“So, which one of you is the guy in the relationship?” is such a classic hetero-normative faux pas. Second only to “So when did you become gay?”, many gay women have actually become accustomed to coming up with creative responses to this question, which gets asked over and over as we literally just try to navigate our existence. Applying gender roles to same-sex relationships has always been such a strange concept to me. It’s as though society thinks that as soon as you enter a gay relationship, you both draw straws for who will clean the house and who will mow the lawn.
Unfortunately, the dynamics just don’t work that way. In many gay relationships, all partners involved usually start from scratch and determine relationship roles, well…based on each other. Which of us enjoys fixing things? Are either of us really great at cooking? As in any other healthy relationship, you build out your lives together based on the strengths that each of you have and what makes you happy.
When my partner Nadia and I got engaged, the gender expectations never went away. Who proposes to who first? Do we both get rings? In the end, we had two proposals and each picked out our own engagement ring. We attended wedding expos where vendors would ask which of us was the bride. We answered questions about “which one of us was going to wear the dress,” and countless other gender-related assumptions that simply did not apply in our relationship. But there is one question, above all, that we have gotten asked over and over. “Which one of you is changing your last name?”
Answering this question was no simple tasks for us. Historically, gay couples have endured challenges in having their marriages recognized. This meant that taking care of basic tasks, like having a family, picking up your children from school, having access to insurance, or making a visit to the hospital was difficult for gay couples because you have to somehow prove your relationship to one another. You may be bypassed on certain privileges because spaces did not consider you “family”. And for this reason, my intuition was that Nadia and I should follow traditions in some suit so that we did not “stand out”. This meant that, in some cases, it would be safer for us and our future children to all share the same last name.
Now, I get that it’s 2019. Family members don’t always have the same last name. Families look different today, and the shifting structure of divorce, remarriage, having children from multiple parents, or cultural stigmas around family last names means that often times members of the family may have multiple last names that do not at all resemble one another. And they’re still family. But LGBT+ families are not always afforded the norm, and sometimes you have to do what is “safe”. Just in case. Because you don’t want to face any issues just trying to navigate your everyday life.
Nadia’s last name has a powerful meaning for her family. As a person from a Persian background, family units find comfort and pride in the history of their last name, so being a Hakim meant something. For that reason, I decided that perhaps it was easier just to take Nadia’s last name. The feminist in me struggled. Am I giving in by not keeping my last name? So many of my friends have chosen not to change their names after being married. I just didn’t know what to do.
This was only complicated by Nadia and I’s love for travel. There are some countries that would not recognize us as a married couple or a family. In fact, there are some countries in which it would be dangerous to be openly gay, including the place where Nadia’s family comes from, Iran. It was literally like running an obstacle course in the oppression Olympics. Which part of my identity is going to complicate my life today?
As Nadia and I moved forward in our lives and booked a trip to Morocco, my name change was seriously brought into question. It would probably be safer to travel to Morocco with a different last name. You know, just in case. While Morocco is known for being one of the more progressive Islamic countries in existence, there are still laws in place that allow LGBT+ individuals to be arrested for public display of affection. There is certainly no concept of gay marriage.
I found myself pushing my name change to the spring. But pushing this task back would never truly solve the issue, unless I never wanted to travel to another anti-LGBT country again. I don’t know if you’ve looked at a map of the world highlighting LGBT+ rights lately…but that’s a lot of countries. There are so many spaces that we just weren’t recognized, and we would have to decide what the best route for addressing that challenge was.
Nadia and I are not an exemplar of how to handle these gender role issues, nor are we an example of how to overcome living in a world that wasn’t built for gay people. We are just one couple trying to live our lives holistically despite it all. Collectively, we have traveled to at least 37 countries. We’ve experienced discrimination in foreign countries, and we’ve experienced hate right here in our home city of Houston. We’ve also experienced loving individuals across the world who accept us for who we are.
The idea is not that any of the information I’ve given leads to one solution or another, but that I should not have to encounter these worries at all. No one should. The idea is that living in fear is no way to live. I can only hope that our future brings a world that we can navigate with a little more ease. We can only hope that our marriage brings us encounters with humans that care, above all else, that we are filled with love.