the dangers of NO. What if someone who's determined to have sex hears no, what if that nice bottle of wine the couple is sharing goes down to fast and the couple can't iterate the word no. I'm not writing this to play devil's advocate, but I'm writing to show that a holiday such as this one can and does have a correlation with gendered violence that roots from sexual and heterosexual pressures this holiday brings on society.Terrence McCoy would agree with me as he states “ Because when some Cambodians think of Valentine’s Day, they think of that songsar, and expect they’re going to have sex with them. Whether it’s consensual or not,” (2015). Furthermore, this author would go on to express valentine's day as a dangerous holiday. We find this is the title The Country where Valentine's Day is the most dangerous day of the year. For this reason, Valentine's day does support gendered violence, and it goes unnoticed.
Counterintuitively, there has certainly been an increase in the representation of LGBTQ groups in the media over time. One example of this is in Lush Cosmetics where glamour.com states that there valentine's day campaign looked to address this issue directly. “The campaign, titled #BetterTogether, depicts two same-sex couples simply relaxing in warm, bubbly baths.” (Christopher Rosa, 2017) It's great to notice that there is an initiative for change, still this under-representation is an issue worth further addressing. Unfortunately, the issue of lack of consent on Valentine's day is not a seriously considered issue, but yet we find it prevalent in other countries. So why does this problem/theory go more unaddressed?
The call to action is this folks, we need to focus on the holiday as a celebration of who we are with and not as a nationwide booty call for one another. More so LGBTQ groups should continue to be represented and in Valentine's media, so that as it becomes normalized they will continue to be regarded as part of this holiday, and even more so as people.
References
McCoy, Terrence. (February 12th 2015) The Country where Valentine's Day is the most dangerous day of the year. Retrieved from URL https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/12/the-country-where-valentines-day-is-the-most-dangerous-day-of-the-year/?utm_term=.3b0a138305f1
Rosa, Christopher. (January 24th, 2017.) Lush Cosmetics’ LGBTQ-Inclusive Valentines Day Campaign Is So Damn Cute. Retrieved from URL https://www.glamour.com/story/lush-cosmetics-lgbtq-valentines-day-campaign
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