"Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?": A Socialist Take on the Vogue Article
Spoiler: It is
Hello,
I am writing this on the day of the cloudflare shutdown - also I kept texting everyone about how cloudfARE was down lol loser - anyways. With this insanely disabling situation, I feel like those pictures of mormon Kim Kardashian and I have had to revit back to writing. Actually not riveting back, because I have never written, but I genuinely feel like Carrie Bradshaw in the Middle Ages writing under candlelight. No Twitter, no ChatGPT, thank god Tiktok is fine, but I am luteal and the extent to which this situation is ragebaiting me is concerning.
ANYWAYSSSSSS, I created my Substack today because I have something to say, to rant about, I have QUESTIONS and I would like to know what other people think about this topic.
To kind of make my article sound academic, I feel like I could start by contextualizing my argument by linking it to an element of the news, and there is one that kind of works: The “its embarassing to have a boyfriend” Vogue Article. Now TRIGGER WARNING, this is NOT an article about this. My thought process started before this article and goes beyond it, it’s just that the article grabbed so much attention I think its worth using to try and ride its popularity wave. The Vogue article is exactly like the Barbie movie: its feminist perception is super limited and reductive but it’s cool to see a piece of feminist-seeming content becoming super popular and accessible. It’s an embryo (#prochoice) of having feminist media being mainstream.
Obviously the article was disappointing because it actually only refers to the social performance of having a boyfriend and how that is embarrassing now apparently. The article does not, however, argue that, as a woman, being in a straight, monogamous relationship with a man is embarrassing. So my first point, but this is really not the only one, is that having a boyfriend IS embarrassing. Being in a monogamous straight relationship with a man ISSSSSS embarrassing.
I’m going to try and summarize my thoughts in one sentence and then develop. What I believe, at least in my Western and bourgeois context, is that monogamy, marriage, the instrumentalisation of love for capitalist and bourgeois needs and our current family ideal and structure, are killing women and should be dismantled and burnt to the ground 🤓.
Again for context, I am a bourgeois white women from a western country so please feel free to check me on all my blindspots regarding this subject - this is why I’m sharing my thought process on the internet.
I will be mentioning academic socialist (hihi) literature - but first, let me get personal.
My “Coming-out”
I am 24 and this year, I had a genuine “coming-out” where I realized that I was not monogamous. I had always felt completely suffocated and genuinely miserable in the straight monogamous relationships I’d had - mostly because I had assumed it was the only option. But this year, I ended my last monogamous relationship and I met this woman (hhihihihi) who introduced me to non-monogamy. But more than that, she introduced me to the concept of ties, love and relationships without hierarchy or labels or any pre-contsructed notions. And this is how I now approach my sex and love life: I don’t and will not have a main partner. I have some people I sleep with who are now friends, others not, others I have a lot of emotional intimacy with… anyways 10000 different ways to live sex and links with people.
Raising a child?
And beyond that, I also realized with my friends and family, that I nothing turns me on less than having a child in a nuclear family format. I want a child, but I don’t want to raise it with a man of course, and I actually don’t want to raise it with one partner.
This is when I start citing academic sources like Silvia Federici and my prophet Alexandra Kollontai (Aka AK-47): I believe that our traditionalist version of family (monogamous and ideally straight parents being the only caretakers of the child and isolating themselves from any other form of community) obeys to hegemonious bourgeois morals and serves capitalism. I am using socialist ideology as the main framework for this thought-process because I agree with the mechanisms it analyzes and denounces and, to some extent, with the solution its offers. But once again, feel free to check-me and inform me if I am not using it or understanding it well.
I think I’ll stop the essay here to not make it too long and annoying to read. I feel like I took a long time to finally spill out what I had to say. I’ll try and be more to the point next time.
In the meantime, let me know what you think, and as stated by another mega icon, Kristen Ghodsee (who has a podcast dedicated to Kollontai, “AK-47”): KEEP UP THE GOOD FIGHT (insert soviet chant). 💖💖💖⭐️