Valentine's Day: Why?

A Rant by GabrielSymes

A dear friend of mine recently ranted about Valentine’s Day and how, as a single girl, she feels disgusted and dismayed by the romantically sickening behaviour exhibited by most, if not all, couples on Valentine’s Day.

Admittedly, it’s her first Valentine’s Day as a single woman, with hopefully no more to come. It’s not her fault, its circumstance. But the point remains. Valentine’s Day: Why?
Why does Western society (and yes, it is only a western concept now being heavily marketed in Asia) actively promote such a heinous day of romantic sap, admissions of love, and grotesque displays of public affection? And why, if it is promoted, is it also accepted?

Two questions. Two very similar answers.

The first is to why the day is promoted. The simple answer is pure capitalist commercialisation, and thats a topic that every human being on the planet can understand. We all know the day is about making money (or as Hallmark Inc. like to say Team America style "Holy Shit! It's Christmas x 2356!"). And that's far too easy a topic to argue. So we must look deeper. The commercialisation must have a basis; there must be a reason why people are willing to pay copious amounts of beer tokens (i.e. money) for goods and services that would otherwise not even be considered unless they had committed an ineffable sin such as ‘forgetting an anniversary’ or ‘just wanting to say I love you (I had sex with my hot blonde secretary so I’m assuaging my guilt)’. The goods and services reference is of course to flowers, chocolates, and those fucking annoying miniature teddy bears that serve no actual purpose unless they’re used to smuggle drugs out of a third world country via UNESCO and / or the Red Cross.

So what could this reason be? And the reason, my dear readers, is that Valentine’s Day is not a two way street. It’s not designed for romance to be encouraged between men and women. It’s designed for a woman to bask in the encouraging feelings of self-worth and the reassurance that they are, indeed, loved for "who they are". You give me one female of the species who receives no messages or indications of affection on Valentine’s Day, and I will show you a female of the species THIS CLOSE to becoming a radical feministic antichrist and massacring her entire friendship circle in a Gatorade-infused satanic pagan ritual.

Yes, that’s the end result that occurs when we men don’t show that we care for the fairer sex.

And one word there is the key; men. Men do not perform any Valentine’s Act for ourselves; we receive nothing in return except ‘affection’ and ‘her undying love’, two emotional reactions which can radically switch direction at any given moment depending on the mood of the aforementioned female and her perceptions of your alleged indiscretions or ‘issues’. We perform these acts simply to reassure the woman in the relationship that we are indeed pushed under their heel, that their methods of control are in fact working (withhold sex for a month and you’ll understand the methods I’m talking about), and that the sinister workings of her mind are working in complete concordance with the world around her.

The day is not about romance. It’s about control. And if a day purported to be all about romance is in fact not about romance, it brings us to the second question; why is it accepted?

And that reason is that women want an excuse to show off something in public to their friends, to the general population, and to the entire world at large something that are given / shown on every single other day of the year in private. The universal social acceptance is that for one day of the year, women want to show us off, and men are willing to have a ball and chain tied around both our left and right testicles and be dragged around as showpieces displaying our levels of affection and care via the purchasing of increasingly expensive gifts and larger and larger sizes of flower bouquets, jewellery, and teddy bears. The reason we as men are accepting of this is the aforementioned power and control that the women in the relationship have over our sex lives.

We accept it because our social conditioning ensures we accept it. As children, we’re encouraged to write Valentine’s Day cards to be delivered to other kids in pre-school class. As young adults, we see the older adults engaging in Valentine’s Day acts with no regard for the social or commercial consequences of their actions. And as older adults, we are conditioned to assume that we are predestined to perform those very same acts.

It’s not romance.
It’s not cute, it’s not cuddly, and it’s not an indication of how much we love you.

You already know how much we care for you, and it’s pointless to administer this lesson in emasculation to provide you with some glowing feeling deep in your loins that may or (as is often the case) may not lead to sexual gratification of any kind. I again point to an example where this is the one night of the year when the woman can go "Baby, let’s just cuddle, ok? I want to see how much you love me by not letting you roger me five ways from Sunday. Now let’s watch the marathon of Sex and The City and talk about our feelings. By the way, my mother is coming over later."

Valentine’s Day is an overcommercialised, overhyped, overplayed, overused, overrated emasculation of the male of the species. It’s nothing more, and simply nothing less, than a day to reassure women around the world that they’re "loved". And by loved, I mean in control.

But as a final point, lets say that Lennon and McCartney were right and that all you need is love. If you need that love to be proven to you and paraded around in front of every person on the planet, then you don’t really know what love is and couldn’t hope to find it in a shoebox full of porn.

Rebut away, Mr. Sizzlord. Rebut away.

GabrielSymes is The Man Who Was Thursday, and is currently based in situ around the world. He calls Brisbane home more often than not, and likes the odd beer or twelve. View more of his writings on Wangthai, and plans are in motion to have an opinion blog set up post haste.