tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/love-1282/articles
Love – The Conversation
2024-02-13T19:31:34Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222054
2024-02-13T19:31:34Z
2024-02-13T19:31:34Z
Showing love on Valentine’s Day by embracing disability
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574603/original/file-20240209-16-r7k1o3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=110%2C0%2C7238%2C4912&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stereotypes often mean people with disabilities are told to wait and delay their engagement in any romantic or sexual experiences.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Valentine’s Day is a time when love and intimacy are celebrated with fervor. Yet, the challenges some face in this regard are not often recognized. In particular, people with disabilities face discrimination and obstacles when seeking love, affection and sexual fulfillment.</p>
<p>People with disabilities often contend with persistent stereotypes when it comes to their love lives. A lack of comprehensive and accessible sex education also leaves people with disabilities ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of relationships and intimacy.</p>
<p>At the University of Calgary’s <a href="https://www.disabilitysexualitylab.com/">Disability and Sexuality Lab</a>, we are working to address these challenges. Our team has undertaken a comprehensive series of interviews with individuals living with disabilities, delving into their personal journeys with love, romance and sexuality. </p>
<p>These conversations reveal the complex realities they face in their quest for intimate connections and underscore the urgent need for greater awareness, and inclusivity within the intersection of disability and sexuality.</p>
<h2>Stereotypes about disability and sexuality</h2>
<p>Individuals with disabilities frequently confront a <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disability-face-barriers-to-sexual-and-reproductive-health-care-new-recommendations-are-only-the-start-206746">multitude of stereotypes</a> that limit their opportunities to form intimate relationships and have sex. These perceptions can deeply affect their experiences and how society treats the topic of disability and sexuality.</p>
<p>Initially, there’s a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3109/09638280903419277">pervasive stereotype</a> that portrays disabled people as lacking sexual desires or being incapable of making good decisions regarding their intimate lives. This view unfairly categorizes people with disability as a “danger” to the community, fostering unnecessary fear and discrimination. Such a narrative not only marginalizes their experiences but also unjustly strips them of their rights to make personal decisions about their bodies and relationships.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, they are subjected to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716688680">infantilization and de-sexualization</a>. This process where their capacity for adult relationships and sexuality is either ignored or denied, undermines their autonomy and contributes to a broader societal narrative. It fails to recognize disabled people as fully rounded individuals with the same spectrum of desires and needs for intimacy as anyone else.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and woman communicate using sign language." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575093/original/file-20240212-22-lcuw8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stereotypes and perceptions can deeply affect how broader society views disability and sexuality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Being told to wait</h2>
<p>Infantilization often means people with disabilities are told to wait and delay their engagement in any romantic or sexual experiences.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003163329-57/intersection-sexuality-intellectual-disabilities-alan-santinele-martino">Our comprehensive interviews with 46 adults who have intellectual disabilities</a> in Ontario highlighted how participants were often advised that they should defer sexual activity until their late 30s, 40s, and in some cases, even their 50s. </p>
<p>This guidance, ostensibly for their protection, underscores a broader societal issue where people with disabilities are not afforded the same autonomy to explore their sexuality compared to those without disabilities.</p>
<p>For instance, Randy, a 39-year-old man with a mental disability, told us he was advised not to pursue intimate relationships. “My mother told me I am not ready,” he said. Often, people with disabilities, especially those with intellectual disabilities, are told to wait.</p>
<p>This represents further the perceived notion that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2012.687241">people with disabilities are not knowledgeable</a> about their own sexuality and intimate lives. For instance <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-023-10185-w">Priscilla, a 43-year-old bisexual woman, said:</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When you have a developmental disability, people think that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Or when you say I’m bisexual or gay, whatever, they think that you don’t actually know what it means.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Sex education inaccessible and inadequate</h2>
<p>In ensuring individuals are informed about their options in terms of sex, sexuality and gender, sex education is often where these conversations begin. Unfortunately sex education is often delivered in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02755-8">inaccessible and ineffective ways</a> to people with disabilities, particularly those who are 2SLGBTQ+. This is what we found in our other research project about the intimate lives of 31 2SLGBTQ+ individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities in Alberta, Canada. </p>
<p>Sex education is often delivered in ways that focus on heterosexual and cisgender experiences. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02755-8">Aubrey, a 30-year-old queer trans man said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know, for myself as a gender diverse person, I really would have benefited from that [sex education], because I hadn’t even known about that possibility until much later in my life.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Partly due to this lack of education, studies have shown that people with disabilities experience greater vulnerability. The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/08/570224090/the-sexual-assault-epidemic-no-one-talks-about">rates of sexual abuse</a> are higher among disabled people compared to non-disabled people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman sits on the lap of another woman in a wheelchair. They look at each other lovingly." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575087/original/file-20240212-30-lntkxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Disabled 2SLGBTQ+ people often face overlapping forms of discrimination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2SLGBTQ+ disabled people being left behind</h2>
<p>Individuals with disabilities who are also 2SLGBTQ+ often find themselves facing multiple forms of discrimination, including ableism, homophobia and transphobia. </p>
<p>Yet, our interviews with 2SLGBTQ+ adults with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities reveal not just the barriers these individuals face but also their profound resilience and desire for love. For instance <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2023.2276320">Tracey, a 19-year-old gender fluid person, said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I just wish there were more like spaces where disabled people could also enter because you know, when you also think of like, people who are physically disabled, they can’t go out clubbing. They physically can’t, then so it’s like, there’s not many activities, there’s not many ways for us to engage in our own community.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our research shows significant gaps in information and conversations about disability and romance, emphasizing the necessity for accessible education, resources and spaces. Recent 2SLGBTQ+ rights challenges, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/albertas-new-policies-are-not-only-anti-trans-they-are-anti-evidence-222579">Alberta’s parental rights policies</a>, underscore the urgency of challenging new transphobic policies. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/albertas-new-policies-are-not-only-anti-trans-they-are-anti-evidence-222579">Alberta's new policies are not only anti-trans, they are anti-evidence</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Disabled activists push back</h2>
<p>Valentine’s Day, with its emphasis on love and connection, brings to light the importance of inclusivity. It’s a fitting moment to reflect on how everyone desires to love and be loved. The work of disabled activists like Andrew Gurza, host of the podcast <a href="http://www.andrewgurza.com/podcast">Disability after Dark</a>, and Eva Sweeney, creator of <a href="https://www.crippingupsexwitheva.com/">Cripping up Sex with Eva</a>, is particularly illuminating. They courageously open up conversations about disability and sexuality, challenging norms and pushing the boundaries of what’s often considered a taboo subject.</p>
<p>In a simple yet profound expression, a young man with Down Syndrome shared his insight, saying, <a href="https://hollandbloorview.ca/sites/default/files/2021-04/Presentation%20Slides-%20Talk%203%20Speaker%201%20Dr.%20Alan%20Martino_0.pdf">“love is natural, we all love.”</a> This statement serves as a powerful reminder, especially on Valentine’s Day — a time often saturated with conversations about sex, intimacy and romantic connections. It’s a period that underscores the significance of making sure everyone feels seen and included.</p>
<p>Their efforts highlight a critical message: The more we talk about it, the less of a taboo topic it becomes. </p>
<p><em>Eleni Moumos, an undergraduate student in Psychology minoring in Disability Studies at the University of Calgary, co-authored this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222054/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Santinele Martino receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.</span></em></p>
Individuals with disabilities frequently confront stereotypes that limit their opportunities to form intimate relationships and have sex.
Alan Santinele Martino, Assistant Professor, Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, University of Calgary
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221003
2024-02-13T19:06:27Z
2024-02-13T19:06:27Z
This Valentine’s Day, embrace green as the new colour of love
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569441/original/file-20240115-23-2z7vft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2991%2C2326&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Summer, c. 1890.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/summer-6779">Smithsonian American Art Museum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Valentine’s Day is associated with red and pink, representing passion and romance. But there’s another hue with a secret, sensual history longing for embrace: green.</p>
<p>The colour of nature and fertility, green is deeply connected to love in traditions throughout the world. In these times of conflict, 2024 is the year we should remember what connects rather than divides us, and embrace green as the colour of love.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-chaucer-to-chocolates-how-valentines-day-gifts-have-changed-over-the-centuries-198512">From Chaucer to chocolates: how Valentine’s Day gifts have changed over the centuries</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Green is at the heart</h2>
<p>In the ancient Indian chakra tradition, green is the colour of the heart. The <a href="https://reporter.anu.edu.au/all-stories/at-the-heart-of-romance-why-a-vital-organ-is-linked-to-love">heart organ</a> has long been associated with love. A <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342562977_A_Brief_History_of_the_Chakras_in_Human_Body">chakra</a>, conceptualised as a wheel of whirling energy, balances particular emotions and the health of the body. The heart chakra at the centre of the chest represents loving-kindness, compassion and care.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569767/original/file-20240117-17-5q8l7v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Prince Receives a Water Jug from a Young Woman at a Well, c. 1745.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/303397">© President and Fellows of Harvard College</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Green has a range of cross-cultural meanings to do with balance, peace and hope. <a href="https://www.amaliah.com/post/45896/symbolic-colour-green-islam-science-of-light-and-colour">Islam</a> associates heavenly paradise with the colour. It is important in the <a href="https://art.catholic.org.au/2021/12/15/colour-meanings/">Catholic</a> faith for hope and life, as in <a href="https://www.5tjt.com/the-color-green/">Judaism</a>, where it means renewal. In China, <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1088/jade-in-ancient-china/">jade</a> is considered powerful and fortunate, as is <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/pounamu-jade-or-greenstone">pounamu jade</a> in Maori culture. Scottish <a href="https://www.crystaldigest.com/crystals/serpentine/">serpentine</a> is still believed by some today to boost creativity. </p>
<p>In European <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.1997.9715937">mediaeval folklore</a>, the colour was associated with both being lucky or unlucky in love. It symbolised a young woman’s sexuality, and being “greensick” was a term for a youth in unrequited love. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-jan-massys-antwerp-c-1509-1575-6297903/">Mary Magdalene</a> was depicted wearing green sleeves. Robin Hood and Maid Marian wore it in the greenwoods, the home of lovers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Middle Panel with Christ on the Cross, side wings with Saint Conrad and Saint Pelagius" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569765/original/file-20240117-25-5q8l7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael Haider, Triptych with the Crucification Creator, c. 1500.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.kunsthalle-karlsruhe.de/kunstwerke/Michael-Haider/Hohenlandenberg-Altar-Heiliger-Konrad-mit-dem-Stifter-Bischof-Hugo-von-Hohenlandenberg-verso-Engel-der-Verk%C3%BCndigung/B33073B743C898563B9AA4AA201E3C8C/">Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the Renaissance, pastoral and woodland settings symbolised nature, pleasure, freedom and lack of convention, as Arden does in Shakespeare’s As You Like It and the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: an alternative <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/erea/4445?lang=en">Green World</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370731759_Shakespeare's_Erotic_Eden_Cultivating_Queer_Ecologies_in_As_You_Like_It's_Pleasurable_Forest_of_Arden">an erotic Eden</a>. </p>
<p>Bawdy <a href="https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/10/17/renaissance-love-songs/">Renaissance madrigals</a> such as Now is the Month of Maying included references to a “barley break” (a roll in the hay) and lads and lasses making merry upon the “greeny grass”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569975/original/file-20240118-29-uh5p2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘And now they never meet in grove or green’ from act two, scene one of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1908.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1954.651">The Cleveland Museum of Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hidden greens</h2>
<p>Old songs give us some clues to the secret, erotic symbolism of the colour green and its fateful relationship to women’s sexuality. </p>
<p>The Tudor version of Greensleeves contains suggestive lyrics regarding crimson stockings with gold above the knee and pumps as white as milk, and a grassy-green gown. According to a <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/greensleeves-did-henry-viii-write-song/">romantic myth</a>, Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves to woo Anne Boleyn.</p>
<p>The lyrics go back to Celtic myths about the joining of the May Queen with the Oak King, also called the Green Man or “Jack in the Green”. Their union is consummated on May Day, also known as <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46916-0_7">Beltane</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sagegoddess.com/blog/holidays/awakening-your-inner-fire-at-beltane/">Rituals</a> still practised today in magic and pagan communities connect May Day festivities to the hand-fasting or marriage of the god and goddess, encouraging desire to flame and convention to be cast aside outdoors.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569764/original/file-20240117-21-nk8mfb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Moonrise: Soldier and Maiden, 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/43841/moonrise-soldier-and-maiden#">The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Green in mediaeval times was also a sign of <a href="https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/264783">female promiscuity</a> rather than free love. Wearing green reputedly signalled a woman’s willingness to make love, since it denoted <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1260708">fertility and the loss of virginity</a>. </p>
<p>Green got a downgrade during the Middle Ages and beyond. Dubbed the <a href="https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/urchins-ouphs-and-fairies-green-and-white-fairy-clothing/">fairies’ colour</a>, who were associated with nature and said to be jealous of human good fortune, it became <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/6-creepy-wedding-superstitions-from-history-8767277">unlucky for brides</a> and <a href="https://www.weddingbee.com/article/wedding-planning/ceremony-reception/12-common-wedding-superstitions/">even today is warned against</a> being worn at weddings. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569769/original/file-20240117-15-2h02b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Follower of Hans Schilling, illuminator and from the Workshop of Diebold. Lauber Jupiter Gives Danae a Gift of Gold, 1469.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/105X32">Getty Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Middle Ages, healers and wise-women who held vital medicinal plant and herb use, as well as some who may have practised folk magic for alluring charms and love potions, were persecuted for their knowledge as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10271903/">witches</a>. The female witch is so associated with green that in The Wizard of Oz she was given <a href="https://www.history.com/news/witch-hat-costume-origins">green skin</a>.</p>
<h2>A contradictory colour</h2>
<p>Green carries negative connotations such as poison, jealousy and envy: the green-eyed monster. </p>
<p>Greenwashing or green-sheening are terms for the promotion of dubious environmental products. In <a href="https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks2012/14/">Green Sense</a> a treatise that explores botanical aesthetics, cultural studies academic John Ryan argues the contradiction of green comes from it being the shade of growth and decomposition: both birth and death.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C7%2C812%2C1015&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C7%2C812%2C1015&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569238/original/file-20240115-23-bdw55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=947&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maurice Denis, Love (Amour), 1892-1899.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://dac-collection.wesleyan.edu/objects-1/info/4494">Open Access Image from the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (photo: M. Johnston)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo5974153.html">The Key of Green</a> cultural historian Bruce Smith suggests green has the power to upset. It has no fixed meaning and encompasses vast mental territory. Part noun, part adjective, part adverb and part verb, we see green, and we can also shop, build, vote and think green. We can feel green: during the Renaissance, he writes, being possessed by the passions was likened to wearing green spectacles. Smith also contends that we can hear colours: to hear green would be to listen longingly, as we do to love songs.</p>
<p>Green flags possibility for growth and change. It revives bodies and souls. In the philosophy of mediaeval mystic Hildegard of Bingen, <a href="https://hildegarden.com/viriditas/">viriditas</a> – meaning greenness and vitality – signified the life force that makes all things fresh and new.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569770/original/file-20240117-29-lsue3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Louis Jean François Lagrenée, Mars and Venus, Allegory of Peace (Mars et Vénus, allégorie sur la Paix) 1770.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/107VSS">Getty Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today greening power is being celebrated and revived. Across the globe, there are calls for the growth of love. Whether we celebrate our relationships in pastel or Barbie pink, passionate red, or all the colours of the rainbow, perhaps, this Valentine’s Day, we can widen our arms to embrace a little green.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/freshly-cut-grass-or-bile-infused-exorcist-vomit-how-crime-books-embraced-lurid-green-132763">'Freshly cut grass – or bile-infused Exorcist vomit?': how crime books embraced lurid green</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Reid Boyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The colour of nature and fertility, green is deeply connected to love in traditions throughout the world.
Elizabeth Reid Boyd, Senior Lecturer School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223128
2024-02-13T15:07:43Z
2024-02-13T15:07:43Z
Is Valentine’s Day worth the romantic investment? Here’s what we can learn from economics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575288/original/file-20240213-24-m13x4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=92%2C58%2C5515%2C3665&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rose-flowers-heart-shape-chocolate-valentines-2090452246">Evgeny Karandaev/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Expressing affection can be expensive. Spending on heart-shaped gifts, romantic cards, chocolates and flowers (other gifts are available) to celebrate Valentine’s Day has reached <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/510981/valentines-day-total-spending-great-britain/#:%7E:text=In%20the%20United%20Kingdom%20%28UK%29%20alone%2C%20Valentine%E2%80%99s%20Day,increased%20by%20just%20over%20300%20million%20British%20pounds.">close to £1 billion</a> in the UK.</p>
<p>So the value of Valentine’s to retailers seems clear enough. But just how valuable is the annual ritual to consumers? What return can you expect for the money you invest in that bouquet of roses or candle lit meal? </p>
<p>Broadly speaking, and depending on your relationship status, buying into Valentine’s Day traditions suggests two possible scenarios. You might be sending a card or gift to a potential partner to inform them of your interest; or you might be giving something to your current partner to remind them of your continuing love. </p>
<p>Research suggests that both options have intrinsic economic value.</p>
<p>For those seeking to express interest, sending a card is like dipping your toe into what economists might refer to as the “marriage market” – the search for someone you like, who likes what you have to offer in return. </p>
<p>This search can happen smoothly, with plenty of information about your potential match, or it can be paved with obstacles, where you may not know much about who is available, and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1703310">learning about potential partners</a> takes time. </p>
<p>So suppose you are searching for a partner, and comprehensive information about potential matches is not freely available. What do you do? </p>
<p>One option might be to put all your hopes into meeting someone on your daily journey to work. You pray that one day, just like in the movies, you will simply bump into “the one”. </p>
<p>A second option might be to focus your search on single work colleagues, or people you know socially, and send Valentine’s Day cards to those you are attracted to. </p>
<p>The option with the highest chance of success is the second one. You are using reliable information – knowledge of who is single. And sending a card to them can provide them with important information about you – that you’re also single, and that you’re interested. This is why research suggests that sending a Valentine’s Day card can be a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2938374?origin=crossref">logical investment</a> of time and money.</p>
<h2>‘Match quality’</h2>
<p>Fast forward five years or so and imagine you are happily married to the recipient of one of those cards. Is it worth repeating the gesture now that you’re settled down together? </p>
<p>Economists think of marriages or partnerships as having an inherent “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2354.2006.00385.x">match quality</a>”, which reflects how good (or bad) your relationship is – and the likelihood of you breaking up. </p>
<p>If match quality falls below the level of happiness you might expect to have if you were to leave, a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2759255">separation may well follow</a>. But many studies also show that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2535409">match quality is malleable</a> – that it can change, for better and indeed for worse, over time.</p>
<p>You can invest in trying to improve match quality in various ways. It might be starting a family, sharing hobbies and interests, or gestures such as cooking a special meal or exchanging gifts on the 14th day of February. Improving your match quality <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228431914_How_Does_the_Change_of_Marriage_Quality_Affect_Divorce_Decisions">directly reduces the probability</a> of a separation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Couple reading a menu at a restaurant table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575299/original/file-20240213-18-4hioc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘And it says here that this meal is a logical investment.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smiling-couple-reading-menu-choosing-meal-120856582">Lucky Business/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then there’s the question of commitment – the willingness to stay in a relationship rather than walking away. And again, gestures can make a difference.</p>
<p>Imagine you have just started a new job, and your employer asks you to complete an intensive training session in your free time, for a skill that would only be useful for that particular role. If you expect to hold the job for a long period, you might happily invest your time. But if your employer is struggling financially and redundancy is on the cards, you are much less likely to agree to perform the task.</p>
<p>Relationships work in a similar way. People are more prepared to invest in things like having children or buying a house together if they expect the relationship to last. Given that commitment is not guaranteed by a marriage certificate, people <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=950688">need to find other ways</a> to signal their continued devotion. </p>
<p>Celebrating Valentine’s Day is one way of making such a signal. It can show faith in your shared commitment, signify that you wish to continue investing in the relationship and improve match quality, further stabilising the partnership. </p>
<p>So even if deep down you think that Valentine’s Day has become over commercialised and meaningless, research suggests it makes good economic sense to send that card.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Selma Walther is affiliated with the Institute for Fiscal Studies.</span></em></p>
Working on ‘match quality’ is an important part of relationships.
Selma Walther, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218401
2024-02-13T10:32:16Z
2024-02-13T10:32:16Z
The problems with dating apps and how they could be fixed – two relationship experts discuss
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574143/original/file-20240207-18-gbocbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C28%2C3776%2C2126&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/augmented-reality-dating-concept-beautiful-lgbt-2301464957">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hundreds of millions of people worldwide <a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/7443/online-dating/#topicOverview">use dating apps</a>. But only <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/">half of users</a> say that they have had positive experiences. Indeed, a shocking 11% of female users under 50 have received threats of harm. Surely there’s a better way to build these apps.</p>
<p>Dating sites and apps have made it easier to find sexual and romantic partners, expanding the pool of potential mates to include the entire internet. About 10% of heterosexual people and 24% of LGB people have met their long-term partner <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/">online</a>. But apps have also introduced (or modernised) many ethical concerns associated with dating.</p>
<p>Before dating apps, many people met partners through family, friends or work, which meant that potential partners were often “vetted” by people we trusted. When you meet someone on an app, you often know nothing about them except what they choose to tell you. Making the pursuit of intimacy more <a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-new-laws-of-love-online-dating-and-the-privatization-of-intimacy--9781509543519">private and individual</a> has increased the potential for negative or harmful experiences. </p>
<p>Apps help you control how you present yourself and refine your dating pool using filters. Many see this as a helpful and liberating tool to clarify their identity and meet like-minded people. There are even <a href="https://leftyapp.com/">dating apps</a> exclusive to people with certain <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-parallel-economy-the-rightwing-movement-creating-a-safe-haven-for-deplatformed-conservative-influencers-201999">political views</a>.</p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/valentines-day-research-backed-tips-for-dating-app-success-199059?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Valentine’s Day: research-backed tips for dating app success</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/online-dating-fatigue-why-some-people-are-turning-to-face-to-face-apps-first-184910?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Online dating fatigue – why some people are turning to face-to-face apps first</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-what-the-show-can-teach-young-people-about-commitment-185459?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Love Island – what the show can teach young people about commitment</a></em></p>
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<p>But the more discerning you can be, the more you may contribute – often unwittingly – to unjust discrimination. Many people are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15240657.2021.1961498">swiped away</a> or filtered out on grounds of race, ability, class and appearance. For example, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/14/8727">99.8%</a> of young black male sexual minority users have experienced some form of racialised sexual discrimination. And only <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-02726-002">3% of contacts initiated by white people</a> are to black people. Disabled people have reported receiving <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11195-022-09771-x#Sec42">“insulting, pitying, or aggressive comments”</a>, or doubts about their ability to have sex.</p>
<p>Apps are designed carefully to hold your attention using <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzXz005b7U">elements and rewards</a> that make using them feel like playing a game. This can distance your behaviour from your values. You might want a few, caring and nuanced interactions, or committed romantic love, yet find yourself <a href="https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/your-happiness-was-hacked/">thrilled by notifications</a>, or drawn into numerous sporadic conversations in ways you find alienating. Ghosting – suddenly leaving an interaction without explanation – is arguably disrespectful, but it <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0265407520970287">can seem logical</a> when apps funnel you into conversations that lead nowhere or to harassment. </p>
<p>Using apps even morphs into an activity in its own right, becoming less a way of meeting people and more a source of attention, validation and sexual intrigue in your pocket.</p>
<p>Finally, dating apps encourage users to objectify each other through rapid judgment based on appearance. From rapid swiping with little information beyond a picture on apps like Tinder, to Grindr’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grindr-gay-men-body-image-1234733520/">grid of torsos</a>, dating apps make it easy to dismiss with a glance. </p>
<h2>Can dating apps be better?</h2>
<p>We are researchers of love and relationships who have studied <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003014331-19/online-dating-love-robots-natasha-mckeever">online dating</a>, <a href="https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=romantic-agency-loving-well-in-modern-life--9781509551521">the idea of compatibility</a>, the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/japp.12157">nature of love</a>, <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com/does-monogamy-work-9780500295694">non-monogamy</a> and the needs of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/japp.12472">sexual minority groups</a>. </p>
<p>Our continuing exploration of these topics has convinced us that the people who design dating apps could do more to improve the experience for users. This is why, at the <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/homepage/420/centre_for_love_sex_and_relationships">Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships</a> at the University of Leeds, we are also launching a new research project on ethical dating online to explore how apps can become a better experience for everyone.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young man sitting on the floor against a couch, looking at his phone with a disappointed and confused look on his face" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574146/original/file-20240207-20-79hrrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Dating apps can be a source of distress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/single-sad-man-checking-mobile-phone-603284075">Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Some apps have already started to do this. Bumble only allows women to make the first move and has added a feature that <a href="https://bumble.com/the-buzz/privatedetector">automatically blurs</a> nude images, giving users a choice over whether they see the photo or not. Tinder has <a href="https://www.tinderpressroom.com/2023-02-07-Tinder-Gives-Members-More-Control-with-Expanded-Safety-Features-and-Partnership">added new safety features</a>, such as an AI that detects if a message may have offensive or sexually explicit language, and prompting users to <a href="https://www.tinderpressroom.com/2021-05-20-Tinder-Introduces-Are-You-Sure-,-an-Industry-First-Feature-That-is-Stopping-Harassment-Before-It-Starts">think twice</a> before sending. </p>
<p>But they could take it further. Enhanced safety features could help people report harassment. Apps could do more to inform users when someone is <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/tinder-chat-gpt-ai-matches-b2320971.html">using AI</a> in their interactions, or make it easier to get <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/23/meet-the-parents-tinder-introduces-matchmaker-approval-tool-for-friends-and-family">feedback</a> from friends, family or other users. These improvements might make it less likely that users will meet up with dangerous people.</p>
<p>Dating apps could give users more information about their preferences and behaviour. Sporadic statistical overviews, or “end of year round-ups” a la <a href="https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-wrapped/">Spotify</a> could help users see whether they are as open minded as they want to be, or just choosing people from a similar racial or class background. </p>
<p>Finally, apps can “nudge” users towards more ethical behaviour, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/oct/31/ghosting-busters-why-tech-companies-trying-stop-blanking-each-other">encouraging them</a> not to ghost someone, for example, or enforcing a cooling-off period for serial swipers. </p>
<p>While this might feel intrusive, remember that dating apps are <a href="https://uxplanet.org/how-tinder-design-hooks-you-up-60201d78501f">already</a> doing this – for example, sending notifications encouraging you to check the app regularly.</p>
<h2>Be a better dating app user</h2>
<p>There are also steps you can take to interact more ethically on dating apps. Being more aware of your own <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810014001950">biases</a> is a good start. So is trying to be more open to people who don’t conform to what you think you want in a partner (particularly when these preferences might be influenced by biases and stereotypes). </p>
<p>You can also take more care of what you say and do on apps. For example, avoiding <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037474/">ghosting</a> others unless it’s a response to abusive behaviour. In short, remember that online dating is not just a game, even if it feels like one, and that the images on your phone are – usually – of real people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218401/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some apps are already introducing safety features.
