GAY OR STRAIGHT, MARRIED OR NOT, ALL COUPLES ARE MATES!

 GAY OR STRAIGHT, MARRIED OR NOT, ALL COUPLES ARE MATES!

                                                       by Norman Spinrad


 A while back,  Dona Sadock--my clumsily so-called “significant other”--and I  attended a traditional wedding where the “bride and groom,” a man and a woman costumed more or less like the traditional little statues on the traditional wedding cake, became “husband” and “wife.” Dona and I had been “significant others” decades ago, parted for decades and married other people, which is to say officially became “wives and husbands,” were both divorced from our respective spouses, and have now once more been eachother’s “significant others,” for over a decade.

Awkwardly written paragraph, now isn’t it?

What do you call a man and a woman who are and have long been living together as “husband” and “wife” in every way save with either benefit of clergy or in the eyes of the state as “married?” How do the people in question introduce eachother to third parties?

In French, “ma femme” et “mon homme” work reasonably well.  Ditto “meine Frau und mein Mann” in German.  But the direct English translations “my woman” and “my man” sound like something in a Country music lament.  And the neuter “my spouse” sounds as cold as a very dead fish.  “Partner” is generally understood to be someone you’re in a business relationship with for better or for worse, which may or may not be true. “So “significant other” seems to have become the rather ridiculous politically correct default.

Also attending that wedding was a lesbian couple, “significant others,” however awkward that may read or sound, right?  But although neither of them appeared particularly “butch,”one of them wore a white dress and the other a somewhat stylized black tuxedo, as if to emulate the iconic statues of husband and wife on the aforementioned wedding cake.

The wedding took place in California, a state, like New York and several others, in which same sex marriages are now legally recognized, in which gay couples may now be ceremonially pronounced....uh....

Uh, what?

It would seem that English is missing a good word for both “significant others” and a good word for two formally and legally married gay people with which to introduce eachother to third parties and the world in general.
Or is it?

I suggest that it is not. I suggest that English has a perfectly good word for people in both situations, a word that is gender neutral, accurate, emotionally heartfelt, and entirely politically correct from any frame of reference.

The word is “mate.”

Now as a verb, “mate” technically means “copulate.”

Or does it?

We say that many species of birds mate for life.  If birds can commit to more lasting and emotionally connected relationships than a roll on a tree limb when they mate for life, why can’t humans do it?  Indeed, of course, descriptively speaking, we do it all the time, if not always successfully.

Dona and I were mates decades go, married other mates for a time, and now are mates again.  So is that lesbian couple.  So are all gay couples and all straight couples, married or not. This is my mate Dona.  This is my mate Norman.  This is my mate Tom, this is my mate Charlie, as  gay friends of ours could have introduced eachother.

Okay, it might not presently parse too well in Britain or Australia, where “mate” in the vernacular tends to mean male heterosexual buddy, but since “buddy” is another perfectly good word for the same thing, in the end mate would be serviceable even for the Brits and the Aussies once they get used to it.
Mates.

One word that encompasses the married and the unmarried, husbands and wives, heterosexual couples and gay couples.

Mates.

And in the 21st Century there’s a lot more to be gained than just freeing the English language from a literary and conversational clumsiness.  Language is influenced by culture, and culture influences language, for if a language lacks a good word for a cultural concept, it becomes difficult not only to easily speak about it, but since we think in language, also difficult to clearly conceive it.

For example, English has a single word for “power,” but French has two. “Pouvoir,” which denotes more or less positional power like that of elected office, and “puissance,” which more or less denotes inherent power like that of a charismatic leader or a great actor, and so to the French mind and hence culture, the distinction between the two is clearer.   In German, the English “man” can be translated either as “Mann,” a biological fact and morally and spiritually neutral, or “Mensch,” a morally upright and courageous fellow and something a male human should aspire to be.

