There’s an interview with me about Valentine’s Day over on The Sorority.
What do you think about Valentines Day?
I think that the idea of having a day to celebrate love is a great one. What concerns me is the narrow range of love that is celebrated which both excludes those who don’t fit within it, and puts pressure on those who do. Single people can find Valentine’s Day very hard because it suggests that romantic love is so vitally important and reinforces the common view that those who don’t have it are lacking, or a failure. If you look at Valentine’s cards, gifts and movies you’ll also see an assumption that romantic love is heterosexual and married (with the bulk of cards ‘to my husband/wife’). Again this excludes those with same-sex relationships and those who are not married. Valentine’s restaurants are set up for couples, which means that people in openly non-monogamous relationships may struggle to feel accepted. Read more…