At the ripe age of 17 in the year 2021, a past Kayla sat down and wrote down all the things she’s looking for in a “lover”. Inside the 20 bullet point list, I wrote that I wanted someone who was “swaggy”, “sends me songs 🤮🙄🙈”, “SEGSY”, “not clingy”, “not a misogynist”, “not homophobic or any -obic/-ism”, and most importantly, “dimples 🥺”.
As I’ve gone back to make edits to this list, the list has gotten longer, I’ve gotten more specific, but also more open-minded, yet key sentiments have always remained. I want someone who in some regard cares about the world around them and actively, even in small ways, goes out of their way to make the world a better place and other people feel safe. In many respects, that is deemed as being “political”.
So, I hope you can understand (though I don’t really care if you can’t) that when I go on these god-forsaken dating apps and I see people who describe themselves as not political or even worse, a moderate, I fear I swipe no. It’s not because I’m choosing to completely disregard a person based on their “political” label. Honestly, I don’t have my political view on my profile because it cannot be summed up in a label--while my views are liberal, I often feel like the liberal that we’ve come to know it as is, while seemingly well-intentioned, sometimes surface level and used to make white people feel good about themselves. In a very general sense, I’m pro people doing whatever they want as long as it’s not causing harm or done off exploiting others or the land/environments. Because of this I don’t have a problem if people don’t have a political view on their profile. But if they do…I have thoughts! (because your political view show up on your profile is something that is done intentionally)*
*This isn’t to say that if people don’t put their political views on their profile then the problem goes away. These things always come to light in everyday conversation because our everyday existence is political. And “politics”, even if I don’t directly use the word, is always gonna be something I bring up when getting to know someone.
A couple of days ago, I posted a screenshot from Hinge of a Columbia University corporate lawyer (without his picture because I think posting people’s dating profiles is kinda weird) who identified as a moderate and I said “moderate is scary, but imma try to get us out the hood y’all”. A friend asked me why I said moderate is scary, and I explained that I can’t date someone who has political views that I don’t align with. Even the sentiment that I could put that aside to “get us out hood” lmaoo isn’t something I actually think I could do. But, walk with me while I explain.
This topic has been on my mind for awhile, especially as I brainlessly swipe through Hinge looking for a decent person I could find myself comfortable talking to outside the app. However, this piece started last night and this morning. Last night, a friend of mine posted a conversation she had with a Hinge match. In blue she sent, “i can’t say i relate, me being heavily pro choice and knowing just enough about the ‘Israeli situation’ to be able to call it genocide”. He responded in grey, “What’s going on over there”.
And I, a viewer, bust out laughing. The genocide of Palestinians orchestrated by the Israeli and United States government is the most talked about “political” event of the last seven months. How on Earth, can someone after months of discussion, protests, and overall outroar not know “what’s going on over there”, I just--. Now, my friend is arguably a very patient and understanding person. She has steadfast “political” views, but she goes out of her way to explain and reason with people who may be misinformed, and we need people like her to have that patience (and I don’t know if I’m those people, lol). But, she did in fact ignore this man and block him. Not knowing what’s going on in Palestine is a choice.
After seeing my friend’s post last night, I was scrolling on Instagram and saw a post from @thecollectress talking about how politics impacts romantic relationships. I’ll include the post below.
@thecollectress writes, “romance can often be used as a tool for escapism and exceptionalism in our culture. And that looks like performing and assigning liberation to all parts of our life except for when it comes to love &/or sex.” Meaning, people will have strong “political” views--and actually before we move any further, let me explain why I keep putting “political” in quotation marks.
Whew, how do I break this down, lol.
Can we all agree that existing in a Black body is political? If you decide to wear your fro out, that signifies a political statement. People think you’re “saying fuck the beauty standard, I’m gonna wear my hair out”, the afro is so closely associated with protest. I mean it was a key part of the Black panther uniform. However, a bitch just wants to wear her hair out without it being a statement (I've written about this).
Secondly, walking around as a Black man is political. When people decide to cross the street because a Black man is walking by, when police officers kill Black men in cold blood just for being Black, that is political.
Next, the resources, or rather the lack thereof, in Black and brown low-income communities is political. It’s political because these things are decided by the people on the hill and have been for centuries. The social interactions we have, the instances of racist micro-agressions, all of that is political. So, being Black and being self-decidedly not political is impossible. I think two things are happening, a lot of us are political in ways we don’t realize (and that’s great, we should keep doing what we’re doing); and two, a lot of us are checked out, and that’s your prerogative, but I can’t date someone like that.
Going back to thecollectress’ instagram post, she calls in some of us who may be decidedly political, and yet still choose to partner with people who in her words are “politically careless” as a means of escape. We all have different views on what romance is, but I don’t want my partner to be my escape because for me that isn’t sustainable. I need a romantic partner to be just that, a partner. I need someone to push my thinking and to help me think differently when I face an obstacle in the work I do. Not an escape from it all. There will be a point in time where the “escape” bores me, where does that leave that partner?
Continuing her thread, she says that “we can’t continue to claim to want different, but resound ourselves in the most intimate moments to have those who are culturally and politically careless be the ones we walk and lay next to…it does further harm to the possibility of intimacy in other places in your life when people watch you commit micro-betrayals of your politics for social romantic acceptance.” And this last part is what especially stuck with me. All of my friends, all of the people around me, come from a marginalized identity in some way. The relationships I have are built in trust and from my actions of being there for those people, including in moments that they may be harmed because of the identity they have. I can’t imagine being intimate with someone who holds views that are harmful to the people around me, or who’s checked out, because no matter how much physical chemistry we have, I fear we will always be incompatible because we think differently on a fundamental level.
Where does this leave me and the girls in the dating scene? Because if it didn’t suck enough to date in the time of dating apps and overall lack of human interaction, with adding “politics” to it, the dating pool just got so much smaller.
I want to emphasize, that I’m not saying that I need my romantic partner to be on the frontlines of every protest, and post every instagram infographic, and be fucking Malcolm X (though he was fine). Not saying that at all. Like I've written about before--activism takes root in so many different ways. Whether it be through writing, through photography, through coaching youth in an underserved community, through just knowing the people in your community--the people in the bodega, the old lady on the second floor, the person collecting bottles that you always see when you walk to the bus--and knowing their needs and being willing to help even in a small way. That’s why I think a lot of us are more political than we think. So with the bar being that low, when niggas choose to be ignorant to that, there is just nothing for us to talk about at the point lol.
So….where are the n*ggas? Organizing spaces do tend to be predominantly women (W for women lovers), and then you run the risk of men who do show up being hoteps (don’t say hotep if you’re not black). Meaning that their views while seemingly based in “liberation” are full of misinformation and misogyny (especially towards Black women). So it honestly is really hard to find a dude (if you’re into them) that checks the oh-so controversial oh-so nuanced box of being “political”. I feel for the people like my friend having these uncomfortable conversations with these checked out men.
I owe it to myself (and my community), no matter how large the desire for romantic love, to not be walking around with a nigga thats ignorant. I wouldn’t cast someone to the side for being misinformed or choosingly not political--everyone is still human at the end of the day. However, if after conversation (not talking at, but conversation) it still persists, it is then a choice at a certain point, and I can also make a choice to not be with someone like that.
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