Natasha McKeever, Lecturer in Applied Ethics, University of Leeds
Luke Brunning, Lecturer in Applied Ethics, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223242
2024-02-13T10:32:14Z
2024-02-13T10:32:14Z
Romance isn’t always rosy, sometimes it’s sickening – lovesickness, erotomania and death by heartbreak explained
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574771/original/file-20240211-31-lmr4xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C17%2C5681%2C3773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/photo/lovesick-love-hurts-royalty-free-image/1500791667?phrase=love+hurts&adppopup=true">Irina Marwan</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Absence makes the heart grow fonder. All you need is love. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.</p>
<p>If cliches and pop songs are anything to go by, humans spend a substantial portion of waking and sleeping hours thinking and dreaming about the pursuit of love – in all its many forms. </p>
<p>But is love all pink hearts, roses and teddy bears – or is there a darker side? Can love, or the absence of love, generate a form of sickness? Can it even lead to lasting physical or mental illness? And is it possible to die of a broken heart?</p>
<h2>Pathological Love</h2>
<p>Love can hurt. Ian McEwan framed a pathological form of affection, leading to obsession in his 1997 novel <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/enduring-love-2004">“Enduring Love”</a>. The central character, Joe, is stalked and harassed by the mentally unwell Jed, following a tragic accident that unites them both. </p>
<p>The condition that McEwan explores so vividly is <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/de-clerambaults-syndrome-in-organic-affective-disorder/CF53A60A1E29C1AF88C13BB038C4B406">erotomania</a>, which was described by de Clerembault in 1942, and the syndrome still bears his name today. It describes the delusional but unwavering belief of being secretly but nonetheless intensely loved by another person. </p>
<p>De Clerembault was not the first person to notice these symptoms. They appear even in the words of Hippocrates, described as a form of unrequited love. The condition has seen a renaissance, over the past three centuries, shifting from unanswered love to sex addiction, to its current standing of delusions of love. </p>
<p>There are many true life examples of erotomania documented in the press. Like in “Enduring Love”, the condition can have murderous undertones. In 1981, John Hinckley Jr was arrested and institutionalised for attempting to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan. His motive? An attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had become obsessed. </p>
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<h2>I love Paris in the springtime</h2>
<p>Love, or perceptions of love for material objects or places rather than individuals might also be enough to trigger psychiatric illness. </p>
<p>Take the observations of Stendhal, the pseudonym of 19th century Frenchman Marie-Henri Beyle. Stendhal was not a psychiatrist, but a writer, who found himself overcome by the <a href="https://www.scielo.br/j/anp/a/3yRYFFQsTRBfhjCzGPjnsNm/?lang=en">beauty of Florence</a> when travelling there in 1817. Both art and architecture – such as the statue of Michaelangelo’s David or the Basilica of Santa Croce - were overwhelming enough to induce dizziness, palpitations, even fainting episodes in both Stendhal and in many other <a href="https://casereports.bmj.com/content/2009/bcr.06.2008.0317.long">Florentine tourists</a> since. A resident psychiatrist recounted many observations of the cluster of symptoms during her time at the local hospital.</p>
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<p>Stendhal syndrome lacks the evidence to be classified formally as a disease – but visits to other cities can also induce similar symptoms. Anyone who seen depictions of Paris in film and fiction, as a city dripping with romance, fantasy and allure, often form a detailed and exciting image of it in their mind.</p>
<p>For many tourists, Paris lives up to these expectations, and more. For others, unfortunately not – leading to a condition known as Paris Syndrome. Realising that the city and its residents don’t conform to their preconceived ideas can prove too great a disappointment for some, who can suffer from a severe form of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/france/paris/paris-syndrome-france-b2481464.html">culture shock</a>; sweating, racing heart, nausea and vomiting, even hallucinations may ensue. </p>
<h2>Too many broken hearts in the world</h2>
<p>For centuries, romance novels have included the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KtIFRJXo9XYC&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=broken+heart+trope+romance+&ots=pebYRUqrIt&sig=29yj9D3-kaOp_H7cTlV3nOKa2OU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">trope of the tragic</a> brokenhearted character, wasting away because of lost love – but is there science to back up this claim? </p>
<p>Well, yes. The term broken heart syndrome applies to a genuine cardiac condition – <a href="https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiomyopathy/takotsubo-cardiomyopathy">Takotsubo cardiomyopathy</a>. This rare condition can generate patterns of acute heart failure, appearing in signs and symptoms, and even in blood tests and ECG (or electrocardiogram – the electrical tracing of cardiac function) to be a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. </p>
<p><a href="https://nataliemeister.ch/TAKOTSUBO">Takotsubo</a>, in case you were wondering, is a specialised Japanese fishing pot used to fish for octopus, to which the ballooned and dysfunctional heart bears a close resemblance.</p>
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<p>The underlying cause of <a href="https://heart.bmj.com/content/103/18/1461.long">broken heart syndrome?</a> Severe stress – from the emotional upheaval of a relationship break up, or <a href="https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiomyopathy/takotsubo-cardiomyopathy">death of a loved one</a>. It is an example of how psychologically driven stress can impact upon the body physically. The biological response which helps our bodies to respond to stressors causes the release of <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/catecholamines">catecholamine hormones</a> – among them, adrenaline. The raised levels of adrenaline have been proposed as an underlying cause of broken heart syndrome – a link between heart and mind – though more research is required to tell for sure. </p>
<p>The good news is that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32039951/">broken heart syndrome is treatable</a>, using the same medications as are used for a heart attack, and in the vast majority of cases is a reversible phenomenon. </p>
<p>Love really is all around, and has more consequences for health and wellbeing than you might think. The brain and heart are inextricably linked, and conditions of each give us insight into the complexity of love and its effect on our bodies and minds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Baumgardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Love conquers all… apart from obsession, heart break or those seriously disappointed with Paris
Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222115
2024-02-13T10:30:46Z
2024-02-13T10:30:46Z
Forget flowers, the greatest gift for 18th century romantics was the heart of a deceased lover
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571688/original/file-20240126-19-6pzd9u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C22%2C1310%2C1191&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sigismunda Mourning Over the Heart of Guiscardo by William Hogarth (1759).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-sigismunda-mourning-over-the-heart-of-guiscardo-n01046">Tate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every Valentine’s Day, we’re inundated with hearts. We purchase cards with hearts and heart-shaped balloons. We wear clothing with hearts and adorn ourselves with heart-shaped jewellery. We ingest heart-shaped foods and candies and send heart emojis in texts. </p>
<p>While we may fall victim to Valentine’s Day commodification and heart-logo mania, there was a time in our not too distant past when actual human hearts were cherished, preserved, worn or placed in <a href="https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/rpr/index.php/object-biography-index/19-prmcollection/75-human-heart-in-a-heart-shaped-cist-18845718.html">special urns</a> and enshrined.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823776/death-and-the-body-in-the-eighteenth-century-novel/">My research</a> into 18th century preservation practices led me to a favourite book that details these heart histories of the famous and infamous: historian Charles Bradford’s quirky tome, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Heart_Burial.html?id=1kxQnwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Heart Burial</a> (1933).</p>
<p>Amazingly sweeping and entertaining, the book narrates the heart journeys of many – primarily western – military, religious and political figures. One such figure, the diplomat Sir William Temple (1628-1699), is buried next to his wife in Westminster Abbey. </p>
<p>But in his will, he directed his heart “be buried in a silver box under a sundial in the garden of Moor Park, near Farnham, Surrey, opposite his favourite window-seat overlooking the garden he had loved so well”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A silver heart cardiotaph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571692/original/file-20240126-17-2qdcxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A silver heart cardiotaph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://thebookofdays.com/months/oct/images/silver_heart.jpg">Book of Days</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One haunting entry describes William King (1684-1763), the principal of St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, who requested his heart be placed in a silver urn and deposited in St Mary’s Hall Chapel. There, the book says: “A curious sound of tapping [can be] heard before midnight … said to be caused by the beating of his heart.”</p>
<p>In 2015, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167988">five 17th-century embalmed hearts</a> in heart-shaped and engraved urns were found buried under the Convent of the Jacobins in Rennes, France. </p>
<p>Archaeologists identified one of the hearts as that of Toussaint de Perrien who, in a loving gesture, had his heart placed in a cardiotaph (a heart-shaped lead urn) and buried with his wife, Louise de Quengo. </p>
<p>The practice of preserving the heart – the ancient symbol of the soul and emotion – was not uncommon. But for people in the 18th century, as this case and others show, it also symbolised lovers being united in death.</p>
<h2>Literary hearts</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most storied literary heart is that of poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Shelley died tragically just shy of 30 years old, drowning when his boat, the Don Juan, was wrecked during a storm off the coast of Italy.</p>
<p>Shelley’s body, along with that of two companions, washed ashore in the Gulf of Spezia ten days later. Italian law required the cremation of a drowning victim’s body, so Shelley’s corpse was laid upon a funeral pyre on the shores of the sea, with literary luminaries such as Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt in attendance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of men dressed in black watching body on funeral pyre on a beach" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571684/original/file-20240126-19-2podus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier (1889).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artifact/funeral-of-shelley">National Museum Liverpool</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Novelist <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Recollections_of_the_Last_Days_of_Shelle/5IAOAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">Edward John Trelawney’s graphic account</a> of extracting Shelley’s calcified heart cemented the morbidly romantic legend. Kept in spirits by Hunt, the heart was eventually returned to Shelley’s wife, the novelist Mary Shelley, who kept it in a desk drawer the remainder of her life. </p>
<p>The year after her own death, the heart was discovered in her desk, wrapped in a silk bag and surrounded by the pages of Adonais, Percy’s elegy to John Keats. The Shelleys’ son, Sir Percy Florence, had his father’s heart encased in silver and placed on display at Boscombe Manor. Upon his death in 1889, the heart was laid to rest in the family vault at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth.</p>
<h2>Hungry hearts</h2>
<p>While the story of Shelley’s heart has a poetically morbid romance, Napoleon’s storied heart has quite an unromantic ending. </p>
<p>In May 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte’s corpse was autopsied over two days before it was to be transported from St Helena to France. Napoleon had requested his intestines be preserved and given to his son, and his heart be sent to his wife Empress Marie-Louise.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Napoleonic_Anecdotes/Nko2AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=napoleon%27s+heart&pg=PA285&printsec=frontcover">Legend</a> has it that following the first day of the embalming process, Napoleon’s valet awakened the surgeon to inform him that the <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alte_Liebe_rostet_nicht-IMG_0572.jpg">notorious rats of St Helena</a> had eaten Napoleon’s heart (which had been placed under a sheet with Napoleon’s body). Allegedly, the surgeon requested a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Academy_and_Literature/3JG4oRRTNJIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=napoleon%27s+embalmed+heart&pg=PA318&printsec=frontcover">sheep’s heart</a> replace Napoleon’s without anyone being the wiser.</p>
<p>When rumours circulated in January 1928 regarding the heart of renowned English novelist Thomas Hardy, many were in disbelief. Hardy’s ashes were to be placed in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. But first, his widow had requested that his body be dissected so that his heart could be removed and placed in a custom-made brass urn and <a href="https://dorset-ancestors.com/?cat=206">buried at St Michael’s Church, Stinsford</a>, near Dorchester. </p>
<p>Unbelievably, the surgeon who performed the autopsy placed the heart in Mrs Hardy’s biscuit tin, a temporary resting place until the funeral director, Charles Hannah, was to arrive the next day with the bespoke receptacle. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Florence Hardy by the sea" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571685/original/file-20240126-23-m5qnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Florence Hardy, Thomas Hardy’s wife, requested the separate burial of his heart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/photoneg/oneITEM.asp?pid=39002036247386&iid=3624738&srchtype=">Yale University</a></span>
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<p>When Hannah arrived and noticed the upturned tin, with most of the heart missing, he supposedly strangled Cobby, the guilty culprit – and Hardy’s favourite Persian cat. Placing the dead cat with the remainder of the <a href="https://westdorsetconfidential.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/ardys-eart-and-the-hungry-cat/">heart in a box</a>, he left the Hardy residence, surrounded by mourners, and proceeded to St Michael’s where the contents were buried.</p>
<p>While heart preservation and burials still occur today – mainly for those requesting the ancient tradition of being buried in the Holy Land, or other places of religious significance – for most, this sentimental and morbid practice has died out.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is one of the reasons that at this time of year we frantically obsess over everything heart-shaped – a symbolic gesture to a lost tradition emblazoned on our collective conscious by our romantic forbears. Though Napoleon’s and Hardy’s storied hearts also serve as reminders, perhaps, that we shouldn’t take romantic traditions too seriously.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jolene Zigarovich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Novelist Mary Shelley kept the heart of her deceased husband, the poet Percy Shelley, in her desk drawer.
Jolene Zigarovich, Associate Professor of English, University of Northern Iowa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223374
2024-02-12T16:26:26Z
2024-02-12T16:26:26Z
Ten of the best romantic films to watch this Valentine’s Day
<p>The shape of love and romance seems to be an ever-evolving facet of the human experience, but somehow the marketer’s dream of Valentine’s Day never seems to move beyond cliché. However the nature of love and the portrayal of different kinds of relationships have always been explored on film, right from the early days of “talkies”.</p>
<p>So if we must indulge in Valentine’s Day, let’s do it with ten very different romantic films that examine the variety of configurations of this most human of conditions. From throuples, to “just friends”, to the unforgettable blush of first love and the one that got away, there’s something here for everyone.</p>
<h2>1. The definitive romantic comedy: When Harry Met Sally … (1989)</h2>
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<p>Written by the late great <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/27/nora-ephron-biography-sleepless-in-seattle">Nora Ephron</a>, who made her name writing and later directing iconic romantic comedies such as Sleepless in Seattle, this film shows something that many romantic comedies often don’t: time. Taking place over 12 years, the film asks the question “Can men and women ever just be friends?” At first glance, the film’s ending might seem to say “no.” But another, perhaps more positive way of interpreting the ending is that true friendship is the bedrock for lasting romance. </p>
<h2>2. Longing for longing: Call Me By Your Name (2017)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/763949215">Luca Guadagnino’s</a> queer masterpiece captures the delicate feelings of love as it begins. The film is intimate and well-observed, capturing the difficulties and discoveries of young love, particularly how emotionally overwhelming it can be. The affection between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) often goes unspoken, but is communicated in other ways. In one crucial scene, dancing expresses what is hard to say aloud, making the film an iconic modern tale of queer romance.</p>
<h2>3. For the poly-curious: Design For Living (1933)</h2>
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<p>It’s the classic love story: boys meet girl, girl cannot decide between them, boys and girl agree to live together. <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/polycule-polyamourous-relationship-meaning.html">Polyamory</a> – forms of non-monogomous relationships – may feel like a modern phenomenon given its recent <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/how-polyamorous-relationships-work-ethical-non-monogamous-rules.html">media attention</a>, but <a href="http://lubitsch.com/biography.html">Ernst Lubitsch’s</a> 1933 classic romantic comedy demonstrates that relationships outside of monogamous marriage have always been on our radar. The film was released during the “<a href="https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/pre-code-hollywood-movies/">pre-code Hollywood era</a>” (1929-1934) and skirts around the principles of the <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/early-hollywood-and-hays-code/">Hays code</a>, a list of censorship guidelines that would be soon be introduced, but which were not yet rigorously enforced. Design For Living still surprises to this day with its subtly risqué and humorous examination of diverse forms of romantic relationships.</p>
<h2>4. For the anxiously analytical: Modern Romance (1981)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.albertbrooks.com/about/">Albert Brooks</a> is one of the great all-time analysts of the modern condition, and this film is no different. Co-written, directed and starring Brooks, Modern Romance explores the agonising question: “is this truly the one?” Caught between his anxious tendencies and a sense of self-importance, Bob (Brooks) has an on-again, off-again relationship with Mary (Kathryn Harrold), in which his insecure but controlling nature escalates, making for a hilarious film. </p>
<h2>5. The soundtrack to great love and grand gestures: Moulin Rouge! (2001)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Baz-Luhrmann">Baz Luhrmann’s</a> jukebox musical gives us two kinds of romance. The romance between Christian (Ewan McGregor) and Satine (Nicole Kidman) is a classic love story, but this tale also captures romance in another sense, that of <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm">Romanticism</a>, an art movement emerging in Europe that prioritised emotional truth. Like Luhrmann’s <a href="https://www.goldderby.com/gallery/baz-luhrmann-best-movies-ranked/">other works</a>, Moulin Rouge! is the story of an artist coming into their craft through life experience, in this case, romantic love. </p>
<h2>6. Love from a political angle: Tongues Untied (1989)</h2>
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<p>“Brother to brother, brother to brother.” Rapid-fire dialogue begins and ends this poetic documentary by black gay filmmaker <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/marlon-riggs">Marlon Riggs</a>. As the film’s poster declares, this film is about black men loving black men. The film analyses how <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-012-0152-4">overlapping systems of privilege and oppression</a> affect marginalised groups. It examines how black gay men are often excluded from gay communities, which have historically been white-centered, while also being excluded from heterosexual society. In its poetic merging of documentary footage, poetry, dance and autobiography, Tongues Untied illustrates that black men loving black men is in itself an act of defiance and resilience.</p>
<h2>7. The charm of first love: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)</h2>
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<p>Working at an elderly care centre over the summer, two teens forge a bond that blooms into first love. But both also have anxieties that stand in the way: Cherry around speaking in public, Smile around her buck teeth. <a href="https://www.animeboston.com/guest/guest_details/234">Kyohei Ishiguro’s</a> Anime romance warms the heart and make you yearn for the warmth of both summer and that blush of first love. </p>
<h2>8. Love in a relatable mid-life crisis: Crossing Delancey (1988)</h2>
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<p>Isabelle (Amy Irving) is a bookstore clerk who admires the world of literary elites in New York. While she has eyes for the new big-name author in town, her grandmother has other plans, working to set Isabelle up with a local pickle salesman. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/14/joan-micklin-silver-obituary-crossing-delancey">Joan Micklin Silver’s</a> film perfectly captures the aspirational feelings of anyone in their twenties or thirties, while also examining distinct New York groups that Isabelle is torn between: the elite <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/152533/death-wasp-elite-greatly-exaggerated">WASP-y</a> literary circles and the <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/orthodox-judaism/">Orthodox Jewish community</a>.</p>
<h2>9. The throwback romantic comedy: Down With Love (2003)</h2>
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<p>Taking inspiration from classic 1950s and 1960s romantic comedies of Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall, Down with Love is about two writers whose pride and ambitions clash in classic romantic comedy fashion. Featuring sizzling performances by Rene Zellweger and Ewan McGregor – with hilarious turns by David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson and Tony Randall himself – director <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/silencio_por_favor">Peyton Reed</a> twists the romantic comedy formula to great effect, making for a colourful, fun and feisty film.</p>
<h2>10. The bittersweet romance: Past Lives (2023)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/oscar-nominees-2024-past-lives-spotlights-the-pull-of-first-love-alongside-the-yearning-for-glory-221574">Nominated</a> for best picture and best original screenplay at the 2024 Academy Awards, Past Lives rounds out this list as a bittersweet triumph. <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/celine-song-past-lives-interview-2023">Celine Song’s</a> gentle film charts the relationship of two people as they meet throughout their lives. Full of tender romance, bring some tissues for this affecting film.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223374/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Ristola does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Big classic romcoms feature alongside some rather more unexpected entries in our special Valentine’s movie list.
