As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I’m a very affectionate person. I touch a great deal, I like to hold hands when I walk with a partner or friend, and people I love are likely to hear me tell them so at least once every time I see them (and most of the times I text with them). I don’t form romantic partnerships easily, and when I do they tend to be long-lasting (and devastating to me when they end); while they endure I enjoy spending time with my partner and having special things we do together, even to the point of having pet names and private jokes and all that good stuff. I’m telling you all this so that you understand that I’m not actually biased against love or romance when I say that in the West in general and the US in particular, the “couple” has become a cultic totem second only to “The Children!” in repulsiveness and maladaptation.
Now, I’ve been part of couples for a large fraction of my adult life, and probably so have most of you reading this. But in all that time, I have never tolerated a partner who attempted to own me, control me, or monopolize my time. Jack’s childish jealousy was one of the reasons we fought so much and broke up so often, and even as a young adult I was never very sympathetic to girlfriends who whined that their boyfriends had interests other than them and didn’t want to spend every fucking free minute with them. I’ve always disliked Valentine’s Day, and one of the reasons my relationship with Matt endured for 14 years was that he traveled a great deal and had interests other than me. So when I saw these creepy things in a tweet recently, they reminded me of the hallucinations Greg Kihn’s character has when looking at the wedding guests in this video:
Sorry, couples; you’re not actually “one flesh” with a conjoined circulatory system, and it won’t hurt you to sit separately for the length of a domestic flight:
Alaska Airlines faces a public-relations storm after a gay couple were forced to give up their seats on a flight from New York City to Los Angeles…to make room for a straight couple. Though the complainant …accepted an apology from Alaska, which said the outcome was a mistake [due to the gate agent’s being given incorrect information] and not reflective of any disrespect, dissemination of the incident on social media has damaged the airline’s image…as…gay-friendly…David Cooley, owner of a popular upscale gay bar in…West Hollywood…[was] on board [with his partner] in their assigned premium seats when a gate agent asked his companion to give up his seat and move to [steerage] so that another couple could sit together. Although Cooley…protested that the two men were also a couple and wanted to sit together…the agent insisted that his traveling companion had to either move to coach or get off the plane…
NOBODY, single or coupled, queer or straight or asexual, should be forced to move from their seat so a “couple” can sit together. What the fuck is that about, really? “Hi, you need to move because these two people like to shove their body parts into each other’s orifices.” Really? Wanna sit together? Plan ahead & get reserved seats; done. And if you have those seats, as Cooley and his partner did, you shouldn’t be forced to move for those who didn’t (and certainly not moved from First Class back into the cattle car). I’ve been separated from partners on planes because of circumstances (standby flying, last-minute plans, poor planning on our part or whatever) before and we lived. But then, we weren’t the devotees of a weird religion which teaches that we somehow deserve precedence over other people because we habitually boink each other.
In various forms, I’ve felt this way about couples and the deference they are generally accorded for a very long time.
A couple will get a decent table in a restaurant while a single will be asked if they want to sit at the bar, or given a small table by the kitchen door or restrooms. Travel, resort, and hotel rates (where a single will pay the same room rate as a couple) are all geared toward couples. And on and on and on.
As you say, ” . . . the ‘couple’ has become a cultic totem second only to ‘The Children!’ in repulsiveness and maladaptation.”
This case of what happened on Alaska Airlines is about the most egregious case of which I’ve heard. I’m not a big fan of litigiousness, but in a case like this it would not only be justified, but might drive home a point in a way that simply accepting an apology won’t. It seems with the enhanced powers given to air crews and gate agents since 9-11 that abuse and treating people (which, after all, is what passengers are) like ciphers or objects (in airline parlance, self-loading cargo) has become widespread.
I’m glad you used this incident to make a broader point. The couples thing is generally just accepted in our society without further comment.
I would disagree that the hotel room thing is part of this pattern; one doesn’t need to be a couple to get that. One simply has to find someone else willing to share the same room, regardless of whether one plans to claim that the two of you habitually shove body parts into each other’s orifices. Businesses and conventions frequently get people whom they’re sponsoring to double up in rooms so as to save money.
Well, true, and I recognize that aspect of double-room charges. I think with resorts, though, it is more couples than business people sharing a room for convenience. Regardless, there certainly are enough examples where deference is shown to couples over singles. And it’s not always in monetary terms.
Saturday Night Live took a shot at couples who do EVERYTHING together with one of their fake ads, this time for the “love toilet”. You can google it. The shirt ad that Maggie included reminded me of it.
I’ve heard of asking people to move so families can sit together. If there are young children who need assistance or at least supervision, that makes some sense. But couples who want to sit together? Nuh uh. My wife and I have taken several flights where we were not seated together. Amazingly our relationship survived.
You think singles get short shrift? Try going somewhere with two or more lovers at the same time & watch what happens. Couple can get away with holding hands, gazing longingly into one another’s eyes, et cetera … but if I did that with two people on either side of me, you can bet we’d be tossed out!
I can’t do poly any more; even one partner is emotionally exhausting, let alone two or more. And that goes triple if any of those partners are male.
Eh bien, à chacun a ses goûts.
Yep. De gustibus non est disputandum. 😉
The root cause here is overbooking – they sold the same first class seat twice, and both passengers showed up. The gate agent had to pick someone to bump to coach, and then was idiotic enough to try to explain what was probably a random choice by the computer as keeping a couple together. Reserved seats don’t do you much good when they aren’t really reserved…
Amen!’