Still Mad at My Dad

I am very perturbed at a comment my father made to me last week. A comment that makes me just as angry every time I think about it as the first time he told me. A comment that I thought I would be over by now.

My father non-jokingly, asked me when my fiance was going to ask his (my father's) permission to marry me.

Now, aside from the fact that this makes no logical sense, as I asked my beloved to marry me, and not the other way around, I am SO mad at all the underpinnings in this question.

First and foremost, I object to the sexist presumption of this question. Why, on earth, would my fiance need to ask my father's permission to marry me? I am not property, I am not a minor, and this isn't the dark ages, for chrissake.

Secondly, I don't need his permission for marriage: I am more than capable of deciding for myself whether or not I want to spend the rest of my life with someone. If I wanted his opinion on this union, I would have asked for it myself, but I didn't. Also, I am the one getting married: this has nothing to do with him.

Finally, I think this is so rude. He has no right to butt into business that is not his own. Especially when he asks stupid questions based on faulty assumptions (IE, the male asks the female to marry him, not vice versa).

I love my father, but man, do I hate the things he does sometimes.

People

Over at the Carnvial of the Feminist (which everyone should check out, by the way, because it's wonderful) people are discussing relationships that they have with women in their life, particularily their family. And there is a thread that run through it, that I think people ignore a lot:

People are complicated.

Normally, I hate the clichéd(and normally misleading) phrase "on both side of the political aisle" but in this case, it actually is true. People are complicated and it is so easy to forget that, no matter your politcal leanings. We are fed a sugary lie as children, sucking on the empty calories of fairy tales and cartoons. We consume it with in larger qualities and with more garnish growing up so that we are addicted to it when we reach adulthood. This lie is that there are "good guys" and "bad guys". Someone is the ruggedly handsome hero, who represents and protects all that is good and holy in the world, and someone is the evil villian, ugly and decietful who wants to tear down good and glorify the evil. Aside from the obvious spongy nature of what "good" and "evil" is, no body on the face of the earth is like that. No one is completely good, and no one is completely evil.


Consider the recent masaccre at Virginia Tech: Cho Seung-Hui is being painted as a hate-filled, violent man who destroyed innocents and was opposed by a great number of heros.

Cho Seung-Hui is a villian, wheras others like are the clear heros.

Yet, that's wrong. Cho Seung-Hui acted villainous and acted heroic, but they were more than merely archetypes. Perhaps Cho also opened doors for people who had huge packages and gave notes away in class for people who had difficulty with a subject. Maybe liked to ridicule students in class. I know neither of these men, so I couldn't tell you.

Before anyone says it, this does NOT mean to justify or minimize either's actions on the day in question. Merely that any one action itself does not make someone "good" or "evil".

We so desperately want the duality of good and evil. We crave the sureity that it gives us: we want this person to be a sinner and this one to be a saint. We want this person to be a bigot and this person to be an activist. We want to know if we should love or hate someone. Shades of grey annoy us; and complexity overwhelms us. In "The Riches" Minnie Driver's character tearfully says "Do you know how much it hurts to hate the one person you love more than anyone in the world?".

My friends are perfect examples of this: they run the gambit of humanity. Some days I get so frustrated with them I could scream (such is when they ask for the 30th time why giving advice to women to protect themselves from rape is a bad thing). Many days they can be downright cruel to me and each others. Once, I broke down in tears at the table, and they responded by mocking me.

I have been asked many times online why I stay friends with people who share next to no of my political leanings, and more than that, are hostile and apathetic to the idea of activism. Some days, when I am frustrated and would like some more tangible support than what they give me, I think the same thing and vow never to talk to them again.

And yet...

When an ex-bf dumped me, there was one of my friends with a house to crash at, bottle of Saphire Gin, Spaceballs, and a face that looked the other way when I started to cry so I didn't have to be embarassed.

After watching "The Shining" and being terrified, my completely exhausted friend stayed up talking to me until 4 am and never once asked why I felt the need to ramble about hotels.

The cruelest of my friends never once questioned what possible reason I could have for coming into his dorm room at midnight to silently watch television with him, on the days that I needed to escape my roommates and/or boyfriend.

My friends are neither evil, nor are they saints: they are people. Disturbed people, to be sure, many of them with more mental and emotional baggage than even me, but people none the less.

I May Be In Over my head

As my recent post had indicated, I am engaged. I am very happy about this arrangement, except for the random moments of hyperventaliting "Dear goddess, what the hell am I doing?".

I had another hiccup in this whole thing too, though: the wedding. I have never been the type to imagine my perfect wedding: in fact, when I had those conversations in my youth I would normally reply that I wanted to elope in Vegas. But, in this case, I cannot do that: both of our parents would kill us (or rather, be "very disappointed" in us, which for some reason still bothers the both of us, although we are adults). I joked to my fiance, Brandon, that we should just tell our parents that we're eloping, and if they want to have a ceremony, they could pay for it, but somehow we both know that that would go over like a lead balloon.

So, odds are, we're going to have a wedding. Now, this is a still a few years off, so I don't have to care too much about it right now, but I have recently discovered that I know nothing about weddings. I was reading Pandagon and how Amanda was amazed that her sister had put together a wedding in a month. I mentioned to Brandon that a month seemed like a long time, and he looked at me as if he was getting a child for a bride. Apparently, there is more to a wedding than mailing out a couple of invitations, renting a building and a few suits, getting a dress, and reserving a hall. Huh, who knew? Obviously, I am worse than the most priveleged guy when it comes to knowing how to make a wedding.

Since I apparently have no idea how to throw a wedding, could some of you in the blogsphere be kind enough to send me a list of all the things that need to be organized for a weddding? Or, if you are married, what did you have to do for your wedding?