Letters to the Editor
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Interesting!
I have always disliked the cheesiness and forced nature of Valentine's Day. There is nothing more awkward than a man giving you some kind of canned gift because he feels he is obligated to. (Fortunately, I am married now and my husband doesn't do stuff like that.)
But you have made me see the day in a whole new light -- the idea that our right to choose our own partners based on love and romance is still controversial in many parts of the world, and therefore Valentine's Day is a celebration of the human right to choose, a right that is particularly linked to women's rights given that limitations on the right to choose generally fall hardest on us.
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Women's Rights? Right on!
"Valentine's Day has everything to do with women's rights and freedoms."
More than you realize. Feb. 14th, 1920 was the day the League of Women Voters was founded.
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Not so.
No jewelery
No Chocolates
No Flowers (only because I forgot when I was in town 30 miles away)
Whipping out her favorite dinner with fine wine etc? Piece o' cake.
The impact on male attitudes can be remarkable when you lot simply accept and appreciate whatever we've found affordable/practical/doable for what it is instead of demanding something that somebody else thinks is affordable/practical/doable.
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Hmmm...
Valentine's Day has everything to do with women's rights and freedoms.
I'd say it's about age-old stereotypes and a lingering sense of female privilige.
In the 19th Century, men placed women on pedestals, worshipping them as being more refined, cultured and sophisticated than themselves. All of this attention was great on the one hand, but restricting on the other. Women had to live up to those ideals. This is one reason why women were denied the right to have libidos (how base, animalistic and... masculine).
Valentine's Day, sadly, still enshrines these values. It's pay for play. Men buy the candy, roses and expensive dinners. Women bask in the attention (which they expect and feel entitled to), and are then expected to put out. Now, there's nothing wrong with the idea of a holiday devoted to romantic love, but I'm afraid heterosexual men and women could learn a lot from their gay and lesbian cousins in this regard.
In same-sex relationships, partners buy for each other, wine and dine each other, think of special things to do for each other to celebrate the day and their affections. It's not about one partner paying homage to the other.
We'll have real equality between the sexes when both straight men and straight women leave behind these old stereotypes, expectations and rituals. On that day, women will buy chocolate boxes for men, give men diamond bracelets (or maybe not), and the guy will spring for dinner. Valentine's Day will be a celebration of equals. That day will have everything to do with women's rights and freedoms.
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That's overdoing it a bit, Carol.
I agree that Valentine's Day does pose a threat to rigidly patriarchical societies, or societies where romantic love takes a backseat to arranged marriages or utilitarian marriages. If Valentine's Day serves to raise the esteem of women in such countries, then very good.
But c'mon, Valentine's Day is not as bleakly one-sided here in the USA as you suggest. I do not think I am the only man with a wife/S.O. whose female companion makes a point of treating me especially nice on Valentine's Day, complete with gift, homecooked special something, and vibrating latex crotchless teddy, etc.
You know, not everything in the USA is fodder for feminist theorizing. Some things are pretty equal, and that's good!
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The irony of it
St. Valentines Day as a romantic occasion was apparently invented by well-known English civil servant and part time versifier Geoffrey Chaucer while writing a poem called The Parlement of Fowles to celebrate a royal nuptial.
For this was on saint Volantynys day
Whan every bryd [bird] comyth there to chese [choose] his make [mate]. [Wikipedia]
Apparently the day was originally May 3rd, which makes sense if you know what Chaucer had to say about March and April (dry, wet), but some time after Chaucer's death was pushed back into February. In olden times people did not bother much with dates as we know it, but referred to Saint's days, which is why so many of us to this day have saintly names. It made it easier for our parents to remember our birthdays.
Chaucer was apparently wrong about English birds mating annually. Even in the 18th century noted naturalist Gilbert White was convinced that birds hibernated in the winter and was not aware that they migrated to vacation spots in Africa together with their mates, (a practice soon copied by humans once they had mastered the art of flight).
So what is the irony of this female self determination thing?
Well, according, again to Wikipedia, "In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve year old boy to her daughter... The aunt was imprisoned...
I should think so too, and this was the start of men's freedom to choose whom they married. This traumatic event in the family no doubt affected the psychosocial development of the young poet, with the result that the whole world is now afflicted with this accursed holiday on which men have to buy highly scented sexual organs of plants, preferably oestrus-red ones, to remind them that they entered into marriages without being kidnapped and therefore can blame only themselves.
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but many of our ideas of love have an Islamic origin
... or, to be more precise, a Sufi origin. The Sufi poets inspired the troubadour love poets from the south of France in the 12th century, and that's where we got our ideas of courtly love, chivalry and the rest. At the time, the south of France was on the border with Andalusia, which is what Spain was called when it was Muslim.
If you don't believe me, go read Rumi's poetry. There's lots of it online.
Both the Sufis and the Troubadours were big on unattainable love, so I'm afraid that's where we get the Madonna-vs-whore thing too. See, you're supposed to be unattainable, at least for a decent interval anyway. Or at least, that's the tradition.