In the 21st Century, in the West at least, the question of same-sex marriage has certainly become a legal and political hot potato, and the traditional rigid role models of the male “husband” who is the “breadwinner and the “wife” who is the “homemaker” or indeed the “housewife” who cooks, cleans, and takes care of the children, have long since broken down.

These days, both mates are more likely than not to be out there earning money, and because they are both likely to be working, both mates are more likely to have to share the housework, the cooking, and the childcare, or at least should be, if for no other reason than practical necessity. A modern male mate must also possess what have been considered “wifely” skills and virtues such as knowing his way around a kitchen and a supermarket, changing diapers and kissing the boo-boos, and a modern female mate should be able to be gainfully employed and not helpless when it comes to using basic tools, changing tires, or dealing with simple electrical wiring.

Gender, one’s biological identity as male or female, has never defined one’s sexual proclivity as heterosexual or homosexual, and now it no longer defines one’s cultural identity as “husband” or “wife.”  I, for example, pride myself on my skill as a cook and a shopper, which may make me less of a “husband,” but, I would contend, more of a “Mensch.”  Dona, also a good cook and skilled if not enthusiastic when it comes to housework, had worked full-time for decades until earning a well-funded retirement, which may make her less of a “wife,” but, I would contend, more of an exemplar of a fully-rounded modern woman (something for which, alas, neither English, French, nor German has as yet found a good word).

We’re mates.

If and when we decided to become legally married in the eyes of the state or spiritually married in a religious ceremony we will still be mates.

You will, I hope, have noticed that all this equally applies to heterosexual and homosexual mates, married or not, and really has nothing to do with who is “butch” or “fem,” “top or bottom,” “dominant or submissive,” and indeed, whether gay or straight, many of us will play different sexual roles from time time as the spirit of the moment may move us.

Gay and straight may indeed be sexual identities, but “butch” or “fem,” “dominant” or “submissive” need not and probably should not be fixed sexual identities and all the more so not fixed cultural and economic roles between mates in any mated relationship, gay or straight.

And yet we do find that many gay couples of whatever gender do try to act out the traditional cultural models ascribed to “husband” and “wife,” legally married or not, perhaps because of the confusion between sexual role playing, who does what in bed,  and cultural role, who does what around the house and in the workaday world.
Perhaps too this is a matter, consciously or not, of defending their legal same sex marriage, if they have one, as equal to legal heterosexual marriage in every way, an unfortunately strong cultural meme that confuses egalitarian equal rights with sameness.

So gay couples, male or female, dressing up and play-acting like the dolls atop wedding cakes may be be doing we heterosexual mates a favor by showing us a kind of cartoon version of the outmoded rigid cultural roles we, after all, tend to fall back into too, even if we don’t usually dress up for the occasion.
And, gay or straight, culturally traditional by choice or not, believers in the God-given nature of those roles or not, maybe in the end pointing the culture at large to the resolution of the conflict over gay marriage.

By now the right of freedom of sexual identity is more or less accepted as a cultural given.  And only a rather small reactionary minority would deny us the right to chose our mates as we please and to settle our chores and economic roles within our matehoods without rigid circumscription by the traditional cultural roles of “husband” and “wife.”

The remaining dispute is two-fold.

Should gay matehood be legally recognized as marriage by the legal authorities?

Must gay matehood be recognized as marriage by religious authorities?

I say that stated that way and acted upon rationally the problem is solved and the dispute disappears.

Render from Caesar that which is Caesar’s to render.  Render from God that which is God’s to render.

Let the state, without using the word “marriage,” recognize all matehoods as equal in the eyes of the law.
Let Believers in whatever religion recognize only what matehoods their belief tells them they should as marriages in the eyes of their God.

Not all mates are husband and wife.  But all husbands and wives are mates.

Thus is the circle squared.

Not all matehoods need be marriages.

But all marriages cannot be other than matehoods.

What’s in a word?

Freedom is not always just another word for nothing left to lose.

Sometimes a single word can talk us to freedom from our cultural chains.
                     end