ROMANTIC LOVE FROM A QUEER PERSPECTIVE
INTRODUCTION:
¿WHAT IS LOVE?
-
How
do we build our loving culture?
o
The
social construction of romantic love: laws, institutions, gender roles, patriarchal
hierarchies, tags, inequality, discrimination.
o
Cultural
construction of romantic love: myths, traditions, stereotypes, beliefs.
o
Our
loving model in our Patriarchal Romanticism.
-
The
romantic postmodern utopia. Individualism and collective goals.
1 PATRIARCAL ROMANTICISM MYTHS
o
Media Naranja Myth
o
Love forever myth
o
Wedding
for love Myth
o
Omnipotence
of Love Myth
o
Heterosexuality Myth
o
Monogamy Myth
Gender
Myths: Femininity and Masculinity Myths.
o
Good girls/bad girls
o
“Don
Juan”, “Prince Charming” and “Alpha Macho” myths.
2 ANALYSIS
OF LOVE IN OUR CULTURE
- Multidisciplinary analysis of two movies (Pretty Woman and Dirty
Dancing) and a Coca Cola advertising campaign
- Royal Weddings Analysis
3 QUEER LOVE
- Models of diverse gender identities and relationships.
- Different love is possible. Proposals to make a better world. Proposals to build good and beautiful relations
between us.
INTRODUCTION: ¿WHAT IS LOVE?
Love is not
only a human feeling. Animals enjoy loving relations between them and with
humans. We have survived as species thanks to love, because we have been able
to feel empathy and solidarity, and to care for our children and elderly, help our
sick fellows, or any people that we find suffering.
We have a
lot of ways to build loving or romantic relationships, and love has been
changing as economy, politics and society have changed. Our grandmothers loved
in a different way we love now in this 21 century. Love changes with history, and the laws, the
beliefs, the models, the heroes and heroines, and it changes at the same time as
societies change.
Love is a very complex phenomenon: It’s a mix
between hormones, enzymes, amphetamines that transform the chemistry and
physics of our bodies. When we fall in love, our bodies change, and we live a
revolution inside of us. Love makes us usually more handsome, or prettier,
because our eyes and hair are brighter, and because our happiness enhances our
beauty … it is often contagious. Our behavior changes as well: We get nervous
if we are waiting for a phone call, we are a little clumsier and sometimes we
say or do things we don´t usually say or do. Love is a personal revolution in our
lives, because we generally become very generous and nice when we feel
something beautiful … we can make a lot of crazy things like leave our jobs to
find a better one, or change our country of residence … we are able to do any
kind of mad and strange things in the name of love.
Love is not
only a chemical issue: Love is a social and cultural construction and has an
hegemonic ideology in it that is not visible to us. We think that love is an
universal feeling, but the way we love each other is not the same … we love
according to our religions, our socioeconomic class, the education we have
received, our age, the country where we were born, the language we speak, the
gender we identify with.
Our
societies are based on systems that are essentially unequal: The traditional
division of gender roles is the principal way to divide us in two opposite
human groups, women and men. This discrimination between us has been built to
make us think that we are very different and that we must partner with a member
of the other group to be completed.
