Forget 'for him' or 'for her': It’s time we include LGBTQ+ people in Valentine’s Day

Walk into any store in the lead up to Valentine's Day, and you’ll be accosted by pink pastels and heart-shaped everything — it’s gotten to the point where you probably see Valentine's products up as soon as Christmas decorations hit the clearance shelf.

Valentine’s Day is a consumerist nightmare, but there’s a bigger problem than how marked-up exclusively pink M&M's are, or the potential butterfly-effect environmental ramifications of buying a cheaply made “I Love You!” bear.

It’s not something you can buy — rather, it's written in between the lines shaped like lingerie and fancy watches advertising something he can get her or she can get him. Clueless husbands have sections of online retailers dedicated to finding gifts for beleaguered wives, and a billion penis-focused tips for how to please your man this Valentine’s Day dot the covers of women’s magazines.

The cisnormativity, heteronormativity and rigid gender roles that surround Valentine’s Day are nothing new — in fact, they’re so pervasive that GLAAD made a Valentine’s Day media resource guide to encourage LGBTQ+ inclusion in publications, advertisements and other pieces of media surrounding the holiday.

And while the solution to the problem of LGBTQ+ exclusion isn’t found in expensive greeting cards with vague pronouns and his & his hand-towels at Target, even if these make cute gifts that weren’t options in a less accepting time, it's a significant first step to inclusion in the culture at large.

It may sound controversial, but is the long-detested consumerist approach to acceptance something that could actually benefit people in the short term?

To be clear: The complete elimination of gender-branded items isn’t feasible, nor is it necessary for an inclusive environment when discussing Valentine’s Day. An uptick in rainbow capitalism, or the practice of commodifying LGBTQ+ identity for commercial gain rather than genuine liberation or inclusion, isn’t a viable long-term option either. 

But shifting the language we use when it comes to Valentine’s? Even if it means giving in, just a little, to the whims of the corporate machine? It’s something. It’s something, specifically, that anyone can do.

Just to give a few examples, someone can stop calling out the usage of the word "partner" over girlfriend and boyfriend or husband and wife, no longer offer cisnormative or heteronormative relationship advice or sex tips unprompted and make sure they don't prioritize marriage in conversations when there are social (and until 2015, legal) barriers to unions that some people might not even want due to their hostile history.

And as GLAAD points out in the aforementioned media guide, there are plenty of topics that media outlets can cover that allow for inclusion without singling out gay couples as different or other, or, alternatively, a commodity that companies can prop up to look inclusive.

Top honeymoon destinations, reflections on long-distance relationships and cute proposal videos all hold no restrictions of gender binary or need for heteronormative language. 

Gay couples and couples with trans and non-binary people in them should be included in material for entertainment or advertising. This not only normalizes the existence of LGBTQ+ people as equal to and just as worthy of being romantically celebrated to people who might not know any gay or transgender people in their day-to-day life but also allows for normalization on a larger scale, too.

It’s privileged to assume that efforts to decommodify holidays don't also make it more difficult to normalize queerness to the general public — something that generally benefits LGBTQ+ people living in less accepting areas. 

Admittedly, waxing poetic about the specific words someone uses when discussing a holiday that’s essentially just a consumerist scheme, or begging for scraps of representation in a commercial, screams “first world problem” pretty loudly.

But small steps like this can still improve the quality of life and sense of inclusion for many LGBTQ+ people. Even if it doesn’t save the world, it’s still a step in the right direction — and what better day to show love is love than a holiday centered around it?