Jacqueline Ristola, Lecturer in Digital Animation, Department of Film & Television, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222791
2024-02-12T13:58:38Z
2024-02-12T13:58:38Z
Five fun fashion Valentine’s gifts from history – from eye rings to hair jewellery
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573438/original/file-20240205-27-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C4%2C792%2C592&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woman At Her Toilette by Berthe Morisot (c. 1875–1880).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/11723/woman-at-her-toilette">Art Institute of Chicago</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Poets, philosophers and scientists have all struggled to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00926230590478005">define love</a>. But when words fail to express our feelings, lovers throughout history have turned to gifts. Whether given as part of a public romantic gesture, or in the quiet intimacy of a private moment, romantic gifts are a longstanding staple of romantic expression.</p>
<p>In 2024, Valentine’s gift-giving is a commercial goldmine for retailers. Popular choices for a romantic gift might include an evening out, a heart-shaped box of chocolates or a classic bunch of red roses. But <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gCBtDwAAQBAJ&">research shows</a> that, if you really want to impress your sweetheart, jewellery and fashion accessories are the best options. </p>
<p>It is estimated that USD<a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/285034/us-valentine-s-day-sales-by-category/">$6.5 billion</a> (£5bn) will be spent on Valentine’s Day bling in the US alone in 2024, while a further $3bn will be splashed out on clothing, such as lingerie.</p>
<p>This commercialisation of love may seem like a very modern phenomenon of our capitalist age, but jewellery and fashion accessories have been popular tokens of love for centuries. </p>
<p>I’m a fashion historian. Here are five historical ways you could show that yours is a love for the ages with a gift of jewellery or fashion this Valentine’s Day. </p>
<h2>1. Sexy underwear, the Georgian way</h2>
<p>Today, corsets are associated with titillating lingerie. The corset’s predecessor, stays (fully boned laces bodices), were just a functional part of everyday dress for the Stuarts and Georgians, but they could still have romantic features.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/busk/">busk</a> was a long piece of wood, which slipped inside a channel at the front of the stays. It’s practical purpose was the keep the front of the garment straight, but people also found more intimate and romantic uses for them.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a golden busk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=72&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=72&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=72&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=91&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=91&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573456/original/file-20240205-17-xearsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=91&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 17th century French busk with the inscription: ‘until I see you again … my love is pure’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84187">Met Museum</a></span>
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<p>Engraved with love poems, depictions of hearts, and sometimes even verses euphemistically <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0424.12066">referring to orgasms</a>, these busks were often given as romantic gifts. Positioned between the breasts, the engraved rhymes often expressed jealousy for the busk, which got to intimately rest in the recipient’s cleavage. </p>
<p>One busk from 17th-century France was engraved: “He enjoys sweet sighs, this lover / Who would very much like to take my place.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-die-where-i-cling-garters-and-busks-inscribed-with-love-notes-were-the-sexy-lingerie-of-the-past-154645">'I die where I cling': garters and 'busks' inscribed with love notes were the sexy lingerie of the past</a>
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<h2>2. Lovers’ eyes</h2>
<p>Georgian lovers did not always conceal their love tokens in their underwear. Eye miniatures, also known as lovers’ eyes, were rings, brooches or pendants decorated with miniature paintings of a romantic partner’s eye. These were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2006.10786302">gifted between lovers</a> as a wearable symbol of their love.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="painting of an eye surrounded by pearls" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573435/original/file-20240205-17-pvinwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An eye miniature from the early 19th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1067812/eye-miniature-unknown/">Victoria and Albert Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/97/MAT.6.22-23.MSG#:%7E:text=22%2D23%20MSG-,%22Your%20eyes%20are%20windows%20into%20your%20body.,body%20is%20a%20musty%20cellar.">Bible says</a> that the eyes are the window to the soul, and the lover’s eye was considered an incredibly intimate form of portrait. Yet it was also very secretive and caused tantalising gossip. Much speculation ensued about who was wearing whose eye.</p>
<h2>3. Lockets</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ring showing two Tudor portraits." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573431/original/file-20240205-21-3o9uke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elizabeth I’s locket ring, known as the Chequers Ring.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/3370875783/">Ann Longmore-Etheridge/flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another popular way of keeping a secret lover close to the heart was the locket. </p>
<p>Early lockets often expressed religious devotion and familial connection, rather than romantic love. Queen Elizabeth I, for example, wore a locket ring containing portraits of herself and her mother, Ann Boleyn (although <a href="https://open.conted.ox.ac.uk/sites/open.conted.ox.ac.uk/files/resources/Create%20Document/The%20Role%20of%20Emblems%20in%20Elizabethan%20Culture_Mariona%20Ponce%20Bochaca.pdf">some historians argue</a> it could be her stepmother, Catherine Parr).</p>
<p>With the rise of mass manufacture in the 19th century, lockets became a cheaply available and widespread love token for the masses. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2YAXe5_y3IIC&">new technology</a> of photography also meant that placing a picture of your loved one inside the locket did not require the expensive commissioning of a portrait painter.</p>
<h2>4. Hair jewellery</h2>
<p>The practice of cutting a lock of your lover’s hair and wearing it in a locket close to your heart was historically widespread, but the Victorians took this trend even further.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="hair in a locket" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573433/original/file-20240205-17-egj60x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hair locket from 1795.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mrs._Gabriel_Manigault_(Margaret_Izard)_MET_DP169297.jpg">Metropolitan Museum of Art</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17496772.2019.1620429">Hair jewellery</a> – ornaments made from strands of human hair – was incredibly popular in 19th century Britain.</p>
<p>While there were also commercial hair jewellery makers, some women crafted rings, bracelets and watch chains out of their lover’s hair at home. Elegant Arts for Ladies, a book containing instructions for crafts that women might try at home, was published in 1856 and even contains instructions for making earrings out of your lover’s hair.</p>
<p>Professional hair-work services came under increasing suspicion in the 19th century. Customers sent in the hair of their lover or family member expecting it to be crafted into a beautiful keepsake. Yet with increasing commercial demands, some manufacturers turned to mass production, and the item returned was sometimes <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Relics_of_Death_in_Victorian_Literature/ugJEBgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">fraudulently made</a> from a stranger’s hair.</p>
<h2>5. Posey rings</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most timeless of all wearable tokens of love is the posey ring. These simple gold bands, engraved with a romantic inscription, were consistently popular from the Medieval period. Their name comes from the French, <em>poésy</em> (poetry), referring to the words engraved inside.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Gold ring with inscription inside" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573434/original/file-20240205-23-uzx7tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 16th century gold posy ring found in Yorkshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2006_T101c,_gold_posy_ring_with_double_row_inscription_inside_from_Buttercrambe_with_Bossall,_North_Yorkshire_(FindID_216018).jpg">The Portable Antiquities Scheme</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The inscriptions in these rings were often taken from published compendiums of sayings, such as The Mysteries of Love or the Arts of Wooing, published in 1658. Sometimes, these inscriptions were touching and romantic, but often they had <a href="https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O118545/ring-unknown/">religious overtones</a>, such as a 17th century example engraved with: “Fear God and love me.”</p>
<p>Romantic bling remains a timeless choice of Valentine’s gift, and the posey ring is still alive and well in the modern wedding band. Although it is doubtful that the wooden busk and hair-work jewellery will come back in fashion any time soon.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Serena Dyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Jewellery and fashion accessories have been popular tokens of love for centuries.
Serena Dyer, Associate Professor, Fashion History, De Montfort University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222480
2024-02-12T13:26:11Z
2024-02-12T13:26:11Z
Are you really in love? How expanding your love lexicon can change your relationships and how you see yourself
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574485/original/file-20240208-20-i320ao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1732%2C1732&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Language can steer your heart in unexpected ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/heart-with-speech-bubbles-royalty-free-illustration/639561892">VLADGRIN/Stock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is love? Could those feelings you label as love be something else? </p>
<p>What about infatuation? Obsession? A passing fancy? Being smitten? Enthrallment? Beguilement? Lust? A crush? A <a href="https://medium.com/@caitlin_murphy/whats-a-squish-cb07ce59adc1">squish</a>? Platonic admiration? Why do people categorize some attachments as romantic love but not others? </p>
<p>Suppose Holly meets someone on vacation. They quickly become romantically and sexually intimate and seem deeply compatible. Holly is from the U.K., where the term “<a href="https://www.oed.com/dictionary/holiday-romance_n">holiday romance</a>” is commonly used and part of her vocabulary. Because she knows this term, she can apply its social scaffolding to this relationship. She understands that the rapid emotional intimacy and apparent compatibility she experienced likely sprang from <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/36-questions-to-fall-in-love-arthur-aron-holiday-romance/">fleeting circumstances</a> that aren’t meant to last. </p>
<p>Someone from the U.S., however, where this term is <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holiday-romance">rarely used</a>, might more easily interpret this rapid intimacy as a sign of deep, significant lifelong compatibility.</p>
<p>Judging that you are in love <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-love-feel-magical-its-an-evolutionary-advantage-180443">can be powerful</a>. It can affect your feelings, relationships and even your sexuality. But how do people judge whether they are in love?</p>
<p>This, I argue, depends on your <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">linguistic community</a>. That is, how the people around you talk about romance, relationships and attraction. </p>
<p>I am a philosopher who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=M5Vxs_cAAAAJ&hl=en">studies categorization schemas</a> – how, when and why people label things such as emotions, sexuality and health. I examine the effects of those labels on how people understand themselves and on their well-being, and how alternative taxonomies and labels can make people understand and shape the world differently. </p>
<p>What happens when a culture instills a broader, more encompassing definition of love, or a narrower, more restrictive definition? How does having a richer vocabulary of words in the neighborhood of love change how we understand it?</p>
<h2>The social scaffolding of words</h2>
<p>Self-ascriptions of love <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">depend on two things</a>. The first are introspective judgments about your feelings: Are you attracted to the person? Energized by them? Nervous around them? And the second is what you think love is: Does love require caring about the person? Thinking about them a lot? Sexual attraction? When how you feel about a person and what you think love is match up, you self-ascribe love. That is, you judge that you are in love. </p>
<p>Words provide social scaffolding. That is, they create expectations and norms that steer how you behave and react to other people. And vocabularies vary by culture and era.</p>
<p>Categorizing an attachment as a “holiday romance” doesn’t just describe it but can also change its course. The label affects what Holly notices and values about the time she spends together with another person and whether she is inclined to pursue a long-term relationship.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-language-we-translate-our-thoughts-into-words-but-words-also-affect-the-way-we-think-111801">Vocabulary is empowering</a>. Having an even more expansive vocabulary would allow Holly to experiment with different labels, and these could shape her relationships in different ways. </p>
<p>For example, the term “<a href="https://www.theheartradio.org/season1/thehurricane">eintagsliebe</a>,” based on the German word for “mayfly” and translating to “one day’s love,” refers to an intense and brief relationship. “<a href="https://poly.land/2021/08/31/what-are-comet-relationships/">Comet lovers</a>” have a deep romantic bond but see each other only intermittently, living far apart the rest of the time without much contact. A “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=holibae">holibae</a>” is a perennial date that happens only when you’re visiting home for the holidays. See also “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Post%2FZip%20Code%20Rule">zipcoding</a>” – dating someone only when you’re both in the same ZIP code.</p>
<h2>The dictionary of polyamory</h2>
<p>Words create possibilities, and the recent surge of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-polycule-an-expert-on-polyamory-explains-195083">interest in polyamory</a>, or having more than one romantic relationship at a time, has introduced substantial amounts of <a href="https://www.readyforpolyamory.com/polyamory-glossary">new vocabulary</a>.</p>
<p>An “anchor partner” is a central figure in your romantic life. A “nesting partner” is a partner you live with. And a “satellite partner” has emotional and physical distance from your home. Vocabularies sculpted by traditional monogamous relationships might not distinguish between these types of attachments because they see non-cohabitating partnerships only as <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a41443281/relationship-escalator/">temporary transition phases</a> that end by breaking up or become serious by moving in.</p>
<p>By rejecting the mainstream social scaffolding about relationships, polyamory creates the <a href="https://blog.franklinveaux.com/2017/12/an-update-to-the-map-of-non-monogamy/">need for more terms</a> to describe innovative relationship structures. And those words in turn create more possibilities for how polyamorous people interpret and structure their attachments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Backs of group of people with their arms links around each other, backlit by the sun" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574493/original/file-20240208-26-zsfx3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Polyamory has inspired new vocabulary to describe nontraditional relationship structures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/low-angle-view-of-friends-with-arm-around-standing-royalty-free-image/961358016">Cavan Images/Cavan via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201910/new-relationship-energy-what-it-is-how-deal-it">New relationship energy</a>” is the buzzing excitement of a new relationship. “<a href="https://polywithabigheart.com/2020/01/27/established-relationship-energy/">Established relationship energy</a>” is the comfort of a stable, long-term relationship. These emotions are especially salient within polyamorous relationships, where the excitement of a new relationship can arise alongside the comfort of preexisting relationships. </p>
<p>But monogamous relationships also benefit from these linguistic innovations. Monogamous relationships might also involve new relationship energy, established relationship energy, and nesting, anchor and satellite partnerships, even if they aren’t labeled as such. Such self-understandings affect the values, emotions, commitments and beliefs people use to forge relationships.</p>
<h2>Conceptual tourism</h2>
<p>Conceptual schemas, or the words and concepts we have for understanding ourselves and the world around us, have <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">permissive flexibility</a>: People can disagree about what words like “love,” “crush” and “bi-curious” mean. Disagreement doesn’t mean that someone is wrong. Rather, flexibility allows us to explore different ways to understand the world and ourselves. We can be conceptual tourists.</p>
<p>Suppose Nell develops an ambiguous attachment to a new classmate. She finds her charming, witty and pretty, but it isn’t a clear-cut case of romantic attraction. Nell can adopt a broad or narrow definition of the word “crush,” depending on whether her feelings meet how she defines a “crush.” Altering what she means by a “crush” would change whether she labels herself as having a crush. This, in turn, could affect whether Nell sees herself as queer or straight.</p>
<p>If she knows other terms to describe her feelings, Nell might interpret them as “<a href="https://www.choosingtherapy.com/types-of-attraction/">alterous attraction</a>,” which is the desire for emotional intimacy in a way that is neither platonic nor romantic. She might seek a “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bound-together/202109/queerplatonic-relationships-new-term-old-custom">queerplatonic relationship</a>,” which resembles a conventional romantic relationship but without sex or conventional romance. Or, if her feelings are intense, Nell might self-ascribe “<a href="https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=psych_fac">limerence</a>,” which is obsessive infatuation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people sitting back to back on grass, hands loosely intertwined" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574487/original/file-20240208-28-blh1vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How you label your feelings toward someone influences how you interpret them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/couple-holding-hands-royalty-free-image/1209086354">Johner Images/Johner Images Royalty-Free via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">Self-ascribing labels</a> affects what people notice about themselves, how they interpret their feelings and what they appreciate about their attachments. What she pays attention to <a href="https://philarchive.org/rec/GARAOT-11">fuels particular emotions</a> and can bolster certain attitudes, like profound gratitude, that might distinguish love from crushes. </p>
<p>For example, if Nell interprets herself as having a crush, she may become more attuned to the excitement she feels around her classmate, which can fuel those emotions in a feedback loop. If she labels her feelings as platonic admiration, she might <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7snpw.8">instead interpret</a> herself as being nervous about impressing her new classmate. </p>
<p>Nell can experimentally adopt different labels – alterous attraction, queer, crush, limerence, straight and more – to see which fit best. Some labels might better match her emotions. And those labels might also change her emotions and become <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-6740420">self-fulfilling prophecies</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GARWFT">Conceptual tourism</a> can be a valuable cognitive skill. It requires the mental dexterity to inhabit rival <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190860974.003.0002">conceptual schemas</a> and try on new interpretative terms. Doing so can increase your self-understanding, cultivate self-determination and even help steer your heart. </p>
<p>Culture unavoidably provides a lexicon of attachment that shapes how you relate to other people. A culture that is more <a href="https://www.bonn-institute.org/en/news/psychology-in-journalism-2">deliberate about the words</a> it uses for different kinds of attraction can help people bond in new and more open-minded ways. </p>
<p>It’s also a great motivator for education: Learning new words can help you improve your love life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222480/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgi Gardiner receives funding from the University of Tennessee. She has previously received funding from the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS). </span></em></p>
Words have power, and what vocabulary you have at your disposal to describe your relationships with other people can shape what directions those relationships can take.
Georgi Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of the University of Tennessee Humanities Center (UTHC), University of Tennessee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221728
2024-02-09T13:35:44Z
2024-02-09T13:35:44Z
Love may be timeless, but the way we talk about it isn’t − the ancient Greeks’ ideas about desire challenge modern-day readers, lovers and even philosophers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574185/original/file-20240207-31-3xrj56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1022%2C790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The love story of Psyche and Eros − also known as Cupid − has survived since the days of Rome and Greece.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/stature-of-cupid-and-psyche-embracing-from-the-villa-news-photo/517391898?adppopup=true">Bettman via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year as Valentine’s Day approaches, people remind themselves that not all expressions of love fit the stereotypes of modern romance. V-Day cynics might plan <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2023/02/02/when-is-galentines-day-2023/11154837002/">a “Galentines” night for female friends</a> or toast their platonic “Palentines” instead.</p>
<p>In other words, the holiday shines a cold light on the limits of our romantic imaginations, which hew to a familiar script. Two people are supposed to meet, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-underestimate-cupid-hes-not-the-chubby-cherub-you-associate-with-valentines-day-197735">the arrows of Cupid</a> strike them unwittingly, and they have no choice but to fall in love. They face obstacles, they overcome them, and then they run into each other’s arms. Love is a delightful sport, and neither reason nor the gods have anything to do with it. </p>
<p>This model of romance flows from Roman poetry, medieval chivalry and Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare. But as <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/david-albertson/">a professor of religion</a>, I study an alternative vision of eros: medieval Christian mystics who viewed the body’s desires as immediately and inescapably linked to God, reason and sometimes even suffering. </p>
<p>Yet this way of thinking about love has even older roots. </p>
<p>My favorite class to teach traces connections between eros and transcendence, starting with ancient Greek literature. Centuries before Christianity, the Greeks had their own ideas about desire. Erotic love was not a pleasant diversion, but a high-stakes trial to be survived, quivering with perilous energy. These poets’ and philosophers’ ideas can stimulate our thinking today – and perhaps our loving as well.</p>
<h2>Deadly serious</h2>
<p>For the ancient Greeks, <a href="https://outils.biblissima.fr/fr/eulexis-web/?lemma=eros&dict=LSJ">eros</a> – which could be translated as “yearning” or “passionate desire” – was a matter of life and death, even a danger to avoid. </p>
<p>In the tragedies of Sophocles, when someone feels eros, typically something is about to go terribly wrong, if it hasn’t already.</p>
<p>Take “Antigone,” <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo14823116.html">written in Athens in the fifth century B.C.E</a>. The play opens with the title character mourning the death of her brother Polyneices, who betrayed her father and killed her other brother in battle. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a white dress and black shawl throws her arms up dramatically in front of stern-looking soldiers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574181/original/file-20240207-28-emp3fw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joan Maria Grovin stars as Antigone in a 1959 broadcast production in Munich.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/szene-mit-joan-maria-grovin-als-antigone-in-dem-news-photo/1198737763?adppopup=true">Klaus Heirler/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After this civil war, King Creon, Antigone’s uncle, forbids citizens from burying Polyneices: an insult to his memory, but also a violation of the city’s religion. When Antigone insists on burying him anyway, she is condemned to death.</p>
<p>The play is often interpreted as a lesson on duty: Creon executing the laws of the state versus Antigone defending the laws of the gods. Yet, uncomfortably for modern readers, Antigone’s devotion to Polyneices <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559213.003.0015">seems to be more than sisterly love</a>.</p>
<p>Antigone leaps at the chance to die next to her brother. “Loving, I shall lie with him, yes, with my loved one,” she swears to her law-abiding sister, “when I have dared the crime of piety.” </p>
<p>Were Polyneices her husband, child, parent or even fiancé, Antigone says, she would never have violated the law. But <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo14823116.html">her desire for Polyneices</a> is so great that she is willing to face “marriage to Death.” She compares the cave where Creon buries her alive with the bedroom on a wedding night. Rather than starve, she hangs herself with her own linen veil.</p>
<p>Scholars have asked <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/657289">whether Antigone has too much eros</a> or too little – and what exactly she desires. Does she lust for justice? For piety? For her deceased brother’s body? Her desire is somehow embodied and otherworldly at the same time, calling our own erotic boundaries into question.</p>
<p>Eventually, Creon’s passion for civic order consumes him as well. His son, Antigone’s fiancé, stabs himself in grief as he embraces her corpse – and hearing of this, his mother kills herself as well. <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo14823116.html">Eros races through the royal family</a> like a plague, leveling them all. </p>
<p>No wonder the chorus prays to the goddess of love, pleading for protection from her violent whims. “Who has you within him is mad,” the chorus laments. “You twist the minds of the just.”</p>
<h2>Embrace the risk</h2>
<p>This leads to a second lesson from the Greeks: Love might make you a better person, but it also might not. </p>
<p>Rather than speak in his own voice, the philosopher Plato wrote dialogues starring his teacher, Socrates, who had a lot to say about love and friendship.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://hackettpublishing.com/plato-on-love">one dialogue, “Lysis</a>,” Socrates jokes that if all you want is romantic love, the best plan is to insult your crush until they thirst for attention. In another, “Symposium,” Socrates’ young student Phaedrus imagines an indomitable army entirely comprising people in love. What courage and strength they would show off for each other!</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A scene of seven men in toga-like garments sitting and standing around a tree." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574219/original/file-20240207-18-d0mmy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mosaic of Plato talking with his pupils, found in the house of T. Siminius in Pompeii.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/plato-conversing-with-his-pupils-from-the-house-of-t-news-photo/73217223?adppopup=true">Art Images/Hulton Fine Art Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://hackettpublishing.com/plato-on-love">the “Phaedrus” dialogue</a>, foolish lovers seek a friends-with-benefits arrangement, afraid of the unwieldy passions that come with falling in love. Socrates entertains their question: Is it better to separate affection from sexual entanglements, since the force of desire can erode one’s ethical principles?</p>
<p>His answer is emphatically “No.” For Socrates, sexual attraction steers the soul toward divine goodness and beauty, just as great art or acts of justice can do. </p>
<p>The idea of friends with benefits, he warns, cleaves the ethical self from the erotic self. Here and elsewhere, Plato insists that to be whole people, we must embrace the risks that come with love.</p>
<h2>A necessary madness</h2>
<p>Socrates has one more lesson to teach. Erotic love is indeed a kind of madness – but a madness necessary for wisdom.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://hackettpublishing.com/plato-on-love">“Phaedrus</a>,” Socrates suggests that love is a madness given by the gods, a fire blazing like artistic inspiration or sacred rites. Sexual desire disorients us, but only because it is reorienting lovers toward another world. The “goal of loving,” <a href="https://hackettpublishing.com/plato-on-love">according to one dialogue</a>, is to “catch sight” of pure beauty and goodness. </p>
<p>In erotic longing we bump up against something greater than us, a thread that we can trace back to the divine. And for Socrates, this pathway from eros to God is reason. In desire, a shimmer of light cracks through the broken crust of the material world, inspiring us to yearn for things that last.</p>
<p>The contemporary philosopher <a href="https://socialthought.uchicago.edu/directory/Jean-Luc-Marion">Jean-Luc Marion</a> has suggested that modern academic philosophy has totally failed when it comes to <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo4134284.html">the topic of desire</a>. There are vast subfields devoted to the philosophies of language, mind, law, science and mathematics, yet curiously there is no philosophy of eros.</p>
<p>Like the ancient Greeks and medieval Christians, Marion <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo4134284.html">warns philosophers against assuming that love is irrational</a>. Far from it. If love looks like madness, he says, that’s because it possesses a “greater rationality.”</p>
<p>In the words of another French philosopher, Blaise Pascal: “<a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/06/19/blaise-pascal-intuition-intellect-pensees/">The heart has its reasons</a>, which reason knows nothing of.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221728/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Albertson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Conventional stereotypes about romance portray it as a passionate, irrational game. Ancient philosophers, on the other hand, viewed love as something dangerous − but also enlightening.
