Marriage

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sonja-lewis/why-do-people-really-aspi_b_1273306.html

As the above article recognises, the ‘idealisation of romantic love and companionate marriage’ (Hirsch, Wardlow, 2006, 75) is often a relationship that is held in the fantasies of adult life. With marriage becoming an institution that is commercialised and sensationalised through endless wedding themed movies, Disney princesses love stories and shows such as, ‘Say Yes to the Dress’, it is easy to see how this romantic fantasy has become an aspiration socialised into (mainly) women from a young age. Lewis describes how when she was single, she, ‘kept one eye open for Mr Right’ feeling that when she eventually found a husband, that he was ‘as close’ as she would get to ‘Prince Charming’ (Lewis, 2012). Interestingly, this relation to the idealised Disney fantasy of weddings is something that fed into Lewis’s aspirations of marriage, which I feel shows the deeply engrained socialisation that begins through a child’s entertainment. Lewis furthermore describes multiple of her other highly successful female friends who all felt that their primary goal in their personal lives was to complete, ‘this burning aspiration’ (Lewis, 2012) of marriage. Although this is not every woman’s fantasy, the idealisation of the perfect wedding day and ‘life-long’ romantic partner, is something that the above article recognises can be in the mind of even the most career driven person, as influenced by the expectations of external society. It is within this, that society creates heteronormative expectations of marriage, centring this relationship as somehow transformative, whilst simultaneously projecting narratives of acceptable citizens through whose reproductive and marital structures are considered desirable.

Comparatively, this article by The New York Times highlights how after the legalisation of gay marriage across certain states in the USA, many gay couples did not feel obliged or a desire to get married. This is unlike the above article, as here the aspiration to marry was something that encapsulated heteronormative frameworks and was not necessarily central to gay relationships. The legalisation of gay marriage across certain US states did allow LGBTQ+ people to marry if they chose (and many did), but this article sums up how gay people choose not to marry as they felt that the institution, ‘forces same-sex couples into the mainstream’ (Buckley, 2013). By this, meaning that, by, ‘promoting and naturalising heterosexual marriage… as the norm’ (Brandzel, 2005, 179), this produces an environment of heteronormativity, something of which LBGTQ+ members may not feel a part of even with legislation. It is important to recognise that normative heterosexual marriage as an institution produces ideologies about acceptable, ‘sexualised citizenry’ (Brandzel, 2005, 179) something that hinders the inclusivity of marriage. The steps taken to legalise gay marriage was a huge advancement for LGBTQ+ equality, however, we must not over-simplify this as equating to equality, as this is not the case. The LGBTQ+ community is still largely marginalised, and we must recognise that marriage is not an inclusive institution by nature that can miraculously create equality, as for legal implications to matter, we must advance socially for equality and acceptability.