Weirdos in favor of infiltrating the ranks of typical, average straight gals

A couple days ago I became a fan of the Facebook cause “Typical, average straight gals in favor of gay rights,” which is approximately the 11 millionth group of its ilk I have joined. I don’t normally feel the need to broadcast my not-gayness, but I like flipping the bird to the idea that everyone who supports marriage equality and non-discrimination laws and so on must be either gay themselves or some kind of loopy, desperate fag hag or coconut-scented metrosexual or something equally strange and repellent. So I joined. And was immediately annoyed.

It’s not easy being a feminist, as I’m sure you know. You have to keep yourself in a state of high dudgeon at all times. It’s in the charter. And to maintain that special feminist brand of crankypants bitchfacery that makes you completely unlovable, you often have to go looking for ways to get offended. Sometimes you have to get creative and find ways to get offended by your allies. That’s what I was doing when I pored painstakingly over the first couple postings on the group’s page and, later, the item that was then at the top of my news feed.

“Straight families for gay marriage,” the first offending item said. “News flash…us typical, avaerage [sic], straight gals have kids,” proclaimed the second. “What the fuck?” said I.

Apparently many—OK, two, but for in order to be properly offended I will unfocus my eyes so that those two look like an army—typical, average straight gals think that their relationship and reproductive choices are shared by all typical, average straight gals. That there is, in fact, only one way to be a typical, average straight gal, and that is to get married and have kids. Single gals and gals without children can only be typical, average straight gals if they assume themselves to be only pre-wifehood and pre-motherhood, not if they are uncertain about whether they will ever enter either of those states or if they are (gasp!) deliberately unmarried and/or childless.

Which is why someone thought they would nobly counter the “segregation” of single-gender Facebook groups (even though they are, in fact, open to people of all genders and LGBTQI people, shockingly enough!) by inviting everyone to join instead a new group called “Straight families for gay marriage.” Yes indeedy, that leaves no one out! Thank you, Facebooker, for showing us the path to unity! To be fair, the group’s founder does tack on an afterthought note saying that singles are welcome to join too, but… no, we are not. One person is not a family. And counting yourself, as a single person, among families implies that you think you are a family-to-be, which it is my vague understanding, not everyone does! Sometimes even non-harpies think they may not be super into the idea of the nuclear family! I am sure you were knocked ass over teakettle by this revelation, just as I and Mrs. Bennet here were.

It’s also why another member felt the need to bring us BREAKING NEWS: NORMAL WOMEN REPRODUCE! in response to some other people saying that a post about an affordable day care advocacy group, while commendable, was somewhat off-topic. Typical, average straight gals have kids, and those currently without kids will have kids, eventually, so they won’t mind being included, surely. I mean, do you know anyone who’s childless by choice? There’s not even a term for that!

So here I am, 25, living with my boyfriend in post-collegiate poverty (and sin!), spending 82 hours a day on the internet, supporting the rights of my friends in quite possibly the least useful, most sarcastic way I can find, thinking I’m pretty fucking typical. A bit of Gen Y stereotype even. And here comes Facebook—Facebook! Supreme overlord of my entire time-wasting, virtual-reality-dependent, ephemera-obsessed, all-about-me-blogging, no-social-skills-having, hope-promoting, hippie-loving, responsibility-shirking, txt-spk-using, over-punctuating, emoticon-abusing, tl;dr generation!—telling me I’m some kind of weirdo! Reader, I was annoyed! First I asked myself, what would a typical, average straight gal do? (Which, actually, is probably write a long-winded blog post.) Then I realized I was asking the wrong question. What I should have asked myself is, what would a weirdo do? And I realized: Eat a rubber tire to the music of The Flight of the Bumblebee. Which is exactly what I’m going to do. That and, you know, keep not having kids, not getting married, and mulishly insisting that despite my self-evident weirdness, I’m just your typical, average straight gal. But mostly the tire thing.