David Albertson, Associate Professor of Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222590
2024-02-09T13:33:14Z
2024-02-09T13:33:14Z
Some of the Renaissance’s most romantic love poems weren’t for lovers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574483/original/file-20240208-16-27mgyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C750%2C552&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sonnets still have a reputation for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Codex_Manesse_Bernger_von_Horheim.jpg">AndreasPraefcke/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As poets have demonstrated for centuries, a sonnet for your beloved never goes out of style. The gift of verse may carry extra cachet this Valentine’s Day, on the heels of Taylor Swift’s announcement that <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-tortured-poets-department-track-list-1234962007/">her next album is poetry-themed</a>. </p>
<p>But in carrying out <a href="https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463720274/petrarch-and-the-making-of-gender-in-renaissance-italy">my research on Renaissance literature and gender</a>, I’ve been struck by how many of that period’s love poems were not for lovers.</p>
<p>These sonnets, composed for friends and family, are not just beautiful; they’re also a reminder that love and Valentine’s Day aren’t exclusively for couples.</p>
<h2>The love sonnet is born</h2>
<p>The sonnet was invented in 12th century Italy as a 14-line poem with 11 beats per line and various rhyming patterns. Its originator, Giacomo da Lentini, was a poet in the Kingdom of Sicily who had been inspired by <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-heretical-origins-of-the-sonnet/">older Arabic and French poetry</a>.</p>
<p>But it was the Italian poet <a href="https://poets.org/poet/petrarch">Petrarch</a> who put the form on the map. In the 14th century, he wrote a collection of 366 poems, mostly sonnets. He penned the collection for a woman named Laura, whom he loved from afar in life and after her death.</p>
<p>Petrarch died in 1374, but his poetry became the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Petrarch/tkbVMQEACAAJ?hl=en">most widely published</a> literature of the Italian Renaissance. It was so popular that it inspired generations of poets, imitators known as “Petrarchists.” Petrarchism became a global phenomenon in the 16th and 17th centuries, spreading to Spain, France, England <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo3645653.html">and even the Americas</a>. </p>
<h2>Playing with sonneteering stereotypes</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-wyatt">Thomas Wyatt</a> is thought to have written the first English sonnets, in the early 16th century. His poems strongly relied on Petrarch; some of the best known, like “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/aug/10/poem-of-the-week-thomas-wyatt">Whoso list to hunt</a>,” are quasi-translations of the Italian poet’s work.</p>
<p>Writing <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-poems/#:%7E:text=While%20he%20may%20have%20experimented,writing%20sonnets%20seriously%20around%201592.">a half-century later</a>, Shakespeare changed the form, ending his sonnets with a rhyming couplet, giving birth to the “Shakespearean sonnet.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Title page of a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets featuring a colorful illustration of Shakespeare, flowers and two cherubs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574458/original/file-20240208-18-z1gp8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets were addressed to an unnamed young man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/detail/FOLGERCM1~6~6~1189282~187533:-Songs--Songs-and-sonnets--manuscri?qvq=q:112125&mi=0&trs=1#">Folger Digital Image Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than four centuries after the first printing of Shakepeare’s sonnets in 1609, his poems are still oft quoted. Many valentines will find themselves <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/18/">compared to a summer’s day</a> or swearing there can be no impediments between <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/116/">the marriage of true minds</a>.</p>
<p>Less well known, however, is the fact that half of Shakespeare’s poems were addressed to a young man, an unnamed “<a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/mysterious-identity-fair-youth/">Fair Youth</a>.” Depending on which Shakespeare scholar you ask, the gesture is either platonic, romantic or a little of both. In any case, it introduces an element of queerness, in that there’s homoeroticism and a <a href="https://huntington.org/verso/queerness-shakespeares-sonnets">challenge to what society deems natural</a>.</p>
<p>Yet today the Renaissance sonnet still has a reputation, even among scholars, for being about the unrequited love of a man for a woman. But even before Shakespeare, in Renaissance Italy, the sonnet was a lot more varied than that.</p>
<h2>For friends and lovers</h2>
<p>For starters, even Petrarch wrote about more than just his love for Laura. </p>
<p>A number of his poems were composed for friends, with several of them for the Florentine poet <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/petrarchs-plague/#p-3-0">Sennuccio del Bene</a>. In <a href="https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=113">poem 113</a>, Petrarch writes about returning to the region where Laura was born, but he opens by describing his love for his friend, saying he is only “half” himself without Sennuccio, and that both men would only be “whole” and “happy” if they were together.</p>
<p><a href="https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=287">Poem 287</a> is a sonnet on Sennuccio’s death, in which Petrarch’s mourning is only mitigated by the knowledge that his friend is in heaven with other great poets, like Dante, and the now-deceased Laura. The short poem mixes his love and grief for both people, his beloved and his friend.</p>
<p>Today’s “<a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a26052713/galentines-day/">Galentine’s Day</a>” – a celebration of female friendship – has yet to spawn a male-friendship-centered “<a href="https://theconversation.com/galentines-day-has-become-a-thing-why-hasnt-malentines-day-130862">Malentine’s Day</a>.” </p>
<p>But platonic love between men carried no stigma in the Renaissance. Take the verses of Venetian writers <a href="https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/orsatto-giustinian_(Dizionario-Biografico)/">Orsatto Giustinian</a> and <a href="https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/celio-magno/">Celio Magno</a>, who published their poetry in a single book in 1601. </p>
<p>Magno and Giustinian portray their friendship with the vocabulary of Petrarchan love. <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Rime_di_Celio_Magno_et_Orsatto_Giustinia/SI81w2hdFcMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA160&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22tu%20non%20viui%22">In one sonnet</a>, Magno describes how he hates being separated from his friend, which is almost like being severed from himself: “You do not live, I do not live; together we are far from ourselves in this bitter state.” </p>
<p>At the risk of being the <a href="https://archermagazine.com.au/2021/03/heteronormativity-popular-history/">“and-they-were-roommates” historian</a>, I’ll note that the book also contains passionate poems from Giustinian to his wife, Candiana Garzoni. </p>
<p>That doesn’t cancel out the homoerotic tension in the men’s poems to each other, but it does make classifying their sexuality challenging. And maybe this shouldn’t be the point. If anything, their <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a46410977/broad-city-10th-anniversary-loving-your-best-friend/">romantic friendship</a> seems to skirt simple categories of sexual orientation. </p>
<h2>Sororal sentiment</h2>
<p>Most published writers in Renaissance Italy were men, but a not-insignificant number <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Five-Women-Shaped-Italian-Renaissance/dp/0367533995">were women</a>. Existing in a single copy in a library in Siena, Italy, is a joint poetry collection written by two sisters, Speranza Vittoria and Giulia di Bona. They lived with their mother and four other sisters.</p>
<p>Their sisters Lucrezia and Cassandra both died at a young age. The sonnets that Speranza and Giulia <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ahDhW3sAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=ahDhW3sAAAAJ:Zph67rFs4hoC">composed for them</a> take the sort of heartbreaking imagery used to describe a lost partner, but is repurposed to portray their grief: the swan song, the sun gone dark, the poet’s wish to die in order to be near the object of their love. </p>
<p>In one melancholic poem about Lucrezia’s death, Speranza weeps for the “strange place, dark earth, and bitter stone” that “possess” her sister, and thus her own happiness.</p>
<p>The poems traded between Speranza and Giulia are brighter, exhibiting an abundance of love and admiration. In one pair of sonnets, written playfully yet impressively with matching rhyme words, the two liken each other to white ermines, <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lady-with-an-ermine/HwHUpggDy_HxNQ?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.872019804523145%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.7206646564529637%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000012%7D%7D">an animal considered a symbol of moral virtue</a>. </p>
<h2>Love is big</h2>
<p>There are so many other Renaissance Italian poems written for friends, parents, children and grandchildren – not to mention fiery love poems dedicated to Jesus and the saints, some by clerics, like <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv15d81vf?turn_away=true">Angelo Grillo</a>.</p>
<p>They serve as reminders of what the love poem can be. They push back against narratives that champion heterosexual relationships or that tout <a href="https://medium.com/the-sundial-acmrs/teaching-premodern-asexualities-and-aromanticisms-908cc375af12">romantic coupling and sexual attraction</a> of any orientation as the most important relationship in a person’s life, <a href="https://theconversation.com/single-on-valentines-day-and-happily-so-155191">minimizing the importance of other loving relationships</a>.</p>
<p>These poems also encourage everyone to think more expansively about their own love and home lives. As an unmarried mother of a 5-year-old – and as someone who has only ever lived with friends or siblings – I have benefited immensely from <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/01/1216043849/bringing-up-a-baby-can-be-a-tough-and-lonely-job-heres-a-solution-alloparents">alloparenting</a>, the care provided for my son by all of the nonparents in his life.</p>
<p>I ended up in these living situations in part because of the pandemic, which, in a way, was a form of luck: Sometimes it takes a disruptive event <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-rhaina-cohen.html">to break cultural expectations</a> for the nuclear family and childrearing.</p>
<p>If writers could describe different types of love during the Renaissance, why limit what we can envision for ourselves?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
These moving poems are a reminder that on Valentine’s Day, it’s OK to celebrate a broader definition of love.
Shannon McHugh, Associate Professor of French and Italian, UMass Boston
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222253
2024-02-08T22:34:47Z
2024-02-08T22:34:47Z
Rethinking masculinity: Teaching men how to love and be loved
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573917/original/file-20240206-16-s8urnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1212%2C664%2C4275%2C2550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to speak more about how to become the kind of man who can openly show love for others while accepting love from those who care. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How will young men learn to love when many messages seem to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-scolding-men-for-being-toxic-113520">either focused on what is wrong with them</a> — or how they can dominate? </p>
<p>Many masculinity critics speak of the dangers of traditional gender ideologies, rape culture or toxic ways of being male.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some men, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-misogyny-the-new-way-andrew-tate-brought-us-the-same-old-hate-191928">Andrew Tate, promote visions of masculinity based on misogyny and male domination</a>, while others, like Jordan Peterson, reinforce <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115920">traditional gender ideologies</a> as a misguided way of responding to men’s search for meaning and belonging.</p>
<p>My scholarship examines masculinity and critical race theory <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/797617">in both early modern drama</a> and contemporary Canadian literature, with a focus on Black <a href="https://doi.org/10.14288/cl.v0i239.191511">and Indigenous literature</a>. </p>
<p>I am a mixed-race (Black, Métis, and Scottish) cisgender scholar who teaches in Treaty One Territory, in the heart of the Métis homeland, on the University of Manitoba campus. I live in a world that shows more than enough hatred to Black and Indigenous men. I want to focus more on how Black and Indigenous men can love and be loved. </p>
<h2>Patriarchy, ‘interlocking’ oppressions</h2>
<p>Many of the ways of being male that are under scrutiny or that some men are trying to reclaim are connected to patriarchy. </p>
<p>The late Black feminist philosopher bell hooks defines patriarchy as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…"<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Will-to-Change/bell-hooks/9780743456081">a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating</a>, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence"</p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hand is seen drawing on a black board next to symbols of the male and female genders." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=563%2C496%2C4514%2C2858&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of the ways of being male that are under scrutiny are connected to patriarchy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As hooks and other Black feminists have also noted, patriarchy, racism, sexism and homophobia can be interlocking systems of domination. For these reasons, my work on masculinity also comes out of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-curb-anti-black-racism-in-canadian-schools-150489">anti-racist teaching practice</a>. </p>
<p>My teaching builds on a long tradition within Black and Indigenous feminist traditions that understand Black and Indigenous men as people who experience racism and domination in the world, and who have to learn how to love their families, partners and children without recreating cultures of domination and control within communal settings. </p>
<h2>Lesser-discussed forms of masculinity</h2>
<p>As Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice notes in <a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/W/Why-Indigenous-Literatures-Matter"><em>Why Indigenous Literatures Matters</em></a>, the stories settlers tell about Indigenous communities often amplify toxic stories of lack and deficit. Too often, such stories presume the perverse success of colonialism. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-stories-about-alternate-worlds-can-help-us-imagine-a-better-future-dont-call-me-resilient-ep-7-transcript-167520">How stories about alternate worlds can help us imagine a better future: Don’t Call Me Resilient EP 7 transcript</a>
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<p>The collection <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/indigenous-men-and-masculinities"><em>Indigenous Men and Masculinities</em></a>, edited by scholars Robert Alexander Innes, a member of the Cowessess First Nation, and Kim Anderson (Cree/Métis), considers what we know or could learn about masculinities in less-patriarchal societies.</p>
<p><a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/C/Carrying-the-Burden-of-Peace"><em>Carrying the Burden of Peace: Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities Through Story</em></a> by white settler scholar Sam McKegney explores “Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism.”</p>
<p>Likewise, Black feminist scholars like hooks have encouraged men to be better and suggested a central task of <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/feminism-is-for-everybody-bell-hooks/">feminist criticism ought to be articulating less dominating ways for men to preform their masculinity</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Audre-Lorde">poet and author</a> <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/">Audre Lorde’s essay “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response</a>” she reflects on mothering her son, noting: “Our sons must become men — such men as whom we hope our daughters, born and unborn, will be pleased to live among.” As a mother, Lorde says, “this task begins with teaching [her] son that [she does] not exist to do his feeling for him.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Brown hands holding a heart." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What could we learn about masculinities in less-patriarchal societies?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Contempt and politics</h2>
<p>While I take the point of writers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/books/pauline-harmange-i-hate-men.html">Pauline Harmange</a> or <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250193421/howtodatemenwhenyouhatemen">Blythe Roberson</a>
that misandry (contempt or dislike) can be politically useful, I fear the language <a href="https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780008457600/i-hate-men">of “hating men”</a> is unproductive — even when meant <a href="https://www.papermag.com/blythe-roberson#rebelltitem4">humourously</a> — and can turn men away from the very feminist work that aims to help them become better lovers, fathers, friends and brothers. </p>
<p>Stories we tell about Black and Indigenous men can create fear of them, and this can serve as a justification for racism. Racism, as political geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore notes, can be defined as “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag">the state-sanctioned or extra-legal production and exploitation of group differentiated vulnerability to premature death</a>.” </p>
<p>Stories representing Black men as inherently violent and prone to antisocial behaviour are part of a long racist tradition which <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyds-legacy-derek-chauvin-guilty-verdicts-could-spell-the-end-of-police-immunity-158194">places the lives of Black men at risk</a>. </p>
<h2>Love and tender feelings</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="The word 'Brother' in large white font on a book cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Brother’ by David Chariandy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(McLelland & Stewart)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Love can be a tool of anti-racist and decolonial education, but only if we encourage men (and women and non-binary people) to take the risk of expressing tender feelings for others. </p>
<p>I teach David Chariandy’s novel <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/26281/brother-by-david-chariandy/9780771023330"><em>Brother</em></a> and Cherie Dimaline’s <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/744474/the-marrow-thieves-by-cherie-dimaline/">The Marrow Thieves</a></em>. These writers depict men who are processing complex and inter-generational traumas. In these books, the characters Michael and French are imperfect men who struggle to show tender emotions. Their struggle, however, is the point. </p>
<p>Through trying to process their feelings within found families, these men are healing themselves. They are becoming emotionally available members of their communities who do not need to dominate others to prove they are real men. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A face seen with a white streak of paint and long black hair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Marrow Thieves’ by Cherie Dimaline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Cormorant Books/HarperCollins)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Speaking of these men in terms of the struggle to love is, in itself, an anti-racist practice. Almost all of the young men I work with struggle to express tender emotions, and seeing these characters struggle helps them see Black and Indigenous men as emotional role models. </p>
<h2>Encouraging flourishing</h2>
<p>Through teaching such stories, my students and I discuss how learning to love is a way of learning how to be fully human. Love cannot come from places of domination or abuse, nor can it be maintained through cultures of power and control. </p>
<p>As analytic philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues in <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9781400826063/the-reasons-of-love"><em>The Reasons of Love</em></a>, love is an orientation to the beloved, whereby I care about doing thinks that encourage their flourishing as human beings. </p>
<p>Literature is a wonderful tool for opening these healing conversations about love and being loved. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-humanities-should-teach-about-how-to-make-a-better-world-not-just-criticize-the-existing-one-190634">The humanities should teach about how to make a better world, not just criticize the existing one</a>
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<h2>Taking responsibility for thinking, loving</h2>
<p>In poet <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/On-Lies-Secrets-and-Silence/">Adrienne Rich’s essay “Claiming an Education</a>,” she distinguishes between the passive act of receiving an education and the active act of thinking of education as a responsibility to oneself.</p>
<p>Discussing love in curricula has the potential to be lifesaving, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-students-are-developing-solutions-to-the-problem-of-campus-sexual-and-gender-based-violence-210445">to help reduce instances of</a> physical, sexual or emotional abuse and to contribute to creating cultures of consent. This works best, I have found, when it comes from a loving disposition. </p>
<p>Teaching students with care while showing emotional attachments to works of literature allows me to reinforce, as a man, that it is OK to be a man and to express love and admiration in public. </p>
<p>If love is something we do, and not just something we feel, then it is something men can learn to do better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Paris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Encouraging men to take the risk of expressing tender feelings for others is part of relying on love as a tool of anti-racist and decolonial education.
Jamie Paris, Instructor, Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media, University of Manitoba
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220822
2024-02-07T13:12:35Z
2024-02-07T13:12:35Z
The divine matchmaker in Chinese mythology − Old Man Under the Moon − who helps couples find love
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573555/original/file-20240205-21-5gjipi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C22%2C4806%2C3184&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Looking for love − a store in Huaian, in China's eastern Jiangsu province, selling flowers on Valentine's Day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vendor-prepares-flowers-for-sale-on-valentines-day-in-news-photo/1247125259?adppopup=true">STR/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In China, people celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, but there are at least three holidays and cultural traditions centered on romantic love. A figure that ties together these other holidays is the Old Man Under the Moon – Yuexia Laoren in Mandarin, or Yuelao for short – who is believed to be a <a href="https://www.lungshan.org.tw/tw/02_2_19_gods.php">divine matchmaker</a>. </p>
<p>In many cultures across the world, including China, <a href="https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofsexandgendervolume3/page/n157/mode/2up">parents traditionally arranged their children’s marriages</a>, and love was not necessarily their main concern. In pre-modern China, daughters had little say over their marriage partners. Moreover, they were seen as belonging more to their future husbands’ families than to their birth families. Under these conditions, unmarried girls would <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Food-and-Festivals-of-China/Yan-Liao/China-The-Emerging-Superpower/9781422294482">pray to the Old Man Under the Moon for a happy marriage</a>.</p>
<p>Girls could either make offerings at home or visit a temple where an image of the Old Man Under the Moon was enshrined. There are other figures in Chinese mythology, such as the “Weaving Maiden” and “Moon Goddess,” who are worshiped for good luck in love. But the Old Man Under the Moon is the most popular god of love and marriage. These days, the name Yuelao has even become a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0612.10">general term for “matchmaker</a>.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://faculty.utk.edu/Megan.Bryson">scholar of Chinese religious history</a>, I know that understandings of gods can change over time. These days, men and women pray to the Old Man Under the Moon to find their own love match, while the Rabbit God takes care of devotees looking for same-sex romance. </p>
<h2>The Old Man Under the Moon</h2>
<p>The Old Man Under the Moon was first mentioned in a ninth-century short story called “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520081581/the-inner-quarters">Engagement Inn</a>,” where he arranged marriages as a divine official. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An icon of an old man with a long flowing beard, holding a long chord in one one hand and register in another." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1271&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1271&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1271&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573556/original/file-20240205-19-c60osd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Old Man Under the Moon at Xiahai City God’s Temple in Dadaocheng, Taipei, Taiwan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/%E5%A4%A7%E7%A8%BB%E5%9F%95%E9%9C%9E%E6%B5%B7%E5%9F%8E%E9%9A%8D%E5%BB%9F%E6%9C%88%E4%B8%8B%E8%80%81%E4%BA%BA.jpg">Sean Chiu via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the story, an unmarried man named Wei Gu set out before sunrise to meet a matchmaker. He saw an old man reading a document by moonlight and tried to get a peek, but found that he could not decipher the script. The old man laughed and told Wei Gu that he was a divine bureaucrat in charge of human marriages, and his document was a marriage register written in an otherworldly script. </p>
<p>Wei Gu then asked about his own prospects, to which the old man replied that Wei Gu would get married, but it would take 14 years. Wei Gu then asked about a bag the old man was holding. The old man pulled a red cord out of the bag and explained that he used those to tie the feet of a future couple so that fate would bring them together.</p>
<p>In the centuries that followed, the Old Man Under the Moon became an increasingly popular figure in Chinese literature, drama and religion. His statue was enshrined in temples, where unmarried people and their relatives could pray and make offerings in the hope of finding a match.</p>
<p>Like other divine bureaucrats in charge of human affairs, the Old Man Under the Moon is rarely a temple’s central deity, but his icon appears in side halls alongside deities in charge of fertility and education. </p>
<p>Fittingly, he looks like an old man with a long white beard, and he holds the red cords that bind couples to each other. People looking to find a partner often leave red strings tied to tree branches, sometimes with short prayer texts attached to the strings, outside shrines to Old Man Under the Moon. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red strings and prayer texts tied around a tree outside a shrine to the Old Man Under the Moon in Yunnan, China." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573340/original/file-20240205-17-oc7yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Those looking for love will pray to the Old Man Under the Moon and tie red threads.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Megan Bryson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Heavenly romance</h2>
<p>The Old Man Under the Moon can be worshiped year-round, but he has special ties to two holidays in the traditional Chinese calendar: the Double Seventh Festival and the Moon Festival. Valentine’s Day is a new addition to existing Chinese holidays celebrating love and marriage. </p>
<p>In Chinese culture, the most important holiday for romance is the Double Seventh Festival, which appropriately falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. This festival commemorates the story of the star-crossed lovers <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/9c442d8613959f71c8340a3a8407530f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y">Weaving Maiden and Cowherd</a>, who live on separate constellations and can meet only once a year.</p>
<p>Unmarried girls make offerings to the Weaving Maiden in hopes of finding a good husband, in addition to saying prayers to Old Man. According to Taiwanese tradition, on the Double Seventh Festival, the Weaving Maiden <a href="https://historic.tainan.gov.tw/index.php?option=module&lang=cht&task=pageinfo&id=957&index=7">compiles a list of all unmarried men and women</a> to give to the Old Man Under the Moon. The Old Man then pairs up the single men and women in his marriage registry, binding their feet to seal their shared fate. </p>
<p>The Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month focuses on family togetherness, but it also includes <a href="https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/article-detail?cmsuuid=9907c553-19b3-4168-a613-49d35f2893ae">romantic themes</a>. Unmarried girls traditionally <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Food-and-Festivals-of-China/Yan-Liao/China-The-Emerging-Superpower/9781422294482">pray to the Moon Goddess Chang’e</a> and to the divine matchmaker Old Man Under the Moon for a good husband. The Moon Festival is seen as the <a href="https://www.lungshan.org.tw/tw/04_activity2.php?p=150&page=0">birthday</a> of the Old Man Under the Moon, so temples sometimes have special events in his honor. The moon represents both wholeness and romance, making it a fitting symbol for the divine matchmaker.</p>
<p>Even the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar, Lunar New Year, can be a time to <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/tw/mental/relationship/g38893042/pray-to-yue-lao-you-need-to-know/">worship the Old Man Under the Moon</a>. As celebrants set their intentions and goals for the new year, those looking for love and marriage will make a point of sending prayers to the Old Man Under the Moon. </p>
<h2>The Rabbit God</h2>
<p>Apart from the Old Man Under the Moon, another divine matchmaker in Chinese mythology is the Rabbit God, who has been worshiped <a href="https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/cult-hu-tianbao-eighteenth-century-discourse/docview/1308083280/se-2">as far back as the 18th century</a> as a god of love between men. </p>
<p>Members of the LGBTQ+ community in Taiwan revived the worship of this deity as a <a href="https://youtu.be/8iyBiV4ixW0?si=AWyDCjDrOiuLSpI7">same-sex counterpart</a> to the Old Man Under the Moon. The Rabbit God binds same-sex couples, just as the Old Man Under the Moon binds couples of the opposite sex.</p>
<p>Same-sex couples in Taiwan can visit <a href="https://www.weimingtang.org/index.php">Wei Ming Tang temple</a>, which is dedicated to the Rabbit God, to seek lasting romantic love and marriage. Worship of the Rabbit God can be done more openly in Taiwan, which is the only place in Asia where <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/17/asia/taiwan-same-sex-marriage-intl/index.html">same-sex marriage is legal</a>. LGBTQ+ relationships are frowned upon in mainland China.</p>
<p>The Old Man Under the Moon has long sustained the hope for romance and love in arranged marriages. Now that most people in Chinese culture find their own marriage partners, he offers hope that people will be able to find their match in a sea of possibilities. The Rabbit God offers the same hope for the LGBTQ+ community, especially in Taiwan.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220822/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Bryson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Young people in China are no longer settling into marriages arranged by their parents. But they are still looking for blessings from Chinese gods to find everlasting love.
Megan Bryson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/217174
2024-01-24T10:12:42Z
2024-01-24T10:12:42Z
Dating apps: marketing experts’ research reveals pitfalls to look out for, and tactics for success
<p>Dating can come with new and sometimes frustrating challenges. In the past, relationships were often <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/ebook/9780520917996/consuming-the-romantic-utopia">arranged by families and guided by societal norms</a>, limiting individual choice but sparing us the agony of endless decisions. Nowadays, those who are single have endless potential partners at their fingertips. A 2019 Pew Research Center study showed that couples who met online are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/24/couples-who-meet-online-are-more-diverse-than-those-who-meet-in-other-ways-largely-because-theyre-younger/">more diverse</a>, be it in terms of income, education, political orientation and ethnicity. </p>
<h2>Freedom can have its price</h2>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Escape-Freedom-Erich-Fromm/dp/0805031499">psychoanalyst Erich Fromm</a>, freedom can sometimes come at the price of feelings of powerlessness and even isolation. We are marketing researchers exploring online dating to determine if the market ideology of freedom and endless choice extends to every aspect of human life. Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0267257X.2022.2033815">research reveals</a> that users’ feelings of anxiety and frustration stem from a clash between a perceived commodification of relationships and societal values.</p>
<p>Some study participants referred to online dating as “draining”, expressing a hope that they could “finally” finish the process. Didier, a 51-year-old engineer living in Paris called online dating “mass manipulation”; Ella, a 25-year-old editor, said that at first, online dating was “exciting and new”, but that as time went by, she found the experience depressing.</p>
<p>So why does it happen that faced with unlimited opportunities to love, we at times feel that love is not getting any closer?</p>
<p><em>“Liquid” modernity and the rise of emotional capitalism</em></p>
<p>In his book <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Liquid-Love-Frailty-Human-Bonds/dp/0745624898"><em>Liquid Love</em></a>, British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman asserts that the modern world has ushered in an era of the “individual without ties,” prioritising freedom and flexibility over attachment. This has transformed traditional notions of love and relationships into more transient and “liquid” forms. </p>
<p>French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz <a href="https://www.fnac.com/a5926310/Eva-Illouz-Why-love-hurts">echoes these observations</a>, contending that those living in today’s capitalist societies face unique challenges due to evolving norms and values. According to Illouz, as a society, we no longer see love uniquely through a framework of moral virtue, commitment and stability, but this is the price we pay for greater control over our romantic lives, greater self-knowledge, and equality between the sexes. Amid the backdrop of media-promoted ideals that often set unrealistic standards for love, people find themselves hesitant to invest in the emotional work required for deeper connections.</p>
<p><em>Misaligned values</em></p>
<p>In online dating settings, what happens when two individuals’ values or expectations of a relationship are not aligned? As our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0267257X.2022.2033815">research shows</a>, this misalignment can cause frustration – for example, one participant could be looking for a long-term relationship, while another could be more interested in casual relationships or broadening their horizons. Both would perceive the other’s actions as inappropriate.</p>
<p>Mark, a 26-year-old management consultant, shared a sense of frustration he felt when the women he met on an app wanted to connect with him on social media or call frequently, as he preferred to establish boundaries. By contrast, Alice, a 54-year-old administrator, said that some of the men she met online were often not open about their marital status. She even worked out techniques to find out whether a potential partner was in a relationship, such as getting off the phone very quickly or always paying cash.</p>
<p>Sometimes these conflicting desires are even experienced by one and the same person: they might strive for commitment, trust and closeness, yet be unwilling or unable to get off the hook of unlimited choice. Derek, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, reflected on the gap between his relationship expectations and his online-dating experience: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“For me, long-term relationships are about values – human values. And if I meet for a date and the morning after I have another new profile, I think ‘Oh, great’, and the woman or the man you saw last night, they’re at the bottom of the list.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This misalignment can lead to negative experiences, mistreatment, and even abuse online. Rose, a 23-year-old university lecturer, said that to her, going on dates was connected with a sense of fear because of the “horror stories” she had heard from others. Indeed, reports from other study participants (whose names we chose to withhold) had experiences ranging from distressing to traumatising, including verbal abuse, encounters with individuals who bore no resemblance to their photos, and even a sexual assault by someone using a fake profile.</p>
<p><em>The gamification of dating</em></p>
<p>The deinstitutionalised social setting of online dating can lead to situations where there are sometimes few or no shared social connections between the partners. This can lead to its being perceived as a “gamified” experience, as those met online are perceived as less “real” compared those encountered through friends or family. This diminished sense of reality can make behaviour less predictable, as there are no specific sanctions for what would normally be seen as unethical behaviour.</p>
<p><em>Denial and shame</em></p>
<p>While many study participants enjoyed the choice provided by dating apps, some were hesitant to identify themselves as using them, highlighting the situational and temporary nature of this condition. Some talked about the “stigmatised” nature of online dating, the perception that if they find a partner this way, those in their social circle might think there was something “wrong” with them because they were not able to find a partner in “real life” by traditional means.</p>
<p><em>The uncertainty</em></p>
<p>Such uncertainty arises when we’re unsure about the norms and outcomes of social interactions. This can happen when there is a lack of clarity about the framework under which the interaction is taking place. As the relationship terms are not clarified, both parties feel vulnerable and prefer not to open up too much to avoid potentially being hurt. The communication codes are also often unclear, giving rise to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/OnlineDating/">multiple discussions in online communities</a>, where the users ask for advice in explaining behaviours of their dating partners.</p>
<h2>The survival strategies</h2>
<p><em>Embrace the best authenticity in you and in others</em></p>
<p>If you’re using a dating app, consider a daring strategy: authenticity. Self-promotion is fine, even necessary, but so are conviction, realism and honesty. In that way you can try to match with partners who see you as the person you are and not the person you project. Definitely select flattering photos and showcase your desirable traits, but also show some conviction and your true self. Let some light in on the magic!</p>
<p><em>Use the app functions to narrow down the choice</em></p>
<p>When seeking a relationship online, it’s important to make the most of the available resources, ensuring you don’t miss out on potential connections. Consider using filters and search tools to refine your search for compatible partners. Specify your preferences, such as age, location, and shared interests, to increase your chances of finding a meaningful connection.</p>
<p><em>Enjoy the little things</em></p>
<p>It’s essential to adapt your approach and redefine what “value” means to you in this unique context. Instead of judging success by a single measure, consider redefining it to include other aspects – for example, meaningful conversations or shared interests. This flexibility enables you to recalibrate your expectations and discover value in your app experience, even if it doesn’t align with your initial goals. Love is built on shared emotions.</p>
<p><em>Talk, but also listen</em></p>
<p>Don’t be afraid to discuss your expectations with potential partners. Most importantly, when a person says that he or she is not looking for a committed relationship, believe them, rather than trying to change them or hoping that they will reconsider. Show them that you’re listening and not just broadcasting a set of preconceived ideas.</p>
<p><em>Keep exploring, yet know when to stop</em></p>
<p>Last but not least, don’t give up. As online dating becomes more and more accepted, a greater number of people are finding real relationships online. Despite all the hurdles, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/06/the-virtues-and-downsides-of-online-dating/">more than 12% of marriages</a> start online, according to a Pew Research Center study. Consider dating apps not as an unending search, but as a means to an end – and potentially a happy one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217174/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>
Use of dating apps is on the rise and they can provide a wealth of choice. Research also shows that they can leave some users feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.
