#autonormativity

Its bothersome how having a family or just the family unit in general is considered more moral/respectable than just an individual. If you turn down a job offer and say "this isnt enough money for me to live off of" it doesnt sound as "good" as "this isnt enough for me to provide for my family with." Like if you say its not a living wage for yourself its not as Respectable as saying you cant feed yourself AND kids. Because an adult wanting to eat isnt as important as feeding children apparently? I rented a moving van the other day and was doing the checkout process online and the instructions said to please make sure the uhual was clean and in working condition for the next "family." They couldve said next user, next person, next customer, etc. but they chose the word "family" instead bc that for some reason invokes more empathy in people maybe? Like theyre more willing to leave the truck safe and clean for a "family" than they are for just any person. Or politicians (normally right leaning) who are like "I have a family so I understand what its like..." or "I'm a family man" etc etc bullshit thats basically "I had raw sex and have the children to prove it therefore I am Trustworthy" (bc lets be real here most of the ppl using that as a persusaice point are white men who have never struggled to feed their kids or even done their kids laundry or dealt with any of the other stressors of raising kids under capitalism). Is this maybe an aspect of "autonormativity"? Like the most important relationship you can have is a romantic one because it allows you to "create" a (nuclear) family? Or is this just conservative-ish family values BS/heteronormativity? (Referring to the US) now that many LGBT+ people can get married (not all bc of lacking disability rights) and have better (but still not 100%) chances of adopting maybe its not as "heteronormative" now but it still feels like it is since gay marriage still feels like a very recent thing and plenty of non het couples can be denied adoptions/cant afford ivf or whatever else. Ironic how str8s will complain about gay people "flaunting it" or "rubbing their sex lives in their face" but then will literally make ads where the major pathos/ethos persuasive point they make is "I put a baby in someone multiple times and heres a photo as proof :)"

I wasn't going to tell anyone about this, but it's been nagging at me. So for context, this is someone that I'm not out to, and this really wasn't the time to do it, and they had attended a wedding the day before, so we were discussing that, and my sarcastic aro ass said, "I don't want to get married, seems like too much fuss" and they replied with, "that'll change when you fall in love" and maybe I should have expected it, and I replied with something like, "I'm kinda not interested" and the conversation moved on, but it annoys me that it was when not if.

Today in my Contemporary Moral Issues class we were talking about Utilitarianism and one thing that we discussed was the “tyranny of the majority.” When asked for examples, I REALLY wanted to mention autonormativity, but I didn’t want to have to explain what that is because I go to a Christian college and I wasn’t comfortable enough to talk about sexuality out loud (I don’t know my classmates well enough yet). Then I thought, “Maybe heteronormativity?” But I didn’t want to do that because most of my classmates seemed to be against gay marriage (and therefore mogai in general), plus ditto on the sexuality thing. I guess that them being against it may have made my point better, but I didn’t think of that. At last I decided to mention gender roles. It seemed like a tame equivalent. Next time I’ll have to just start talking about sexuality, because I was bursting to share and shouldn’t have let fear hold me back. After all, debate is kinda what the class promotes.