Around a year ago, Vogue came out with an article called “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” written by Chanté Joseph. The same year, The New York Times released “The Trouble with Wanting Men” by Jean Garnett.
What the articles failed to address is that there are layers to this.
Of course, there is the embarrassment any woman faces when she is with a man, especially when the men are painfully mediocre or worse, actively bad or negligent towards the woman.
Queerness complicates this.
Race complicates this.
Intersectionality has been woefully absent from this conversation, and I am a queer BIPOC woman in a straight-passing relationship with a White man.
I’m not here to complain or say, “woe is me” when the fact is that being in a straight-passing relationship and being with a White man both afford me social privileges that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
I know that the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole faces many challenges that I don’t often see due to my relationship status.
But I can talk about my experience, and the truth is, I do tend to occasionally feel guilt and shame over the person I love.
Not by any fault of his, but because of what it represents to love the kind of person he is.
I worry that by being with a man, I am contributing to bi-erasure. I grieve that by getting married to a man, I will inevitably be reduced to being perceived as nothing more than a man’s wife by some men eventually. I grieve that I have never (and will have never) dated or been in a relationship with a woman. I worry that I am somehow less queer or less able to participate in queer culture as someone in a straight-passing relationship.
I worry that by being with someone White, I am opening the door for any future children of mine to struggle with their identity as someone who will be biracial. I worry that by being with someone White, I am betraying my ancestors, who were colonized by Americans. I grieve that I am not in a relationship with someone whose parents and family fully understand my cultural background and who may not ever fully accept or understand myself or my own family because of that. I worry that I’ll be even less accepted as Filipino in the Philippines because I have an American spouse. I grieve that I will never know what it’s like to be with someone who intimately knows the experience of being Othered and feeling unsafe in your own skin in the States. I, silly as it is, wish I didn’t just become a statistic in the Oxford Study for choosing to be in a relationship outside my race/culture. I wish that being an Asian woman in a relationship with a White man didn’t come with all the barrage of assumptions about the nature of our relationship that it does.
And yet –
I love that my partner has taken the time to understand my culture. My history. He has visited the Philippines on entirely his own initiative and has been studying Tagalog. One of our friends laughed at me for being the most man-hating and White-person-hating person he knew, and yet, I can say with certainty, that if anyone hates men or White people more, it’s my partner. Ironically, for a straight man, he sounds an awful lot like a lesbian woman when sharing exactly why he is straight. He’s been my biggest supporter and ally in advocating for women’s reproductive rights, coming to anti-ICE protests to support immigrants, and in going to local Pride marches.
But really, when it comes down to it, it’s not just that that matters to me.
He helped me rediscover my will to live when I was ready to end it all.
He is the person that always washes the dishes and takes out the trash and does laundry. He is the person who helps me thank my body for what it does and encourages me to let myself have the occasional treat when my body dysmorphia acts up and I get insecure about my weight. He is the person who I have a peaceful and joyful and whimsical life with. Who dances with me in the kitchen, who sits and embroiders with me at night, who humors all my hyperfixations, and who has a seemingly endless (practically saintly) reservoir of patience for me when I am running late due to my time-blindness and ADHD, even though punctuality is something that he’s taken pride in for so long.
Sure, being queer and a woman and a BIPOC child of immigrants means that upon first impressions, it’s sometimes kind of embarrassing to have a boyfriend who is a straight White man.
It’s not embarrassing to have a Cooper, though.
He’s the opposite of casual or nonchalant. Even though he doesn’t drink coffee, he’s memorized my latte and bubble tea specifications to bring to me at work to make me smile just because it’s a random Tuesday. He has my feminine hygiene product preferences and every single Asian cooking ingredient I use saved in a folder on his phone so he knows exactly what to get when he’s at the grocery store, because he knows that I get overstimulated while shopping. When I was dealing with imposter syndrome before heading to a big conference, he put together a photo album of pictures of me without him to remind me how strong I am on my own. When I was running ragged between working and taking care of our puppy and getting emotional at how quickly the puppy months were passing, he printed and hung up photos of me and her while I was away as a surprise. When we were first dating and I was dealing with trauma from having been coerced into sex and raped, he said he wouldn’t ever make me touch him – he just joked that he hoped I would at least accept an air hug from him the next time we saw each other. In almost every creative writing assignment he’s received since we began dating, he’s written a story that in some way has included me. He makes me feel considered, cherished, and in every moment of doubt, he has reminded me that I am deserving of love.
And in the past years we’ve been together, we’ve grown together.
We’ve been building something together since we were 19 and 20, and it’s pretty freaking cool to have lived so much life together, even though this is still only our beginning.
In the years we’ve been together, we’ve dealt with long distance, severe mental health challenges, the loss of family members and friends, moved out of state, gotten new jobs, new pets, and lots of other Big Life Transitions. We’ve matured. We’ve been learning how to set boundaries, but also, how to be villagers. How to be part of a community.
We’ve found joy in the routine of being regulars at small, locally owned restaurants and in befriending local artists. We’ve determined our goals for our future together and made bucket lists for adventures to go on. We enjoy the company of each other’s friends.
That is a gift, and I know just how lucky I am to have this kind of love in my life.
It’s more than worth the looks, the stares, the judgement.
I know I don’t owe people an explanation for why I choose to be with this person.
Sometimes, though, I wish they’d ask. Because from the outside, our relationship looks a hell of a lot different than it does from inside. And honestly? I am pretty damn happy in here.
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