Alisa Minina Jeunemaître, Associate Professor of Marketing, EM Lyon Business School
Jamie Smith, Director of Undergraduate Programmes, ISC Paris Business School
Stefania Masè, Associate professor of marketing and communication, IPAG Business School
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212569
2023-09-06T21:48:14Z
2023-09-06T21:48:14Z
The price of love: Why millennials and Gen Zs are running up major dating debt
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546762/original/file-20230906-40532-qq86zj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are you looking for love in all the wrong places?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-price-of-love-why-millennials-and-gen-zs-are-running-up-major-dating-debt" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://nypost.com/2019/09/12/heres-how-much-money-the-average-american-spends-on-dating/">The average American invests US$120,000 throughout their lifetime in pursuit of love</a>, spending significant money on romantic dinners, movie outings and thoughtful gifts, not to mention personal grooming and cosmetic products. </p>
<p>As a result, according to <a href="https://www.lendingtree.com/credit-cards/study/dating-money-inflation/">a survey by LendingTree</a>, 22 per cent of millennials and 19 per cent of Gen Z have begun to incur “dating debt.”</p>
<p>Another study by <a href="https://www.creditkarma.com/insights/i/dating-debt-young-adults-survey">Credit Karma</a> found that 29 per cent of people aged 18–34 have accrued debt for a date, with 21 per cent exceeding $500 in dating debt in a year. Reasons include accidental overspending (29 per cent), an attempt to impress dates (28 per cent) and seeking intimacy (19 per cent).</p>
<p>But another survey <a href="https://www.finder.com/unacceptable-partner-debt">by Finder</a> also reveals that 44 per cent of Gen Zs consider debt a romantic deal-breaker when considering a partner. </p>
<p>This highlights potential ties between accumulating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x">dating-related debt and barriers to the chances of success</a> in forming meaningful romantic connections.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man sits on a picnic blanket and opens a bottle of champagne." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546426/original/file-20230905-25-1rh7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luxury dates are leading to debt for millennials and Gen Zs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Jelleke Vanooteghem/Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This conundrum is a problem for younger generations, where the pursuit of love and connection is intricately tied to an appetite for luxury, ultimately leading to debt accumulation. </p>
<p>The trend has implications for financial stability, emotional well-being and the very essence of modern relationships.</p>
<p>There are a few issues fuelling it, including the desire to signal status and the persuasive retail marketing of luxury as being synonymous with love, creating that false sense of connection between luxury and love.</p>
<h2>‘Costly signalling’</h2>
<p>Accumulating debt for romantic engagements has its roots in an innate human desire — namely, the urge to signal status. In a digital age where social media and online dating platforms are the norm, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11621-012-0108-7">standing out in a crowd has never been more challenging</a>, yet it’s also crucial.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3483-1">The “costly signalling” theory</a> may explain why such habits develop. It argues that humans and animals use resource-intensive or risky behaviours as genuine, hard-to-fake signals indicating their desirable traits and availability. </p>
<p>This is related to <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203936993">conspicuous consumption</a>, which is driven by a desire for status and the clear signalling of this status to onlookers. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/after-service/202102/what-your-social-signals-reveal">Signalling status in relationships or social circles isn’t uncommon</a>, but it’s found a financial expression in younger generations. Young adults are increasingly associating luxury experiences and goods with a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540194">unique form of personal expression</a>. </p>
<p>Whether it’s a lavish dinner at a high-end restaurant or gifting a designer handbag, these actions become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21639159.2022.2033132">markers of distinction and status</a>. While these acts add a layer of individuality to a relationship, they come with the risk of potential financial instability.</p>
<h2>Retail marketing</h2>
<p>Retailers often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac034">employ strategic marketing tactics to link luxury with love</a>, capitalizing on the emotional connection between these two powerful concepts to entice consumers into purchasing high-end goods. </p>
<p>For instance, luxury brands often release limited-edition Valentine’s Day collections, adorned with romantic motifs and themes, ranging from heart-shaped jewellery to high-end designer fragrances. </p>
<p>Additionally, retailers leverage the allure of love in their advertisements. They often showcase couples exchanging luxury gifts in opulent settings, fostering an aspirational connection between luxury products and romantic ideals. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A diamond engagement ring on a Tiffany blue background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546439/original/file-20230905-19-g0bd2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Tiffany ‘Believe in Love’ campaign featured links to engagement ring offerings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.tiffany.ca/engagement/love-stories/">Tiffany & Co. released a “Believe in Love”</a> campaign featuring stories of seven couples at different stages of their relationships, and how Tiffany has played a part in their love journey.</p>
<p>Retailers create an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucac034">ambience of indulgence and luxury</a>, presenting their offerings as tokens of affection and devotion. </p>
<p>Personalized engraving services on luxury items, such as monogrammed initials or special dates, further enhance the sentimentality and connection between the product and the act of gifting, convincing consumers to spend money on these high-end, emotionally charged offerings. </p>
<p>For example, Gucci’s “<a href="https://www.lofficielbaltic.com/en/fashion/apple-of-my-eye-gucci-s-apple-print-collection-comes-in-time-for-chinese-valentine-s-day">apple of my eye</a>” limited-edition collection shows two interlocking red letter Gs that are meant to signify romantic love.</p>
<p>These strategic marketing tactics linking luxury with love contribute to more debt by enticing consumers to overspend on high-end goods with premium price tags. They promote impulse buying through limited-edition collections, foster unrealistic desires through aspirational advertising, encourage additional spending on personalized services and compel people to prioritize romantic gestures over financial responsibility.</p>
<p>This ultimately leads to the accumulation of debt as consumers strive to express their love through emotionally charged purchases.</p>
<h2>False sense of connection</h2>
<p>But there seems to be an intriguing paradox when it comes to luxury goods and their ties to social relationships. </p>
<p>While luxury items can enhance someone’s social image and boost self-perception, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-09-2014-1161">people also tend to view themselves more positively when they possess or experience luxury — even though they often hold a less favourable view of others who do the same</a>. </p>
<p>This sheds light on a fascinating discrepancy in self-versus-other evaluations when it comes to luxury consumption. </p>
<p>In a dating context, a person boasting about the purchase of an expensive wine on a dinner date, for example, may over-estimate whether it will actually impress their date.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A glass of white wine sits in front of a woman at a table in a restaurant." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546516/original/file-20230905-31392-5c4cul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ordering an expensive bottle of wine on a date isn’t necessarily impressive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(JP Valery/Unsplash)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gift-givers often believe that more expensive gifts are more appreciated, assuming they convey greater thoughtfulness. But gift recipients don’t necessarily share this belief because they don’t consistently link gift price to their level of appreciation.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.11.003">This suggests that gift-givers may not accurately predict what gifts will be meaningful to others</a>. And because they personally may connect expensive gifts with something meaningful, it may lead them to spend more, ultimately contributing to greater dating debt.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while it’s known that people use luxury items to signal their social status and earning capacity, the reactions to such gifts may be complex. Indeed, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103945">many people prioritize their independence and question the giver’s motives behind such gifts, fearing power imbalances and expectations</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-essential-piece-in-every-wardrobe-young-people-are-shopping-for-luxury-like-never-before-184536">'An essential piece in every wardrobe': Young people are shopping for luxury like never before</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Instead, they may value personal connections over materialistic displays and be cautious in the early stages of a relationship. </p>
<p>Ultimately, open and honest communication about expectations is crucial for navigating these complexities, ensuring that gift-giving aligns with the relationship’s goals and mutual desires.</p>
<p>The concept of luxury often gets mixed up with our quest for love, creating a captivating but misleading link between the two. In the realm of romantic relationships, luxury goods or indulging in extravagant experiences can sometimes make us feel closer to our partners than we really are.</p>
<p>But the ties between luxury and love can be deceiving. While luxury can certainly add to the romance, it’s important for younger generations to see the difference between flashy things and the deep, lasting connections that bring us closer to love.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Genuine love holds immeasurable value, yet discovering it can pose challenges — and come with a significant price tag.
Omar H. Fares, Lecturer in the Ted Rogers School of Retail Management, Toronto Metropolitan University
Seung Hwan (Mark) Lee, Professor and Associate Dean of Engagement & Inclusion, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199420
2023-08-01T05:59:36Z
2023-08-01T05:59:36Z
Is equality compatible with the nuclear family? Alva Gotby proposes a radical politics of friendship
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533955/original/file-20230626-74220-ey31e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3911%2C2781&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Craig Addlerley/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Love is usually framed as romantic and desirable: an intimate connection that’s its own reward. That justifies, perhaps, the toil and hard work that make up much of our lives. But it also disguises how much love is also work: a labour performed disproportionately by women. </p>
<p>Alva Gotby’s <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/they-call-it-love-alva-gotby/book/9781839767036.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwvdajBhBEEiwAeMh1UzzPQWlIF6ATgWXJcDc0fibEryZLCn-m1Rqq3AdHShOopTDX-MMapBoCZ9sQAvD_BwE">They Call it Love</a> is a timely reminder of one of the more invisible gender inequalities – the difference in emotional and intimate care work performed by men and women within heterosexual households. </p>
<p>Acts like comforting a family member or friend, soothing children or providing company for the elderly are all labours of love – but they’re not given or received equally.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: They Call it Love: The Politics of Emotional Life – Alva Gotby (Verso)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Gotby’s book is a fascinating account of how this makes women subordinate carers (or apologist secondary co-workers) within nuclear families. </p>
<p>She crusades to unmask the “naturalness of feminine care” – and to expose care inequalities and incite political awareness. She encourages women to refuse labour and even suggests abolishing the nuclear family. </p>
<p>I personally found her account of women’s agency and men’s emotional complexity limited at times. And the book sometimes lacks the evidence to fully support its claims. But it also has a lot to offer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533927/original/file-20230626-61110-lds4rx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alva Gotby’s book suggests abolishing the nuclear family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emma Bausco/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gotby critiques the work we do creating “good feelings” for ourselves and others. She employs sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s concept of <a href="https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/13293_Chapter4_Web_Byte_Arlie_Russell_Hochschild.pdf">emotion management</a>: women are still required to perform more <a href="https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/13293_Chapter4_Web_Byte_Arlie_Russell_Hochschild.pdf">emotion work</a> for children and partners in heterosexual nuclear families – and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-emotional-labour-and-how-do-we-get-it-wrong-185773">emotional labour</a> for clients and colleagues in the workforce. </p>
<p>And she draws on domestic labour theorist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/magazine/waged-housework.html">Silvia Federici’s</a> ideas of “reproductive labour” – the care work we do to sustain ourselves and others – to describe how care work is cast as “naturalised” and innately feminine. (And how it’s undervalued as a form of labour.)</p>
<p>Gotby combines these ideas to develop the concept of “emotional reproduction”: how the capitalist need for cheap (or unpaid) care labour relegates women and mothers to continuing the performance of excessive, unpaid emotional and other care work. </p>
<p>This frees men to do more paid work and models conventional gender roles for children – reproducing the gendered order of society. As Gotby reflects:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Love can thus be used to extract an ongoing, infinite amount of labour – a work relationship that may stretch over a whole lifetime. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Class and ‘emotional elites’</h2>
<p>Modern bourgeois notions have seen the nuclear family “monopolise care”. Alternative forms of attachment have been discredited, while children’s emotional needs have expanded – so, the care required from mothers has intensified. </p>
<p>In the 1970s and 80s, Hochschild <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778583">observed</a> that middle-class children were raised to become managers (by appreciating and instrumentalising feelings), while working-class children were raised to become factory workers (by respecting discipline and authority). </p>
<p>Now, argues Gotby, working-class children destined for the service economy also need to learn and deploy emotional skills. However, these emotional skills are still largely about deference.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533923/original/file-20230626-130650-fvy3b5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Working-class children need to learn deferential emotional skills to work in the service economy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My recent work on the emergence of “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/dystopian-emotions/new-economy-and-the-privilege-of-feeling-towards-a-theory-of-emotional-structuration/A45448C6E34093776EE5CEDFC82FAD9D">emotional elites</a>” reflects these fascinating distinctions, too. Emotional elites include bosses, managers, owners – people with resources and privilege who can displace their emotional difficulties onto others. </p>
<p>They are served by an “emotional precariat” of workers employed in the service economy. Some perform from scripts (like sales pitches). Others are recruited based on gendered and racialised assumptions they will form a “naturally caring” workforce. This was reflected <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09502386.2017.1303426">in a study</a> of Filipino call centre workers.</p>
<p>“Emotional intermediaries” mediate between these groups. These include professional care and education workers (like nurses and teachers) and those paid to manage what <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Outsourced-Self-Intimate-Market-Times/dp/080508889X">Hochschild calls “outsourced emotions”</a>, like wedding planners and love coaches. </p>
<p>They also include middle managers whose jobs include sustaining and protecting their bosses’ emotions, as demonstrated in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0730888400027001003?journalCode=woxb">Katherine Lively’s</a> study into how female paralegals show emotional deference to male attorneys. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-emotional-labour-and-how-do-we-get-it-wrong-185773">What is emotional labour - and how do we get it wrong?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Invisible work, female anger</h2>
<p>Gotby argues that the capitalist economy relies on invisible reproductive work to survive. Care work is not fully recognised, valued or integrated by the formal economy. Groups more likely to perform this informal labour, such as women and migrants, are especially negatively impacted.</p>
<p>Gotby advocates resistance and suggests a range of strategies. She urges women to appropriately label care as work, withdraw their labour and refuse to reproduce. She criticises poor or punitive state support for child care, reproductive services, community housing, healthcare and support care workers.</p>
<p>There are “rewards for those who do gender well, in particular for white, bourgeois, heterosexual women,” Gotby writes. Queer sexualities, on the other hand, are often punished. </p>
<p>She claims heterosexual women are still bound to underpaid or unwaged care work, while men exaggerate “emotional ineptness” to avoid it. Women “participate in their own exploitation”, by investing in heterosexual love and performing emotional labour that enhances their partner’s or co-worker’s status over their own. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533924/original/file-20230626-29-68wsem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Heterosexual women are still bound to unwaged care work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She also points to the gendering of anger. For men, it’s fleeting, situational and conviction-based. But for women, it reflects weakness, flaws and excessive emotion: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>feminised workers are mainly made to absorb anger and frustration […] masculinity, on the other hand, works through the displacement of anger onto others.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women are required to be flexible and compliant, she writes. In the workforce, they must be distant from reproductive duties and feminine; they must absorb unwanted emotions and unwaged work. They are even pressured to enjoy this labour.</p>
<p>But what about feminists who want to resist these arrangements? Gotby argues feminist movements have aimed not at fostering “better” feelings, but at mobilising feelings for liberation, refusing emotional reproduction and suppression, and broadening allowable emotions for women. </p>
<p>She champions women’s use of anger to ignite solidarity against male backlash and aggression. She advocates working with men in the broader struggle against capitalism, built on a base of organised, powerful feminist resistance. And she argues for sexual refusal and queer resistance to male sexual domination.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533928/original/file-20230626-103925-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alva Gotby champions women’s use of anger to ignite solidarity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edmond Dante/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Abolish it all?</h2>
<p>In her final chapter, Gotby presents her most strident and controversial claims: she argues for the abolition of the nuclear family, gender and capitalism.</p>
<p>She argues that getting men to do more childcare without challenging “the conflicting needs and contradictions within capitalism” will have limited effect. She even claims true equality is impossible within existing gendered categories: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sexual difference already contains a construction of hierarchy, making “gender equality” a contradiction in terms.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She proposes denaturalising gender, “stripping bodily markers of their social significance”. This means “following black, indigenous, trans, and intersex feminists” and embracing the openness and pleasure of queer sexual identity. </p>
<p>She pushes for a “political commitment to caring for each other outside of the family” – along with a reworking of the welfare state, and social policies to decentralise the nuclear family household (providing better community and intergenerational connections). </p>
<p>And she calls for support for activist groups that provide care and political support for criminal, queer, trans and migrant people – and actively resist harmful social norms. </p>
<p>Finally, she calls for a radical politics of friendship: prioritising friendship connections, making them much more intimate. Ultimately, she wants to reclaim love by transcending the nuclear family in favour of solidarity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533951/original/file-20230626-5608-e8fwl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alva Gotby calls for support for activist groups that provide care and political support for criminal, queer, trans and migrant people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Sof/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A convincing call to arms?</h2>
<p>The book advocates big changes. However, the call is muted (or perhaps rendered premature) by several important limitations. </p>
<p>Gotby’s idea of emotional reproduction mirrors – but does not engage with – the idea of <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/COTTEC">emotional capital</a>, which argues the capacity to manage emotions is learned, not innate. Conceiving of emotional care work as “capital”, which can be learned, allows for change.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/COTTEC">men can learn</a> caring skills in teaching and nursing work – albeit with greater difficulty, later in their lives. The ebb and flow of emotional capital allows for emotional winners and losers to emerge, beyond Gotby’s conventional male-oppressor and female-oppressed binary. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533926/original/file-20230626-154331-h49d2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Men can learn caring skills in the context of teaching and nursing jobs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anastasia Shuraeva/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This exemplifies a second problem. Gotby’s strong critical feminist Marxist position risks inflexibility – and a degree of highly gendered structural determinism. By erasing the possibility women can experience authentic feelings of love and care in heterosexual nuclear families, uncorrupted by gender exploitation, Gotby undervalues existing intimacies.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017003017002004">Bolton and Boyd</a> demonstrate how workers can participate in emotional labour while knowingly and willingly finding it enjoyable. Women’s agency to avoid or resist exploitation – and men’s agency to become involved in care work – is underplayed throughout the book.</p>
<p>A third problem is that this largely theoretical book lacks contemporary empirical data to back up its many assertions, or demonstrate their continued relevance. </p>
<p>It fails to include contrary empirical findings, such as studies that show couples who endorse egalitarian over essentialist gender beliefs have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224545.2021.1983508">more equal involvement in childcare and housework</a>. Including recent data about women’s ongoing exploitation and men’s lack of emotional effort would give greater weight to many of Gotby’s claims.</p>
<p>A fourth problem, connected to all those raised above, is the unsubtle way the book represents men and masculinity. It relies too often on a standardised depiction of middle-class white men as ubiquitous, unconscious, privileged recipients of care. </p>
<p>It doesn’t account for the nuance in men’s emotions. Australian <a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/3136/">survey data</a> shows that – contrary to classic depictions of unfeeling male stoicism – men experience a complex range of emotions. These include feelings of care, concern and sympathy with family and childcare. </p>
<p>Gotby’s work also fails to encompass emotional work performed by different types of men, based on characteristics such as social class, age or cultural background. And it doesn’t account enough for shifts in men’s housework and care work. Studies have shown <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/17/gender-roles-parenting-housework-coronavirus-pandemic#:%7E:text=Since%201965%2C%20fathers%20have%20nearly,they%20have%20no%20other%20choice.">men increased their domestic work contribution during COVID</a>, and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-022-09735-1">maintained higher levels of childcare</a> in the immediate aftermath. </p>
<p>These problems undermine Gotby’s powerful call to end the nuclear family altogether.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533932/original/file-20230626-103925-46jrob.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The book nonetheless has much to recommend it. It helps us understand the ongoing situation faced by many women in performing unrecognised (and unpaid) care work. It clearly links private and public emotional work and labour (in a way often missing from emotion management literature) by pointing out how much the formal capitalist economy relies on informal unpaid labour and reproductive effort to sustain it. </p>
<p>And it de-naturalises and de-essentialises emotional labour and care as distinctly feminine. This opens up this space for a bigger (and welcome) role for men to take on more of it – as they can and should. </p>
<p>The book provokes and challenges, raising important questions around the future role of the family, and about the sustainability of emotional labour within a capitalist economy increasingly dominated by emotional services, concerns and requirements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Patulny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Alva Gotby’s book encourages women to refuse the labour of care – and even suggests abolishing the nuclear family.
