We Need to Retire the Phrase ‘The Man of the Relationship’
We Need to Retire the Phrase ‘The Man of the Relationship’
How the Internet is forcing heterosexual relationships into inflexible gendered binaries
You’d expect, or at least hope, that love would be the last thing the Internet hijacks, but it is in fact doing so quite successfully. In its effort to produce homogenous individuals and relationships devoid of nuance, social media is not just trying to control how we (show) love, but also who we are in love, as individual men and women.
It’s an ancient habit, sorting ourselves into binaries when we speak of relationships. We have an inexplicable urge to go back to default settings to be able to effectively explain and define ourselves. And sadly, it’s not that we think a woman can’t be masculine, or a man can’t be feminine - it’s that we think they shouldn’t.
The ‘princess treatment or bare minimum’ trend, for example, encapsulates the essence of what a relationship means to social media: both grand and little gestures simply an exercise in surface-level, quantifiable ‘performing’. Things that would be princess treatment (basically, where someone could be going out of their way) are often proclaimed to be the bare minimum: bringing flowers on every date, picking her up regardless of where she is, always taking care of the bill. It enforces the idea that a man must always give, and a woman must always receive, eventually tipping the scales of who holds more power - power to provide.
I had a conversation about this with a friend, who said that these creators reek of entitlement. And while it is important to note that these are mostly seemingly privileged influencers, I agreed only partly. Because I think it’s more about looking at something that should be inequality, that historically has been inequality, and turning it into ‘comfort’ - simply because one is privileged enough to do so. A recurring trend with ‘choice feminism’, the Internet has begun to blur the lines between reclaiming and regressing, and is appropriating injustice for ease.
“Happy International Men’s Day to all the women who’ve had to be the man of the relationship” is a reel I came across recently. On similar lines, there was a compilation of videos of women and men on boats, with the women rowing them, and a similar comment shaming men for not being ‘men’. That was the most graphic metaphor of this whole conundrum so far: we are literally uncomfortable steering the wheel, and taking charge. Why are we, as women, so insecure in the idea that we can be masculine, and by extension, hold some of the power that traditionally only men are allowed to exercise?
This whole idea of women always receiving, being pampered and showered with affection, of women expecting men to comply with certain (often unrealistic) standards of chivalry, all of it inevitably feeds into the Andrew Tate-ification of relationships, too - that women must always be passive, soft, feminine. And we’re taking pleasure and comfort in being passive, only in another, more twisted way, without recognising that it’s not making us any more powerful. We’re setting ourselves on a back foot by giving more men the freeway to experiment with a novel mutant of toxic masculinity, one tied with meaningless, deceptive performativity.
This is also what social media, at the end of the day, is all about - the performance of the thing rather than the thing itself. That evil influencer whispering in our ears about what a woman should expect from a man, or what a man should provide to a woman, is making us believe in the romance of a bygone era. On top of that, in a world that’s constantly ushering us towards individualism, we're forgetting that relationships are inherently about partnership and learning from each other. This worst-of-both-worlds blend of tradition while complying with the ideals of today (choice feminism and performativity) is exactly what makes such conservative content, by both men and women, so dangerous.
Perhaps having a boyfriend wouldn’t be so embarrassing :p if we could remember the fixed core of an ideal relationship - one built on equality and balance - while allowing ourselves the room to experiment with gender roles.
Written by Pia Oza
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