Roger Patulny, Affiliate Researcher, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205697
2023-06-08T14:08:14Z
2023-06-08T14:08:14Z
Sex, money and love: what South African university students say about romance and dating in a material age
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529083/original/file-20230530-15-2ezsot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young women are not, as some believe, passive sexual beings. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DavideAngelini/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2012.664660?scroll=top&needAccess=true&role=tab&aria-labelledby=full-article">Transactional sex</a> – the exchange of consensual sex for material support like gifts, money or food – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-nigerian-students-told-us-about-transactional-sex-on-campus-116610">occurs</a> on <a href="https://theconversation.com/rise-in-sugar-babies-mirrors-increase-in-student-sex-work-44377">university campuses</a> in <a href="https://theconversation.com/student-sex-work-is-happening-and-universities-need-to-respond-with-health-services-167767">many parts of the world</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa is no exception. Some scholars have highlighted the importance of understanding transactional sexual relationships beyond seeing it only (or mostly) as a way for young women to mitigate poverty, or because they want to enjoy the advantages of what is perceived as an elite and glamorous lifestyle. It’s more complicated than that. </p>
<p>We came together as a trio of psychology scholars to <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/gab/article/view/230358">explore</a> how young South African female university students construct themselves as sexual beings, and negotiate dating and intimate relationships. </p>
<p>Our findings highlight that young women view transactional intimate relationships from multiple levels, including family experiences, the cultures they are embedded in and broader social contexts. These factors all influence how they articulate their understanding of intimate relationships.</p>
<p>Financial considerations may compel and shape their choice of sexual partners. But they aren’t the only factor. Others include the chance to get work, to advance their careers or to unlock educational opportunities.</p>
<p>All of this challenges the idea that young adult women choosing to enter sexual relationships that can meet their financial aspirations are not agents in their relationships.</p>
<h2>A variety of reasons</h2>
<p>For the study, we conducted focus groups with 14 women students at one South African university. We were interested in their perceptions and understanding of transactional relationships – some reflected on their own experiences, while others reflected on those of others they knew. All were aged between 19 and 26. While the number of participants was relatively small, their perceptions were helpful in assisting us to get some understanding of how women students perceive transactional relationships.</p>
<p>The participants explained that they and other young women they knew engaged in intimate relationships for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they want to meet their love and sexual needs; sometimes they want to enhance their socio-economic and social standing within their peer group and wider society. The latter arrangement has been referred to by some researchers as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4875790/">sexual-economic relationships</a>, which enhance one’s social standing or result in class mobility for the young women involved in transactional sex. </p>
<p>When talking about these sorts of sexual-economic relationships, the participants in our study offered an example of how a man’s financial status is gauged: by the car he drives.</p>
<p>A sexual relationship with a man who has a good job is seen as a safer option than one with an unemployed, unmotivated man who is unable to provide or meet the young women’s consumer expectations. A man’s ability to work hard was said to “count” in terms of his appeal to women. This is reflected in some of the comments made by the young women in our study:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most girls my age group tend to go for guys who have money or who are well established. In a sense of where they are going with their lives. Most girls are tired of going for guys who just sit at home and do nothing the whole day.</p>
<p>I don’t think relationships do exist, nowadays, I don’t think so, it’s more about material, what don’t you have … if a guy comes to you driving a Volvo and a guy comes to you driving a Mazda 3, the latest, I don’t think girls will go for the guy driving a Mazda, but the one driving a Volvo, that’s all, that’s how I see it recently.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some transactional relationships may offer the pretence of real love and create the illusion for the male sexual partner that he is the only object of the young woman’s affection. Other relationships are initiated on the implicit understanding that they are non-exclusive or multi-partner arrangements, with a tacit agreement not to discuss other sexual partners.</p>
<h2>Navigating the perils</h2>
<p>But that doesn’t mean people are necessarily happy about non-exclusive relationships. Mistrust, jealousy and anger arise at times.</p>
<p>If a man has multiple girlfriends in a transactional arrangement and they learn about each other, the women often turn their anger towards each other. This may lead the women to try and “stake their claim”. For example, some told us that, in a sense, one becomes a “PI” (private investigator) assessing or “researching” their partner’s “true colours” or “their intentions and motives” and hoping for “transparency” from their partners. These concerns often centred on concerns about contracting HIV and AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases because their boyfriends had multiple partners.</p>
<p>It also became clear that our participants did not have much faith in any future marriages lasting for a long time or that their husbands would be faithful. But this didn’t mean that they didn’t want to experience genuine love or to pursue marriage that would also result in having children.</p>
<h2>Nuance</h2>
<p>This research makes it clear that there is a great deal of nuance around how young women negotiate their intimate relationships with men. Our research has shown us that the nature of transactional relationships can no longer be solely understood within the frames of disenfranchised young women and men as the embodiment of agency. </p>
<p>Rather, it is critical to engage the ways in which our consumeristic and materialistic global society seems to dictate what is “normal” and how this, in turn, plays a role in how young women choose to engage in transactional relationships. </p>
<p><em>Precious Sipuka and Christine Laidlaw co-authored this article and the research paper on which it is based.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Puleng Segalo receives funding from The National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p>
There is a great deal of nuance around how young women negotiate their intimate relationships with men.
Puleng Segalo, Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, University of South Africa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204737
2023-06-08T01:06:01Z
2023-06-08T01:06:01Z
Love, loss and the end of the world: three Australian debut novels seduce and stumble
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530245/original/file-20230606-22-dgl9pc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C5278%2C3487&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tatiana Syrikova/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Coming of age is familiar territory for first-time novelists – the journey from youth to adult maturity. First novels often draw on personal experience. For the reader, they can feel like a hybrid of memoir and fiction. In these three debut novels, growing up happens very differently for each protagonist, across diverse Australian settings. </p>
<p>The territory they inhabit variously hovers between the recognisable real world, in two coastal novels that include themes of parental closeness and estrangement, and the purely imaginary – in a dystopian debut where the protagonist grows up in a near-future where it never stops raining.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Thirst for Salt – Madelaine Lucas (Allen & Unwin); The Comforting Weight of Water – Roanna McClelland (Wakefield Press); My Father the Whale (HarperCollins)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Madelaine-Lucas-Thirst-for-Salt-9781761066931/">Thirst for Salt</a>, Madelaine Lucas builds an emotional world so real that we viscerally inhabit the mind and heart of her young narrator. Any of us who has ever known (or wanted to know) rare intimacy in all its sensuality and rawness will recognise it in these pages. </p>
<p>The Australian cover of Thirst for Salt features a young woman, face partially obscured, on a windswept beach. The cliché undersells the literary strengths of Lucas’s novel; her psychological story is so much richer than the cover – and the bare plot – might suggest. </p>
<h2>A yearning affair</h2>
<p>A young woman forms a relationship with an older man, Jude, encountered on a beach holiday. She is 24, he 42. The symmetry portends hope, despite their difference in age. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530247/original/file-20230606-29-7sme40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The narrator, never named, is breaking from an unusual closeness with the single mother who raised her. She wants to “establish a life outside her purview, a life that was mine alone”. The passionate affair with Jude forms the core of the novel, but neither love story nor coming-of-age are quite adequate to capture the deep and affecting emotional complexities explored in this novel: from the heartbreak of parental separation and estrangement to the losses of what might have been. </p>
<p>The young woman feels untethered. She sees it in the “raised-by-wolves look […] in certain pictures from the years after my mother left my father”. She shares with her mother “a marrowed loneliness, passed down womb to womb”. Love is a central theme, communicated with a finely attuned sensibility that never descends into trope. </p>
<p>The narrator yearns, too, for her absent father, whom she sees sporadically due to her transient upbringing. She recalls the occasion of playing a game of chess with him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I tried to mirror him, moving my pawns forward one square at a time until he cornered my king in five moves. Checkmate. It happened so quickly, the pieces swept away, the board closed up and slipped back into my father’s coat, and then he was gone. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The quest for an absent father figure looms, but never overtakes, in the burgeoning affair with Jude.</p>
<p>This legacy of parental neglect – not materially, not even so much the lack of love, more a carelessness towards a growing child’s being – gives rise to an uncertain persona, a woman who mistrusts the gifts of life and love. She feels her relative youth as a flaw (“trying to appear seasoned, brave, lying in his bed with the sheets tucked up under my arms”) and struggles to find equality with a man so much older, more experienced, more worldly-wise.</p>
<p>The asymmetries of the relationship become more pronounced. “Jude said that we should be like a gift to each other, but I longed to be essential.” There is something of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/wuthering-heights-emily-bronte-and-the-truth-about-the-real-life-heathcliff-192230">Heathcliff</a> in Jude, or perhaps <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/07/100-best-novels-jude-obscure-thomas-hardy">Jude the Obscure</a>; the literary reference is not lost. He is handsome – and inscrutable. </p>
<p>The reader can’t help asking why an intelligent, qualified young woman is living a life of reclusion with an older loner of a man in a weather-ravaged house on a remote (windswept) coast. The answer: refuge, care, comfort, phenomenal sex (at first) and an illusion of trustfulness, stability and dependency, the “forever” she seeks. But ultimately Jude needs “not to feel bound to anyone – love with a loose leash”. Like a silk-spun cocoon, we know their affair must break (and this is not a spoiler – we know from the opening pages). </p>
<p>King, an affectionate, hound-like mutt of a dog enters their life. He, like the narrator, was once abandoned, now finding new love and care. His condition deteriorates as does the progression of love. “We wanted to believe, my mother and I, that love could restore what was beyond repair, and if not, at least let us walk around in the wreckage.” But love cannot cure all, she discovers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530304/original/file-20230606-17-y3q4co.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Madelaine Lucas builds an emotional world so real that we viscerally inhabit her narrator.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kylie Coutts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some novels invite you right in, to settle down in that warm house while storms rage outside. The protagonist’s naïve voice is interwoven with the mature insights of a much-older narrator, a decade on, reminiscing on this significant episode in her life. The two voices work together in delicate harmony, shifting effortlessly between description, action, sensory experience and reflection. The prose is textured and multilayered, as pure and melancholic as the sea in all its changing moods, which Lucas so beautifully captures. </p>
<p>“There is no end to grief,” the mother tells her daughter, “because there is no end to love”.</p>
<p>Thirst for Salt treads familiar territory, yet is told with such acuity as to render it fresh. Who is not drawn in by the seductiveness of first love: love like no one has ever experienced? Who of us hasn’t longed for that to endure and questioned why it didn’t or couldn’t? </p>
<p>These and other universal questions – the need for belonging, connection and stability, as well as the coming-of-age quest for identity, adventure and challenge – form the meditative core of Thirst for Salt. And they absorb the reader through the novel’s pages. </p>
<p>For all its melancholy, Lucas still leaves us with hope: “What continues to surprise me,” the narrator shares, “and what I still don’t understand, is not the reasons that love ends but the way that it endures.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/damsels-in-distress-two-new-australian-novels-fail-to-achieve-their-literary-ambitions-187089">Damsels in distress: two new Australian novels fail to achieve their literary ambitions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Adolesence and the death of humanity</h2>
<p>Coming of age is depicted in a starkly contrasting environment in <a href="https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1863&cat=0&page=&featured=Y">The Comforting Weight of Water</a>. The narrative chronicles the daily routines of an adolescent in a dystopian, near-future world where it never stops raining – except for one brief period of sunlight each day. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530248/original/file-20230606-27-w1h1ts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The adolescent narrator lives with the ageing Gammy, who can remember “shops and people walking on the moon, being part of the land”. The adolescent – the only one remaining in the village (“they killed the rest like you”) wears a green cloak and a bell. She is responsible for providing food for the rest of the villagers: lizards, eels, frogs, cockroaches, crabs. At the same time, she is greatly feared by them. The animals of the swamp – a cod fish, a turtle – are her only companions. </p>
<p>This disturbing scenario is presented as an inevitability for anyone complacent about the threats to our environment. McClelland depicts a terrifying world exacting revenge on humanity for its excesses. The elements are personified. The Wet – ceaseless rain. “Before the Wet was the dry, scorched brown earth.” The River – the villagers angered the River, who “just takes what is hers […] not a bitch, just in charge”.</p>
<p>Then there is the Unbidden, symbolised by threatening figures with their “empty eyes” and “black empty shells”, breakaways from the group of shrouded villagers. Gammy recounts what the Unbidden did: “they chucked the parents into the river, bound with ropes.” </p>
<p>Gammy is old enough to recall the events of the past. “We could make machines that circled the stars, but we couldn’t stop the Wet.” (“What’s a star, Gammy?” asks the narrator.) When the waters came, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>great lines of people [snaked] their way to higher ground […] leaving behind crumbling cities and poisoned waters and death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As if this isn’t bleak enough, there is no human salvation. In one chapter, the adolescent finds a position to spy on them. The villagers are pointlessly rebuilding their wooden huts in the incessant rain:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>their skin peeling off in sheets, revealing red, mottled and raw flash underneath. Some of them even have a patchwork of green and black swelling up from their ankles. Rotting as they stand there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They are “Zombie villagers, moving husks with nothing left inside. The wet hollowed them out”. They toil wordlessly, in their wooden-slatted shoes, or lie “in their own shit and piss”. A man falls into the sludge, submerges, his disappearance noted but ignored. This is humanity at its most degraded.</p>
<p>The villagers lack any recognisable form of empathy. The only communication is between the adolescent and Gammy. Even then, the dialogue is mocking, often harsh. Only in brief moments does Gammy acknowledge any form of sympathy or regret: “I’m sorry your future was taken away from you, kid.” </p>
<p>One day, there is no patch of sunlight. Gammy and the adolescent must leave: they set out, plodding and wading through the River, come across submerged villages, and surprisingly, find one that is flourishing (“The forest feels calm, not cowed”). They are pursued by a threatening figure (Gammy claims it was the Unbidden) but manage to elude the pursuer. </p>
<p>There are brief, energised moments and barely registerable scene changes, but for the most part, nothing much else happens in the narrative – which is the point. This is the void. The nothingness hereafter. A sobering allegory for our times.</p>
<p>The Comforting Weight of Water is not an easy read, but it’s searing in its portrayal of utter environmental annihilation and the death of humanity and humaneness. McClelland writes with angry passion – the depressed voice of a generation whose future has been stolen. As Gammy bemoans: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>all the plans you have, the way you thought you would live, suddenly wrenched away from you. Ideas for the future you didn’t even realise you relied on, washed away.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>McClelland draws the reader back into the primeval swamp and seems to be warning: if you don’t watch out, you’ll be abandoned there. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sophie-cunninghams-pandemic-novel-admits-literature-cant-save-us-but-treasures-it-for-trying-187724">Sophie Cunningham's pandemic novel admits literature can't save us – but treasures it for trying</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p> </p>
<h2>Idealised, imperfect – and abandoning</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460714973/my-father-the-whale/">My Father the Whale</a> is an absorbing, if uneven, tale of growing up with the transience of life on the road and the shock of paternal abandonment.</p>
<p>It is 1984 and nine-year-old Ruby roams the country in a Kombi with father Mitch, performing acrobatic circus tricks with him for a living. Her mother is long dead, silenced out of the conversation. Ruby yearns for the stability of a permanent home – and when a vehicle breakdown delays them in a regional town, Ruby has the chance to attend the local school and befriends the kind Fiona Stanley. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530249/original/file-20230606-18-aw2y9h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Divisions with her father begin, heightened when Ruby is left to fend for herself in the midst of a threatening bushfire. Mitch subsequently leaves his daughter in the care of the Stanleys, chasing an opportunity in Japan and only re-entering Ruby’s life 16 years later.</p>
<p>Mitch is a larrikin, hippy father, not particularly likable or dependable, but not wholly bad either. He is idealised by his daughter, though she is also cognisant of his shortcomings. Her longing for approval – and for him to even notice her – ring true enough, but his abandonment of her is somewhat implausible given the reasonably functional and close relationship they have shared. (Though there is a background explanation to come.) The Stanley family’s adoption of Ruby without intervention from social workers and the state also stretches belief, to me. Pauline and Max feel a little too decently good to be true – though such families do exist.</p>
<p>Now an adult, Ruby works for the whale-watching company in town and develops her skills as an artist. She is obsessed by whales, as if to underline the story’s recurrent motif and the novel’s title. </p>
<p>As a child she marvelled at the mother whales’ loyalty to her calves and was curious about the role of the father whale: “The males were the singers, the battle-scarred bodyguards who taught the calf what it needed to avoid danger and survive.” Her yearning is palpable: “standing there on the bow watching the whales it was as if her wishing had brought them to her.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="whale tail emerging from sea" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530250/original/file-20230606-29-48t6iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The narrator of My Father the Whale is ‘obsessed by whales, as if to underline the story’s recurrent motif’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phillip Flores/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And, as if her wish did come true, Ruby’s father suddenly reappears, tagging along Carlos, the three-year-old son of his current partner, Maeve. The ironic parallels – and Ruby’s envy of – the relationships around her are especially tough for her to bear. Mitch is attached to the unappealing young Carlos, who now dominates his time and care, while Maeve is preoccupied by bigger and greater things. </p>
<p>Ruby embarks on a mission to solve the unanswered questions of her past. The implausibility rolls on through the second part of the novel. </p>
<p>I couldn’t help but think of other books on the same theme of parental abandonment, which felt like they acutely, authentically captured the voice of the abandoned child as narrator: Cath Moore’s YA novel, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/metal-fish-falling-snow">Metal Fish Falling Snow</a> and Shannon Burns’ memoir, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/childhood-a-memoir">Childhood</a>. By comparison, the abandoned child’s voice in this novel didn’t feel as real. Nor did I find plausible the events of the narrative, given we know Ruby is curious about her maternal family.</p>
<p>For instance, why didn’t she ask more questions, try to find out more about her mother, contact her maternal grandparents? At least wonder about them, in her thoughts? Fourteen years without physically seeing the father she had been so close to seems unrealistic, even for the times.</p>
<p>When Ruby does finally meet with him again, it is as if he had only disappeared yesterday. I expected a more aggrieved reaction: more shock, anger and hurt. She is irritated at Carlos for defacing her painting, but later worries she overreacted. The word “anger” towards her father arises in her thoughts, but we don’t see this in her actions, nor is there any moody silence in the dialogue between them. </p>
<p>Perhaps it is because their relationship remains essentially unchanged: Mitch has always done what he wanted, and Ruby has always passively accepted that. “No point in dwelling on these things, you’ve got to move on” Mitch says, inadequately explaining his long abandonment. Ruby hits back sharply with a response that rings more truly: “We were always moving on.”</p>
<p>Other minor characters are half-baked. Ruby’s already-married romantic attachment is barely introduced – and then dispensed with conveniently, in a matter of pages. Minor characters like this might be better invoked in brief reminiscence, or left out altogether.</p>
<p>Perry writes with fluency and ease, but I wanted her to trust the reader more, to let the dialogue speak for itself – without so many explainer tags. </p>
<p>By the end of the novel, some questions are answered. But there’s a disappointing feeling Ruby hasn’t really grown up, as she herself observes: “a strange feeling of something ending rather than beginning”. </p>
<p>Given her tough upbringing and Mitch’s flaws, such a lack of resolution is not entirely unexpected, but I found it a little unsatisfying. I expected more agency and decisiveness from Ruby – but perhaps I am too much a sucker for the restoration of order and wrongs being put to right.</p>
<p>It is really hard to write a novel. There is no fail-safe recipe. These authors are to be commended on reaching the finish line, exploring universal themes that resonate with readers: love, loss, parental failings and the imperfections of our grown-up selves. Fiction, to <a href="http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct20/prendergast.pdf">quote</a> <a href="https://shortaustralianstories.com.au/product/bloodrust-and-other-stories/">Julia Prendergast</a>, is an “apt vessel for capturing the haunting incompleteness of human experience”. These three novels, each in their own ways, effectively tackle that incompleteness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Turner Goldsmith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Three debut Australian novels explore diverse territory: the recognisable real world of parental estrangement, and a dystopian near-future where it never stops raining.
Jane Turner Goldsmith, PhD candidate, Creative Writing, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204886
2023-05-31T12:39:02Z
2023-05-31T12:39:02Z
Summer reading: 5 books that explore LGBTQ teen and young adult life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528449/original/file-20230526-19-zowllg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C38%2C5137%2C3350&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coming of age brings new challenges for central characters who are discovering their own sexuality.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/reading-at-the-beach-royalty-free-image/102491237?phrase=summer+reading&adppopup=true">Chris Hackett via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In recognition of LGBT Pride Month, The Conversation reached out to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uBrR7S0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Jonathan Alexander</a> – an English professor with a scholarly interest in the interplay between sexuality and literature – for recommendations of young adult fiction books that feature LGBTQ characters. What follows is a list that Alexander, who has just stepped down as the children’s and young adult fiction section editor for the <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/">Los Angeles Review of Books</a>, considers as “must-reads” for this summer.</em></p>
<h2>1. Darius the Great Is Not Okay</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Two boys sitting and looking at an urban landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527550/original/file-20230522-19-alwc0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Darius the Great Is Not Okay’ by Adib Khorram.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/573023/darius-the-great-is-not-okay-by-adib-khorram/">Penguin Random House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Written by Adib Khorram, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/573023/darius-the-great-is-not-okay-by-adib-khorram/">Darius the Great Is Not Okay</a>” is told from the perspective of a Persian American teen battling an anxiety disorder while navigating the complexities of growing up in a culturally mixed household. Darius’ parents – an Iranian immigrant mother and a white father – are kind and sympathetic, even as they are dealing with their own issues, including the dad’s struggle with mental health issues and the mother’s attempt to maintain family relations with relatives in a country that is not only halfway around the world but whose government is viewed with suspicion by many Americans. Still, Darius’ family pulls together, even making a trip to Iran to visit relatives. While there, Darius learns about his cultural background as Persian, makes a lifelong friend in an Iranian cousin, and considers his own sexuality. He might be gay. How will that complicate his life? </p>
<p>Khorram beautifully handles the challenges – and pleasures – of growing up in a culturally mixed but rich and loving household while also dealing with mental health challenges and identity exploration. And there are a lot of sweet touches throughout, including a love of tea and “Star Trek.” Highly recommended for its sensitivity and authenticity. </p>
<h2>2. Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Two teenagers holding hands and smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527556/original/file-20230522-23-49gxsv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution’ by Kacen Callender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/lark-kasim-start-a-revolution_9781419756870/">Abrams Books</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kacen Callender, whose groundbreaking “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/felix-ever-after-kacen-callender?variant=32280909578274">Felix Ever After</a>” delighted readers with its tale of a Black trans boy learning how to navigate being in and out of love, returns with a new book just as compellingly real. Lark and Kasim are old friends whose relationship has seen better days. Lark is working hard at being a writer while also trying to help Kasim figure out how to handle the complexities of living at least part of their young lives in the shadows of social media. Ultimately, the book is as much about forging friendships – and learning how to handle their evolution – as about crushes and teen love. </p>
<p>With richly drawn nonbinary and queer characters, “Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution” joins Callender’s previous award-winning books in contributing beautifully written and deeply imagined Black, queer and trans characters that readers of all kinds will come to love. </p>
<h2>3. Last Night at the Telegraph Club</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An empty city street with two people holding hands under a lamppost." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527560/original/file-20230522-14801-xyo5r1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Last Night at the Telegraph Club’ by Malinda Lo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565819/last-night-at-the-telegraph-club-by-malinda-lo/">Penguin Random House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Malinda Lo’s<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565819/last-night-at-the-telegraph-club-by-malinda-lo/"> National Book Award-winning novel</a> is set in mid-20th-century San Francisco, in a Chinese American immigrant community in which Lily Hu has to learn to deal with racism, the “Red Scare” and the possibility that she might be a lesbian. A masterwork of historical young adult literature, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club” introduces readers to how lesbian communities formed – and thrived – even during some of the most repressive and homophobic moments in U.S. history. </p>
<p>Lo’s novel joins her previous works, such as the groundbreaking “<a href="https://www.malindalo.com/ash">Ash</a>,” a retelling of Cinderella from a lesbian perspective, in creating exciting and affirming work for young queer readers, as well as for anyone who cares for those questioning their sexuality and sense of belonging in the world. </p>
<h2>4. Café Con Lychee</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Two boys making eye contact in front of sugary snacks and drinks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527562/original/file-20230522-15-b7kh5t.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Café Con Lychee’ by Emery Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/cafe-con-lychee-emery-lee?variant=40682132668450">Harper Collins Publishers</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Emery Lee’s delicious novel centers on the rivalry between an Asian American café and a Puerto Rican bakery in a small Vermont town – with both eateries facing competition from a new fusion restaurant that has just opened. The families that own the cafés each have a young son working in them – Theo and Gabi, respectively – who have to learn to overcome their own rivalry and help their families survive the precarities of operating a business in a world of cutthroat capitalism.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780063210271/cafe-con-lychee/">Café Con Lychee</a>” shows how love survives economic challenges and family foibles as the two young men move from rivalry to romance. A sweet and nourishing tale, the book offers readers a relatable glimpse into making it – and making out – during a time of economic upheaval.</p>
<h2>5. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A red truck parked on grass at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527563/original/file-20230522-17128-jkclqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe’ by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Aristotle-and-Dante-Discover-the-Secrets-of-the-Universe/Benjamin-Alire-Saenz/Aristotle-and-Dante/9781665925419">Simon & Schuster</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I want to conclude this year’s summer reading list with an older work – Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s still beautiful, still vital and still very necessary paean to young gay love. Ari and Dante, from two different walks of life, learn to find love and self-acceptance in this beautifully written book. At the start of the book, Ari is dealing with family trouble, including a brother in prison, and Dante is perhaps a bit too smart for his own good. The two meet at a swimming pool one summer, setting the stage for a steamy exploration of friendship that might turn into something more. If you haven’t read “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” catch up this summer with this classic of contemporary LGBTQ young adult fiction, and then check out its recently published sequel, “Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World.” Happy reading!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A scholar of young adult fiction presents a fresh list of LGBTQ ‘must-reads’ for the summer of 2023.
Jonathan Alexander, Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of California, Irvine
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/201563
2023-05-25T20:01:06Z
2023-05-25T20:01:06Z
Friday essay: what the migrant workers who made my iPhone taught me about love
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525790/original/file-20230512-39256-ha5kei.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C0%2C3167%2C2148&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten years ago, a group of images on a popular Chinese <a href="http://fj.sohu.com/20130911/n386381112.shtml">website</a> caught my attention. They showed young rural migrant workers in intimate, though not overtly sexual situations: talking quietly, holding hands, kissing, embracing, or simply sitting close to each other with their limbs intertwined. </p>
<p>These intimate moments all take place in public spaces in the industrial areas of Dongguan, Guangdong Province, where these workers live and work – on the lawn of a park, on a bench by the roadside, at a table outside a snack bar, in a community library, in a public phone booth, on a city street. While some women in the photos wear casual or even sexy clothes, others wear factory uniforms.</p>
<p>As a cultural anthropologist who has spent 20 years studying rural migrant workers in China, I was immediately captivated by these images. I liked their realism. But what intrigued me were the polarised comments about them.</p>
<p>Some were one-liners such as “So sweet”; “How romantic”; “They are so pure and innocent”; “Love doesn’t discriminate against the poor”; “Life is beautiful because love exists.”</p>
<p>Others were harsh. One comment said that Shenzhen and Dongguan were full of “illicit love birds”. Criticism of such intimate acts was also implied in another post, which said “most of these couples are just after sex; love doesn’t really come into it.” One of the comments struck me as particularly judgemental:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They’re not interested in learning, they have no souls, they give free rein to their bodily urges. They feel no responsibility for themselves, their family, and society. They’re after cheap sexual pleasure. What do they know about love?</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524324/original/file-20230504-23-3u85uq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wanning Sun’s decade-long journey into the intimate consequences of inequality among Shenzen’s migrant workers began with a series of photos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking back, I realise it was my initial fascination with this group of photos that started me on a decade-long journey of exploring the intimate consequences of inequality.</p>
<p>I wanted to know what rural migrant workers themselves would make of these images and these polarised responses. I wanted to know what it feels like to go on yet another blind date arranged by their parents, to steal an intimate moment in compromised circumstances, and to endure the stigma of not being able to afford a wife.</p>
<h2>The iPhone and iPad workers of Shenzen</h2>
<p>Driven by these questions, I started my fieldwork in 2015 in the newly created industrial zone of Longhua District in Shenzhen – a manufacturing sector in the Pearl River Delta that is a major employer of China’s rural migrant factory workers.</p>
<p>From 2015 to 2017, I spent an average of one month each year talking to a total of 50 migrant men and women who worked for <a href="https://theconversation.com/foxconns-labour-union-elections-put-chinese-workers-rights-under-the-spotlight-12122">Foxconn</a> in Shenzhen – people who assembled the iPhones and iPads we use. In addition to these in-depth, one-off interviews, I also invited ten workers – five men and five women – to participate in my research over three years, so I could document the changes in their lives. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524328/original/file-20230504-23-v47tvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The production line at Foxconn, making iPhones and iPads.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kin Cheung/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During this period, I met members of these workers’ families, and spent as much time as possible with them: chatting, cooking, eating, shopping and watching television, or simply “hanging out.” I closely followed the developments in their love lives in 2018 and 2019. To this day, I still communicate with them regularly via WeChat.</p>
<p>The main site of my fieldwork was Village Q, a “village within the city” enclave that lies outside Foxconn’s plant. Inside the village, the smell of food wafts in the street, as does the sound of popular songs lamenting the travails of unrequited love, betrayal and <a href="https://theconversation.com/loneliness-is-a-health-issue-and-needs-targeted-solutions-96262">loneliness</a>. </p>
<p>Spicy aromas of food from Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan fill the nostrils, ameliorating homesickness and gratifying the chilli-loving palates of large cohorts of workers from these provinces. Shops selling lottery tickets, mobile phone accessories and groceries line the streets, as do internet cafes, hair salons, and “accommodation” venues of a dubious nature, selling temporary intimacy at hourly rates. </p>
<p>The streets are littered with promotional material in the form of cards or leaflets advertising myriad goods and services, ranging from “factory girls” who are happy to spend a night with you for a reasonable fee, to clinics offering a “quick and painless abortion.” </p>
<p>Everything migrant workers need for subsistence can be found here. It’s all cheap and cheerful, catering exclusively to workers on a wage of around 3,000 yuan (approximately US$440) a month.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524327/original/file-20230504-23-icu5sy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shenzen’s ‘Village Q’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wanning Sun</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each morning, around 7.30, I would see a steady stream of workers hurrying toward the northern and western gates of the Foxconn factory, breakfast in one hand and sleep still in their eyes, afraid to risk having their pay docked for being even a couple of minutes late. </p>
<p>At the same time, another stream of workers going in the opposite direction would emerge from the same gates, dragging their tired bodies after a 12-hour shift, looking pale and numb, heading for bed in their dormitory or rental accommodation. Everyone wore a lanyard with their Foxconn photo ID card hanging from it; no one was allowed to enter or leave the plant without swiping their card.</p>
<h2>‘A very modest dream’</h2>
<p>The rural migrant workers I talked to are often referred to as <em>nongmingong</em>, literally translated into “peasant worker”. Rural migrants can be found in the manufacturing sector, where I conducted this study. They are also in the <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442236776/Subaltern-China-Rural-Migrants-Media-and-Cultural-Practices">construction sector</a>, the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maid-China-Morality-Cultural-Boundaries/dp/0415592194">service and hospitality</a> sector, small businesses, and a wide range of other areas. </p>
<p>Chinese cities cannot function smoothly for a single day without rural migrants. The China’s so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-economic-miracle-is-close-to-fruition-but-what-now-for-workers-10926">economic miracle</a> simply would not have been possible without the cheap labour they supply.</p>
<p><em>Nongmingong</em> have become part of urban life since the start of the economic reforms of the 1980s. China’s <a href="http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202104/t20210430_1816933.html">National Bureau of Statistics</a> finds that as of 2020, there were up to 286 million “peasant workers”. That’s more than ten times Australia’s entire population.</p>
<p>The rural migrants I talked to were born in the 1980s and 1990s. They are the children of the rural migrants who went to the city to seek employment during China’s first two decades of economic reforms. Most of these younger workers have little or no experience in farming. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525800/original/file-20230512-36129-z3np5w.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most rural migrants Wanning Sun spoke to harbour the ‘very modest dream’ of finding a life partner, and the chance for family and a better life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They tend to be better educated and more engaged with urban consumption culture than their parents, but they also feel more stuck, angry and disillusioned – unlike their parents, who had always intended to go back to the village, they generally want to remain in the city. However, they see little hope of doing so, and are often unwilling even to contemplate returning to their native villages.</p>
<p>Most rural migrants I talked to harbour what might seem to be a very modest dream: of finding a life partner, having the chance to start a family, and living with a little more dignity and less discrimination in their often bleak and harsh lives. </p>
<p>Since they still hold rural residential registration status, they have less access to a wide range of socioeconomic benefits – health care, education, housing and employment – than city folk do. This is despite the fact they have lived in the city all their lives, and have spent their youth and prime years contributing to <a href="https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-slower-chinese-economic-growth-inevitable-without-internal-reform-170277">China’s economic growth</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-china-does-valentines-day-129420">How China does Valentine's Day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Without betrothal gift, my family would be embarrassed’</h2>
<p>I first met WJ, a clerical employee at Foxconn, in August 201. WJ comes from a rural village in Henan Province, one of the biggest labour-sending counties in Henan. She was 27 years old, and had been away from home for more than ten years. </p>
<p>WJ’s mother was also a first-generation rural migrant worker. But several years of long hours and night shifts working in a garment factory finally took their toll, and WJ’s mother returned home, nursing a chronic high blood pressure condition. WJ’s only brother had just gotten married and was expecting a baby, so he was living at home for the moment. </p>
<p>At the age of 16, just after finishing middle school, WJ decided to “go out” (<em>chu qu</em> – leave her hometown), since there was nothing to do in the village, and there was no work. The small piece of farming land available to the family brought in little income.</p>
<p>WJ’s story exemplifies the dilemma of being caught between parental opinions and her own desires.</p>
<p>Born in 1988, WJ was aware that many women her age were already married with children. She liked someone she met online, but she was not sure how to proceed. In the eyes of her mother, this potential marriage partner had three strikes against him: he owned no property; he had two younger, unmarried brothers (so he may have needed to support them in the future); and his mother could not help with childcare. And to add the final straw, he may not have been able to afford a betrothal gift, even though the expected betrothal “fee” (<a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-11/23/content_22510352.htm"><em>caili</em></a>) from the groom’s family in WJ’s hometown is not high.</p>
<p>Then WJ met S, who had a university degree, and then worked in a company in Shenzhen. WJ hoped to find someone better educated or financially better off than she was.</p>
<p>This traditional preference to “marry up” on the part of female rural migrants explains why, despite the large number of male workers in Foxconn, women still report difficulty in finding “suitable partners”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525782/original/file-20230512-33099-1sxqpo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is a traditional preference to ‘marry up’ on the part of female rural migrants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though WJ did not think S was very “handsome”, she felt what he lacked in looks was compensated for by his superior education. While WJ was keen on S, her mother disapproved. S’s mother was mentally ill, and there was not a marital house for the would-be couple. Furthermore, S’s family could not afford to pay betrothal money – an amount of about 100,000 yuan (more than AUD$20,000) – in WJ’s hometown.</p>
<p>The practice of giving “betrothal money” to the bride’s family has survived in China from a much earlier era. WJ was aware that paying a betrothal fee to the bride’s family was a bad “feudal” custom, but it had been done for generations and her family felt it should be followed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Personally, I don’t care if he has no caili, but I know my family would be embarrassed. What would our neighbours think of us? Everybody else follows the tradition, and who are we to break it? People may say that your daughter is so cheap she’s prepared to go without any betrothal money.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>WJ’s mother put pressure on her to consider a young man who now had a small local business, and whose family was keen to cement the marriage with a handsome amount of betrothal money as well as an engagement ring. </p>
<p>WJ was not in the least interested in that man – “we have nothing in common” – but she was worried that her open defiance might further upset her mother’s health. So, while her mother went ahead and accepted the betrothal money and ring from the other suitor, WJ secretly continued seeing S.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-tv-dating-shows-helped-change-love-and-marriage-in-china-forever-60594">How TV dating shows helped change love and marriage in China forever</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘My daughter doesn’t want to talk to me anymore’</h2>
<p>In the married cohort I talked to, MB’s story was fairly common: parents arranging matchmaking, the couple getting married after a few meetings, the relationship falling apart soon after marriage. </p>
<p>After MB married this way and their daughter was born, she and her husband came to work at Foxconn in Shenzhen. Their daughter, four years old at the time I met MB for our first interview in 2015, was being cared for by MB’s mother-in-law back in the village.</p>
<p>At that meeting, MB told me she had not seen her daughter for a couple of years. She could only get leave during the Chinese New Year period, but she could not secure a train ticket because of the high demand during peak seasons. Once, she got up at 4am and queued for three hours, only to find that the tickets for her train home had sold out.</p>
<p>Social media platforms such as QQ and WeChat were useful to connect with her daughter, but only to a limited extent. Her mother-in-law did not know how to use QQ – she did not even have QQ on her phone – so MB could only see her daughter on QQ when her mother-in-law visited relatives. On average, she saw her daughter once every two or three months. But she was sad that her daughter no longer wanted to talk to her.</p>
<p>MB lived in Foxconn’s dormitory, whereas her husband lived in a small rented room near the factory. They seldom saw each other in the factory – it was a huge complex and they worked in different departments. MB went to visit him on Sundays when they both had a day off. She told me that she would help him tidy up his room, wash his clothes, and cook a meal. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525787/original/file-20230512-25-dozci7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">MB (not pictured) lived in Foxconn’s dormitory and visited her husband in the small rented room where he lived on their shared day off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My first guess about their decision to live separately was that it was a way of saving costs. But it wasn’t until I met MB for a second face-to-face interview in the following year that she became more open about her conjugal problems.</p>
<p>They fought all the time, and could not agree on anything, even though she was quite sure there was no other woman in his life. The tension between the couple was not just due to an incompatibility of personalities. They also disagreed about the future. </p>
<p>MB believed they should work as hard as possible while they were still young, and save enough money so that they would not have to work so hard when they eventually went back home. At this stage of her life she also preferred to be living in the city, and did not want to go back home. In comparison, her husband was less enthusiastic about city living, and would not mind going back home.</p>
<p>MB has tried to engineer opportunities for her to talk with her husband.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His rental room is small – only big enough for a bed – dark and stuffy, so one time I suggested we go out for a walk. So, we went for a walk, and I sensed he was in a much better mood, and for the first time, he talked about some things from his childhood. After that, whenever we had another fight, I’d suggest we get out of his room and go for a walk. But he wouldn’t do that anymore. He said, “That’s just your trick of getting me out so you can discuss our relationship.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>MB knew in theory that she needed to “communicate”, but she said she did not know how to in practice. Nor did she know how to communicate with someone who refused to engage.</p>
<p>MB echoed the sentiments of quite a few migrant women I spoke to, who were eager to talk to their husbands but did not know how to get through to them. An expression that came up frequently in my conversations with migrant women about their partners was “cold violence” (<em>lengbaoli</em>), referring to the absence of physical violence but the presence of aggressive and hostile refusals to engage – in effect, emotional abuse.</p>
<p>Last year, MB told me via WeChat, 11 years since I first spoke to her, that she was finally divorced. She is still working at Foxconn.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hukou-and-what-birthplace-can-still-mean-for-marriage-in-china-75032">'Hukou', and what birthplace can still mean for marriage in China</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘You never get ahead by working hard’</h2>
<p>These conversations made me realise experiences in people’s intimate lives are shaped by differences in gender as well as socioeconomic status. ZB is one of the five men whose love lives I followed, but he was the only one who recently found someone and got married. </p>
<p>When I first met ZB in 2015, he was still single, and he offered this explanation why the odds were against migrant men like him “getting girls”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People like us come from the countryside, and we don’t own a house or car, and many of us can’t afford the cost of getting married, including caili. If you’re poor but good-looking, you may have a chance. But then again, if you are that good-looking, you wouldn’t be a worker at Foxconn, would you? </p>
<p>Also, girls like boys who have glib tongues and pay them a lot of attention and shower them with gifts, even though these boys may not have serious intentions. Younger people, those born in the 1990s, tend to have a more casual approach when it comes to girls. Older ones like me who were born in the 1980s are more serious. </p>
<p>I’ve seen too many boys who are honest and want to do the honourable thing by girls, but they’re shy and don’t know how to talk to them. That may not be a problem if you’re loaded with money; your money can talk on your behalf. But what chance do you have if you have no money, you look ordinary, and you don’t know how to talk to girls? Most of the men you see here fit that description, especially those born in the 1980s. </p>
<p>And let’s face it, girls like men who are confident and can sweet talk them, even though they may not be as dependable as the honest, quiet ones. That’s why you see so many lonely souls here – starving for love, sexually frustrated, and feeling lost.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525784/original/file-20230512-43932-eabman.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wanning Sun followed some of China’s so-called ‘leftover men’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>JH is one of the so-called “leftover men” I followed. Born in 1986, JH grew up in a mountain village in southeast of China. When I first met him in 2015 in Shenzhen, he was working 12 hours a day, six days a week at Foxconn plant, assembling iPhones. “That’s one of the iPads we make,” he said, noticing mine.</p>
<p>JH frequently changed jobs during the period of my fieldwork. By August 2019, he was working as a security guard in a hotel. I asked him why he had left his last job making furniture. He told me the company had to lay off many people because of China’s trade war with the United States, and his company faced too much competition from inland factories in Chengdu and Jiangsu, so he had to work more for less pay. He could no longer make enough to support himself.</p>
<p>JH is tall and dark, with a well-chiselled face – my assessment of his good looks was shared by other workers, both male and female. But he had had no luck in finding a girlfriend. In my meetings with him, he was quiet, softly spoken and shy. He found it difficult to strike up a conversation with a stranger. But other migrants who knew him well all commented on his loyalty as a friend. </p>
<p>Unlike those glib-tongued men who “get girls easily”, JH would not ask a girl out even if he was attracted to her, because he feared rejection. Because of this, he lived with a constant sense of failure. Furthermore, he did not believe in wasting time on frivolous affairs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I like a girl and want to go out with her, I want to make sure she knows I’m serious. I don’t want to waste her time, or my time. Also, I want to behave responsibly toward the girl. I don’t want to take advantage of her, only to leave her later. I also don’t want to say and do nice things – such as buying her gifts – just to please her and get close to her, with no intention of marrying her. It’s not the right thing to do. I know I’m old-fashioned.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>JH was referring here to some younger rural migrant workers in their twenties, some even as young as their late teens, who “get girls” easily, but have no intention of staying in a relationship with them or getting married.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524341/original/file-20230504-27-e04xvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some younger rural migrant workers ‘get girls easily’, but have no intention of staying in a relationship or getting married.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhan Youbing</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to his loneliness, JH’s sense of failure is exacerbated by a feeling of guilt for letting his parents down:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They [his parents] sacrificed so much to bring me up, and all they want to see is that I’m married. But I’m not able to give them that. They try not to put too much pressure on me, but I know they’re also under a lot of pressure from neighbours and relatives. I have two sisters and I’m their only son. So, they always try to set me up with a date when I go home. I feel I need to go along with these meetings, but nothing ever comes of them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the past, JH had believed that, as long as he was prepared to work hard, he might have been able to change his circumstances. After all these years of job hopping, he remains a source of disposable cheap labour. He earns enough money to survive on, but has nothing left to save, and certainly isn’t acquiring any certified professional skills. Now, he is adamant that “you never get ahead by working hard.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pity-chinas-bare-branches-unmarried-men-stuck-between-tradition-and-capitalism-68592">Pity China's 'bare branches': unmarried men stuck between tradition and capitalism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Love doesn’t conquer all</h2>
<p>One key message I got from my conversations with workers is that love does not conquer all, as we are often told. Instead, market logic and socioeconomic inequality largely determine the extent of success or failure in the pursuit of dreams and intimate desires on the part of the rural men and women in the study. </p>
<p>My research tells me that although people from all social classes experience “love troubles”, an individual’s capacity to ward off such troubles often depends on their socioeconomic position.</p>
<p>As shown in the polarised responses to the photos discussed earlier, inequality not only shapes how much access people in different classes have to intimacy, it also shapes how their intimate practices are talked about: both by themselves and in public narratives. </p>
<p>For instance, I talked to both young rural migrants and their educated urban counterparts about how they made decisions about wedding photography. Both cohorts considered wedding photography essential to their marriages, but they attached different meanings and significance to this ritual of consumption.</p>
<p>The love lives of the workers are not only personal and individual matters; they are closely related to how the Chinese state governs. Much government funding has gone into research about the lived reality of a large cohort of unmarried and sexually repressed rural migrant men in urban China: mainly because sexual frustration is usually believed to be a law and order issue, and may pose a serious threat to moral order and social stability. The aim, therefore, is largely to find ways of governing vulnerable communities and managing inequality.</p>
<p>I did get to ask workers to comment on those images of lovers in Dongguan: the ones that started me on my ten-year journey of discovery. Their responses were mostly along the lines of “So what?” </p>
<p>To them, what was represented in these pictures was simply their everyday lives: “These are very familiar to me; I see people like this everywhere, all the time.” Some even told me they had “been there and done that” and that “it’s nothing to make a fuss about.” </p>
<p>It’s clear that workers didn’t want people to romanticise their love lives – and nor did they wish to be patronised, judged or censured.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Wanning Sun’s new book, Love Troubles: Inequality in China and its Intimate Consequences, is published by <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/love-troubles-9781350329614/">Bloomsbury</a>, May 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This study was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant "Inequality in Love - Romance and Intimacy among China's Young Migrant Workers" (ARC DP150103544) </span></em></p>
Wanning Sun spent nearly a decade talking to migrant workers at the Apple factory in China’s Shenzhen about their intimate lives – and how their relationships are affected by inequality.
Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/201856
2023-04-03T12:28:06Z
2023-04-03T12:28:06Z
Sex, love and companionship … with AI? Why human-machine relationships could go mainstream
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518533/original/file-20230330-20-i47owy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C22%2C4970%2C3315&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The California-based startup Replika has programmed chatbots to serve as companions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-a-virtual-friend-is-seen-on-the-news-photo/1211994925?adppopup=true">Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There was once a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01457.x">stigma attached to online dating</a>: Less than a decade ago, many couples who had met online would make up stories for how they met rather than admit that they had done so via an app. </p>
<p>Not so anymore. Online dating is <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/06/the-virtues-and-downsides-of-online-dating/">so mainstream</a> that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908630116">you’re an outlier</a> if you haven’t met your partner on Tinder, Grindr or Hinge. </p>
<p>We bring up online dating to show just how quickly conventions around romance can change. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166891536/an-open-letter-signed-by-tech-leaders-researchers-proposes-delaying-ai-developme">With rapid advances in AI technology</a> over the past few years, these norms may well evolve to include sex, love and friendships with AI-equipped machines.</p>
<p>In our research, we look at how people use technology <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.042">to form and maintain relationships</a>. But we also look at how people <a href="https://doi.org/10.30658/hmc.4.7">bond with machines</a> – AI-equipped systems <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/03/17/replika-ai-chat-bot-companion-experience/">like Replika</a> that essentially operate as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000008">advanced chatbots</a>, along with physical robots like <a href="https://www.realdoll.com/realdoll-x/">RealDollx</a> or <a href="https://sexdollgenie.com/collections/ai-sex-robots">Sex Doll Genie</a>.</p>
<p>We explore the different forms of sex, love and friendships that people can experience with AI-equipped machines, along with what drives people to forge these relationships in the first place – and why they might become much more common sooner than you’d think.</p>
<h2>More than just a cure for loneliness</h2>
<p>A common misconception is that people who are lonely and otherwise unsuccessful in relationships are the most likely to turn to AI-equipped machines for romantic and sexual fulfillment. </p>
<p>However, initial research shows that users of this technology differ in only small ways from nonusers, and there is no significant connection between <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/mti1010003">feelings of loneliness and a preference for sex robots</a>.</p>
<p>Someone’s willingness to use sex robots is also less influenced by their personality and seems to be tied to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107403">sexual preferences and sensation seeking</a>. </p>
<p>In other words, it seems that some people are considering the use of sex robots mainly because they want to have new sexual experiences. </p>
<p>However, an enthusiasm for novelty is not the only driver. Studies show that people find many uses for sexual and romantic machines <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics7040062">outside of sex and romance</a>. They can serve as companions or therapists, or as a hobby.</p>
<p>In short, people are drawn to AI-equipped machines for a range of reasons. Many of them resemble the reasons people seek out relationships with other humans. But researchers are only beginning to understand how relationships with machines might differ from connecting with other people.</p>
<h2>Relationships 5.0</h2>
<p>Many researchers have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3278721.3278741">voiced ethical concerns</a> about the potential effects of machine companionship. They are concerned that the more that people turn to machine companions, the more they’ll lose touch with other humans – yet another shift toward an existence of being “<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_connected_but_alone?language=en">alone together</a>,” to use sociologist Sherry Turkle’s term.</p>
<p>Despite this apprehension, there is surprisingly little research that examines the effects of machine partners. We know quite a bit about how technology, in general, affects people in relationships, such as the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.04.007">benefits and harms of sexting among young adults</a>, and the ways in which online dating platforms <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502221127498">influence the long-term success of relationships</a>. </p>
<p>Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of AI partners is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-022-00331-0">a bit more complicated</a>.</p>
<p>We are now in an age of what sociologist Elyakim Kislev calls “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/relationships-50-9780197588253?cc=us&lang=en&">relationships 5.0</a>” in which we are “moving from technologies used as tools controlling human surroundings and work to technologies that are our ecosystem in and of themselves.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Elderly people in wheelchairs watch a white robot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518537/original/file-20230330-21-p8ns2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A humanoid robot named Pepper performs a comedy routine for residents at a nursing home in Minnesota.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nursing-home-residents-carol-jones-carol-fisher-and-irene-news-photo/1407319386?adppopup=true">Mark Vancleave/Star Tribune via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Therapeutic value is often mentioned as one benefit of romantic and sexual AI systems. One study discussed how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2020-0001">sex robots for elderly or disabled folks</a> could empower them to explore their sexuality, while almost half of physicians and therapists surveyed in another study could see themselves <a href="https://doi.org/10.2196/13853">recommending sex robots in therapy</a>. Robots could also be used in therapy with sexual offenders. But very limited research exists on these uses, which raise a range of ethical questions.</p>
<p>We also have very little knowledge about how human-to-robot relationships compare with human-to-human relationships. However, some of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000008">our early research</a> suggests that people get just about the same gratification from sexting with a chatbot as they do with another human.</p>
<p>According to theories about how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19734-6_1">sexual relationships with artificial partners would work</a>, one of the many factors that could affect the quality of the interactions – and, ultimately, the wider adoption of relationships with robots and AI chatbots – is the associated stigma. </p>
<p>While women are the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1578329">main purchasers of sex toys</a> – and their use has become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460719861836">a generally accepted practice</a> – people who use what’s called “sextech,” or technology designed to enhance or improve human sexual experiences, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2022.2067783">are still stigmatized</a> socially. That stigma is even stronger for romantic AI systems or sex robots.</p>
<h2>Will you be my v-AI-lentine?</h2>
<p>As we have seen with dating apps, technological advancements in the context of relationships initially face skepticism and disagreement. However, there’s no question that people seem capable of forming deep attachments with AI systems.</p>
<p>Take the app <a href="https://replika.ai/">Replika</a>. It’s been marketed as the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-tried-the-replika-ai-companion-and-can-see-why-users-are-falling-hard-the-app-raises-serious-ethical-questions-200257">AI companion who cares</a>” – a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend that promises to engage users in deeply personal conversations, including sexting and dirty talk. </p>
<p>In February, the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/italy-replika-ban">Italian Data Protection Authority</a> ordered that the app stop processing Italian users’ data. As a result, the developers changed how Replika interacts with its users – and some of these users went on to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-erotic-roleplay-updates">express feelings of grief, loss and heartbreak</a>, not unlike the emotions felt after a breakup with a human partner. </p>
<p>Legislators are still figuring out <a href="https://doi.org/10.3233/frl-210009">how to regulate sex and love with machines</a>. But if we have learned anything about the ways in which technology has already become integrated into our relationships, it is likely that sexual and romantic relationships with AI-equipped systems and robots will become more common in the not-so-distant future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Early research finds that people get just about the same gratification from sexting with a chatbot as they do with another human.
Marco Dehnert, PhD Candidate in Communication, Arizona State University
Joris Van Ouytsel, Assistant Professor of Interpersonal Communication, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200914
2023-03-15T19:03:36Z
2023-03-15T19:03:36Z
Stuck in a ‘talking stage’ or ‘situationship’? How young people can get more out of modern love
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514589/original/file-20230310-461-c4ljrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C25%2C5689%2C3796&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1516744263504-69bd3dec5d82?ixlib=rb-4.0.3&ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&auto=format&fit=crop&w=1742&q=80">Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Going together” sounds like a romantic term from yesteryear. Today’s young people have a newer label: the “talking stage”. It happens between being introduced to someone and officially dating, and it can involve talking or texting for days – even months.</p>
<p>The purpose of this stage is to have the opportunity to get to know someone before committing to a relationship with them. </p>
<p>But judging by their posts on social media, young people all over the world are <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a42030971/talking-stage-relationship/">struggling</a> with this modern-day dating phase. They can find it drawn-out, repetitive and emotionally draining.</p>
<p>Is it a new thing? And how can potential couples partners make the most of it? </p>
<h2>New label, old practice</h2>
<p>The talking stage is not a new phenomenon, but instead a new take on what we know as traditional “courting”. </p>
<p>Courting involves getting to know someone and building intimacy, often for an extended period of time, before committing to marriage. </p>
<p>Yet, not all relationships start with a courting or talking phase, some relationships start as a hook-up then progress to dating. This is because how people <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01463373.2010.524874">communicate romantic interest</a> and initiate intimacy depends on personalities and social context. </p>
<p>Neverthless, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-021-09896-9">the global pandemic changed the way people date now</a>. People who might not have chosen to date online previously, started pursing dates via the internet or sometimes teledates via screens. </p>
<p>Dating using <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-ghosting-to-backburner-relationships-the-reasons-people-behave-so-badly-on-dating-apps-179600">online apps</a> spread the love by swapping, matching, and instant messaging – often with multiple partners and in large numbers. </p>
<p>Researchers termed this period “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-021-09896-9">jagged love</a>” and found it didn’t lead to traditional courting and romance. People in this context move quickly between partners, searching for meaningful connections and often feel disappointed with the outcome. There’s a lot of potential for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332691.2020.1795039">sabotaging a relationship</a> before it even starts. </p>
<p>And there is a significant difference between the talking stage and traditional courting. Today, early conversations are accelerated by the amount of information publicly available about someone on the internet. So, for some people, talking or texting might feel like an unnecessary or tedious step, given what we can glean from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. </p>
<p>But the talking stage may be a way to solidify <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Liquid+Love:+On+the+Frailty+of+Human+Bonds-p-9780745624891">fragile human bonds</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1631029239293067270"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hook-ups-pansexuals-and-holy-connection-love-in-the-time-of-millennials-and-generation-z-182226">Hook-ups, pansexuals and holy connection: love in the time of millennials and Generation Z</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Is it a ‘situationship’?</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dating_advice/comments/104icrr/what_are_some_tips_to_improve_talking_stage/">online forums</a>, young people report feeling confused about how long to talk to someone before moving on, or what to discuss with a potential partner. So the talking stage might seem ambiguous, stressful or anxiety-provoking. </p>
<p>Young people are also confused about whether they are in a “situationhsip” – another relationship status with an ambiguous definition, used to describe non-committed but emotionally charged intimate engagements. This one is similar to recent labels like “friends with benefits”, “booty calls”, or one-night stands.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CWRI2EVvF9T","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Being in an undefined stage or relationship can impact mental health and wellbeing. <a href="https://ww.ijicc.net/images/vol4iss3/Raquel_Peel_et_al.pdf">Relationship difficulties</a> are one of the most prominent reasons why people seek counselling and a significant contributor to anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self harm. Counselling services in Australia <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-8040-3_14">report</a> the most common reasons for seeking counselling include relationship conflict, inadequate interpersonal skills to initiate or establish significant relationships, family violence, and sexual assault.</p>
<p>Fear of being hurt, abandoned, rejected or trapped can be a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332691.2020.1795039">barrier</a> to forming and maintaining healthy long-term intimate engagements. </p>
<p>Being in a committed romantic relationship <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01248.x?casa_token=P-CZTx8mVz8AAAAA%3ADv2y6JsPkpyf08XsvzzGSbpznAIi8N3TdzVrHxgFDuN3FCJWS5iDWJg-HxGzT1uAH_so4yZi9bi_iP-m">decreases</a> the incidence of mental health issues when compared to ambiguous or casual engagements. This why <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332691.2020.1795039">my research</a> focuses on increasing people’s skills and confidence to navigate intimate partnerships. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-ghosting-to-backburner-relationships-the-reasons-people-behave-so-badly-on-dating-apps-179600">From ghosting to 'backburner' relationships: the reasons people behave so badly on dating apps</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Good practice</h2>
<p>Many people <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332691.2020.1795039">lack relationship skills</a> such as insight, flexibility, maturity, confidence, effective communication and how to manage expectations. Being able to improve relationship skills is a strong predictor of relationship satisfaction and long-term relationship success.</p>
<p>Working out how to navigate an intimate relationship, by communicating needs honestly and creating opportunities to develop and explore a sense of self, can help people feel <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02654075221101127?casa_token=na2lhyw3DrcAAAAA%3AHHnN8P_wqKmoVrMgkbo8YGO6da6IjE49ze9fnTaUg7FvazDDKAUTqfKaYqkLZRQQdiN8GLKPxpXw0aY#bibr10-02654075221101127">more confident</a>. </p>
<p>So, the talking stage is an opportunity to get to know a potential partner, explore compatibility, and improve relationship skills. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514594/original/file-20230310-20-ded6q5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is talking and then there is the talking stage …</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-women-looking-at-each-other-8552267/">Pexels/Pavel Danilyuk</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-one-could-dna-tests-find-our-soulmate-we-study-sex-and-sexuality-and-think-the-idea-is-ridiculous-158533">The One: could DNA tests find our soulmate? We study sex and sexuality — and think the idea is ridiculous</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>5 ways to make the talking stage better</h2>
<p>It may be a bit confusing and open-ended, but there are ways to make the talking stage more helpful than stressful.</p>
<p><strong>1) Open communication</strong> – make sure to express your needs, expectations, and be willing to also understand the needs and expectations of others in an honest way </p>
<p><strong>2) Explore compatibility</strong> – the talking stage is an opportunity to explore whether a potential partner shares interests, values and morals</p>
<p><strong>3) Define the relationship</strong> – this stage is an opportunity to discuss the potential relationship and the type of romantic engagement. It is important all parties understand what the relationship is and where it is headed </p>
<p><strong>4) Acceptance</strong> – this insightful step involves understanding the talking stage or “situationship” might fizzle out and not turn into a relationship (which may hurt) and that this is a natural part of the process </p>
<p><strong>5) Establish boundaries</strong> – self-protection and safety are basic human instincts. So, it is important to know how to navigate this process in a healthy way by establishing boundaries for the intimate engagement early.</p>
<p>Humans are hardwired to search for intimate connections from birth. Modern times may might have changed how we pursue and communicate love, but this innate instinct remains truly unbreakable and the talking stage can be an important part of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raquel Peel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The ‘talking stage’ is a lot like traditional ‘courting’ – with some online complications. Still, it can be a great way to test the waters with a potential partner and establish healthy boundaries.
Raquel Peel, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland and Senior Lecturer, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199241
2023-02-13T21:34:30Z
2023-02-13T21:34:30Z
Marry or mingle: The risks and rewards of being single
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508940/original/file-20230208-27-aolhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=115%2C77%2C5026%2C3345&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marriage has traditionally been touted as the goal to which everyone should strive, but remaining single is increasingly common.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pexels/Freestocksorg)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/marry-or-mingle--the-risks-and-rewards-of-being-single" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>For many people, Valentine’s Day can be an isolating time. The dominant Valentine’s Day narrative insists that to be in a romantic relationship is to be happy. And for many single people, the day can come with pressure to find a partner. </p>
<p>The sensationalization of romance on Valentine’s Day puts pressure on people. Singles wonder whether there is something “wrong” with being single (or with them for being single). Couples wonder whether their relationship measures up to the ideal and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2004.00095.x">often break up</a> if they find it doesn’t.</p>
<p>Marriage has traditionally been touted as a goal to which everyone should strive, but that norm is changing. In past decades, the stigma caused by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20447267">societal disapproval</a> was a driving motive to “find love.” But those <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/583033">pressures</a> have slowly decreased. It is <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2134600">more normal than ever</a> to remain single or live in a common-law <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjk2x42">relationship</a>.</p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710006001">40 per cent of Canadians are single</a> and the number of single-person households is increasing. In 2021, Canada had around just as many <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220713/g-a001-eng.htm">single-person households</a> (29.3 per cent) as it did couple-only households (25.6 per cent) and family households (25.3 per cent).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/single-on-valentines-day-and-happily-so-155191">Single on Valentine's Day and happily so</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Still, the expectation remains that people should be actively trying to find a partner. Valentine’s Day reinforces that. Rest assured, there is nothing wrong with remaining or becoming single — in fact, there can be benefits.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.542">stereotype</a> is that singles are lonely, miserable, and unhealthy. That’s just not true. Single people tend to be more social, active and independent.</p>
<h2>The rewards of being single</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of people at a restaurant sharing a toast." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509011/original/file-20230208-19-n4e0m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research shows that single people tend to have stronger and wider social circles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Being single increases connectedness:</strong>
Single people are not necessarily isolated. In general, singles often have stronger social networks. Their networks tend to be more expansive, with singles more actively involved in their broader community. Moreover, not only do they have more connections, but single people are more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407515597564">maintain the social relationships</a> they have by reaching out and depending on connections.</p>
<p>Marriage can be more insular. When you have a partner, you are less likely to look outwards for support or rewarding social interactions because you already have a close relationship at home to depend on.</p>
<p><strong>Being single increases physical fitness:</strong>
Single people are more likely to take better care of their physical health. Singles spend <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3599846">more time exercising</a> than married people and consequently have, on average, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.06.001">lower BMI</a>. Single people also report similar levels of overall <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.542">well-being</a>, self-esteem and life satisfaction in comparison to couples.</p>
<p><strong>Being single increases independence:</strong>
Single people are usually more self-sufficient. They are more likely to experience <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/019251398019006001">personal and psychological growth and development</a> than married people, likely because they have to be more autonomous.</p>
<h2>The risks of being single</h2>
<p>However, it’s not all roses. There are also some detriments associated with being single. In general, married people <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2061670">live longer</a>. There’s an ongoing debate about whether this means healthier people are more likely to get married (the marriage selection effect) or that marriage provides a protective environment (the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwr111">marriage protection effect</a>). </p>
<p>It’s likely that both contribute to the statistics. Research suggests that individuals with poor <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(95)00347-9">physical</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/585665">psychological</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2005.11.043">emotional</a> health are both less likely to marry and more likely to die at an earlier age. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man holds a ring box while proposing to a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509013/original/file-20230208-18-2cj53m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The quality of our social interactions is what matters most, whether we are single or in a relationship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Single people, while more physically active, have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000654">poorer diets</a> than married people. Married people also have built-in social and emotional support in each other, are less likely to participate in <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2061670">risky behaviours (such as problem drinking) and have better economic conditions</a> compared to single people. </p>
<p>However, it is important to note that not all romantic relationships are satisfying. If romantic relationships are loving and supportive, then there are physical and psychological benefits. But when marriages and long-term relationships dissolve, the physical, mental, emotional and economic stress can have significant negative effects on health. </p>
<p>Similarly, if romantic relationships are of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2005.0103">poor quality</a>, the corresponding stress can affect a person’s well-being. And there’s no evidence to suggest that staying in a poor relationship is beneficial. </p>
<p>Altogether, research supports a single message: social connection is important. The number and quality of our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383501">social relationships</a> affect our mental and physical health, behaviour and mortality risk. Relationships, whether romantic, familial, friendships or otherwise, keep you healthy. Love <em>should</em> be celebrated. </p>
<p>Let’s refocus Valentine’s Day less on romance and more on cultivating and celebrating having happy lives full of loving relationships in whatever form they take.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Sherry receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
Valentine’s Day can be isolating for people who aren’t in romantic relationships. But research shows there are benefits to remaining single.
Simon Sherry, Clinical Psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198716
2023-02-13T20:32:54Z
2023-02-13T20:32:54Z
Why the love story of Radha and Krishna has been told in Hinduism for centuries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509268/original/file-20230209-21-e2oksj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=59%2C74%2C4893%2C4187&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the Hindu tradition, the story of the divine love of Radha and Krishna features prominently.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/page-from-the-boston-rasikapriya-ca-1610-artist-unknown-news-photo/1217999430?phrase=radha%20and%20krishna%20hindu%20gods%20paintings&adppopup=true">Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although it originated as a Christian holiday <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-real-st-valentine-was-no-patron-of-love-90518">in honor of St. Valentine</a>, Valentine’s Day has become a global celebration of romantic love, observed by people of many religions and of no religion.</p>
<p>Other religions have long had their own myths centered on love. I have observed, in my work as a <a href="https://www.etown.edu/depts/religious-studies/faculty.aspx">scholar of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism</a>, that in Hindu traditions, there are many stories of divine couples: deities who embody the ideal of love, and whose stories often contain lessons for the rest of us. One couple that has especially captured the imagination of Hindu devotees for centuries is Radha and Krishna. </p>
<h2>Who is Krishna?</h2>
<p>The story of Radha and Krishna is first found in the Bhagavata Purana, a text dated by scholars as somewhere between the fifth and 10th centuries. Their story is further elaborated in the Sanskrit devotional poem “<a href="https://ia800602.us.archive.org/18/items/Gitagovindam-Jayadeva-Barbara-Miller-1977/book-Gitagovindam-Jayadeva-Barbara-S-Miller-1977.pdf">Gitagovinda</a>,” authored by Jayadeva, who lived in the 12th century in Eastern India. </p>
<p>Krishna, a highly popular and beloved Hindu deity, is regarded, depending on which textual tradition you read, either as an avatar or incarnation of the deity Vishnu, or as the Supreme Being himself. In Hindu belief, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Bhagavad_Gita/COuy5CDAqt4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=winthrop+sargeant+bhagavad+gita&printsec=frontcover">Vishnu preserves the order of the cosmos</a>, often through taking on an earthly form to right some wrong and to set the world back on the correct course when chaos threatens to overwhelm it. </p>
<p>The life story of Krishna is an exciting one, full of adventure as well as tragedy. When Krishna is born, his evil uncle, a king named Kamsa, orders all of the male children of the kingdom who are born on that night killed, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2017/12/who-was-herod/">not unlike King Herod in the New Testament</a>. This was due to a prophecy that one of those children would put an end to his reign. Krishna’s parents, however, are warned of this impending calamity, and the baby is spirited away to safety.</p>
<p>Krishna, therefore, who is born to royalty, has a humble upbringing, growing up amid the cowherds and cowherdesses, or gopis, of the bucolic region of Vrindavan. Stories of Krishna’s teenage years, in particular, are greatly beloved by his devotees. This was a relatively carefree time in Krishna’s life, when he engaged in all kinds of playful mischief with the gopis, and wandered the forests of Vrindavan playing his flute. All of the gopis fell in love with Krishna, and he with them, but the one with whom he fell in love the most deeply was named Radha.</p>
<p>The story of the love of Radha and Krishna is overshadowed by an air of tragedy. The two cannot be together, as Radha is already married and Krishna has a great destiny ahead of him. When the time comes, Krishna must leave Vrindavan and overthrow his wicked uncle, and also play a key role in the fight between two groups of warring brothers, the Pandavas and the Kauravas.</p>
<h2>Divine love</h2>
<p>This tragic story is dear to devotees not only because of the very real human feelings it evokes, but also because of its deep theological significance in the Vaishnava tradition – the Hindu tradition in which this story features most prominently.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A watercolor painting that shows the Hindu god Krishna, surrounded by beautiful women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509273/original/file-20230209-22-4pl8xb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a famous work of art called the ‘Ras Lila,’ a multiplied Krishna dances with gopis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/krishna-and-the-gopis-leaf-from-a-bhagavata-purana-series-news-photo/1404465650">Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To some, the love between Radha and Krishna might appear to be adulterous or scandalous, given that she is married. The focus of the tradition, though, is not so much on this scandal, but on the deep, spontaneous, genuine love that it illustrates. Radha’s love for Krishna is so strong that it is willing to fly in the face of social conventions. She is willing to risk the disapproval of her community for this love. And according to Vaishnava theology, this is how individuals’ love for God should be. True love for God – called bhakti, or devotion – should be characterized by wild abandon. It should be spontaneous and free.</p>
<p>In Vaishnava theology, the gopis represent the many jivas, or souls, that dwell in the universe, while Krishna is Ishvara, the Lord, the Supreme Being. A very popular and beautiful artistic depiction of the relationship between Krishna and the gopis is called the “Ras Lila.” It depicts the gopis dancing in a circle. Each of them has Krishna for a partner. He has used his divine power to multiply himself so he can dance with each gopi individually. </p>
<p>When Krishna finally has to leave Vrindavan, the pain of separation Radha feels is almost unbearable. When she asks Krishna why she has to feel such pain, he tells her that she must learn to see him in all beings, for he dwells in the hearts of all. The individual soul’s sense of separation from God is similarly painful, and is believed to be a particularly powerful manifestation of bhakti. But that separation can be overcome by seeing God in all beings and in one another. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Bhagavad_Gita/COuy5CDAqt4C?hl=en&gbpv=1">Krishna also says in the Bhagavad Gita</a>, “I am never lost to one who sees all beings in me and who sees me in all beings, nor is that person ever lost to me.” </p>
<p>The story of Radha and Krishna can therefore be enjoyed on Valentine’s Day on two levels: as a sad and poignant tale of a past youthful love, remembered fondly but left behind by the call of adulthood, but also as an invitation to be open to love in all its forms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198716/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffery D. Long does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
On Valentine’s Day, a scholar of South Asian religions tells the story of the divine love of Radha and Krishna and the lessons in it for our world today.
Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Elizabethtown College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198885
2023-02-13T19:13:14Z
2023-02-13T19:13:14Z
What happens in our brain and body when we’re in love?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508767/original/file-20230208-13-1s2l0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C31%2C5152%2C3414&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/A7Um4oi-UYU">JustinFollis/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Love dominates our popular culture and is the subject of countless songs, movies, and works of literature and art. But what’s happening in our body when we feel love?</p>
<p>Love is difficult to define, but can be described as an intense feeling of deep affection. At the most basic level, science sees love as a cocktail of chemicals released by the brain. </p>
<p>From an evolutionary perspective, romantic love evolved from the primitive animal drive to find and keep preferred mates. Love <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-love-139212">keeps people bonded</a> and committed to one another, to raise children through infancy. This ensures our species will continue to reproduce, survive and thrive. </p>
<p>However, romantic love is not just about reproduction. Some <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2019.05.011">argue</a> we should consider love a motivation, like hunger, thirst, sleep or sex. </p>
<p>There are many benefits of loving others and being loved. These <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-is-good-for-us-so-why-do-lawmakers-try-to-break-us-up-131191">include</a> better mental health, wellbeing and immune function, and reduced chronic stress and disease. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-love-139212">What is love?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What happens when someone initially falls in love?</h2>
<p>Falling in love typically begins when someone starts to see another person as special and unique. </p>
<p>The initial phase of falling in love is an <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27366726/">extreme neurobiological state</a>, characterised by heightened responses and high passion. Lust and attraction are driven by the sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone, as motivations for sex. </p>
<p>Specific areas of the brain are activated when you fall in love, in particular the limbic system and the reward centres. The limbic system has key roles in emotion and memory. This causes a positive mood and explains why the memories associated with new love are so strong. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young lesbian couple cuddle in long grass" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508763/original/file-20230208-23-zvpqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Memories of early love are strong because the brain’s limbic system is activated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/03tSOB03Xko">Masha S/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is also an increase in dopamine and noradrenaline. Dopamine stimulates the reward pathways and increases motivation and obsessive thoughts and behaviours to pursue the love interest. Noradrenaline causes the feelings of euphoria, and the physiological responses of a faster heart rate, butterflies in the stomach and increased energy.</p>
<p>At the same time, other brain areas are deactivated. Reduced activity in the frontal cortex reduces negative emotions and judgements. This explains why initially people may be blind to faults in the person they are in love with.</p>
<p>But while you might be feeling less judgement, there is also increased cortisol, stress and feelings of insecurity in the early phase of falling in love. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/love-is-good-for-us-so-why-do-lawmakers-try-to-break-us-up-131191">Love is good for us, so why do lawmakers try to break us up?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How does romantic love change over time?</h2>
<p>The initial phase of falling in love and intense infatuation lasts for several months. </p>
<p>During the next phase, there is increased intimacy, commitment and attachment. This is driven by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin helps us feel safe and secure after the initial high cortisol and stress of the uncertainty and risk of falling in love. Vasopressin promotes behaviours of vigilance and being territorial and self-protective. </p>
<p>Between oxytocin and vasopressin there is a balance of connecting with others while also protecting the person you are in love with and yourself.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Older couple walk in a forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508771/original/file-20230208-20-78hdw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oxytocin helps us feel safe and secure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/GPJ3VEbEDH4">Alex Blajan/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oxytocin is often called the “hormone of love” because it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104948">facilitates</a> the formation of social bonds and connections. However, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.12.011">new research in animal models</a> suggests oxytocin is not essential for life-long pair-bonding as previously thought.</p>
<p>Sexual activity is distinct from love, but it does reinforce attachment. When we touch, kiss or have sex, oxytocin and vasopressin <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-point-of-sex-its-good-for-your-physical-social-and-mental-health-67848">are released</a>, which promotes love and commitment between a couple. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-point-of-sex-its-good-for-your-physical-social-and-mental-health-67848">What's the point of sex? It's good for your physical, social and mental health</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Years into a romantic relationship, there is often a period of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22119059/">transition</a> from passionate love to companion love. High intimacy and commitment help to sustain this love. Some relationships end at this time because of the reduced passion, while other couples remain in the passionate love phase for decades. </p>
<h2>What about non-romantic love?</h2>
<p>Beyond its role in romantic love, oxytocin is important in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1124/pr.120.019398">all forms of love</a>, including with family, friends and even pets. Positive social relationships and oxytocin have many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.07.007">benefits</a> on human health, wellbeing and longevity. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Person pats cat in bed" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508772/original/file-20230208-13-37gyqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oxytocin plays a role in our love for pets, too.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/mAsKA0jFfeQ">Chris Abney/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In our research, we <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48705219">have shown</a> oxytocin is associated with better quality of life and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.10.018">healthier social connections</a>, among people with and without depression. </p>
<p>So, for the love of your favourite person, people or pet(s), whoever they are, however long you love them for, and however many times you fall in love, relish loving and being loved. </p>
<p>Love might just be nature’s best chemical cocktail. But all the intricacies of the complex behaviour and emotion of love <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-is-it-just-a-fleeting-high-fuelled-by-brain-chemicals-129201">continue to elude science</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/love-is-it-just-a-fleeting-high-fuelled-by-brain-chemicals-129201">Love: is it just a fleeting high fuelled by brain chemicals?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
At the most basic level, the brain releases a cocktail of chemicals. But there’s more to it than that.
Theresa Larkin, Associate professor of Medical Sciences, University of Wollongong
Susan J Thomas, Associate professor, University of Wollongong
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.