From: JBrown
Charles writes:
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>And , serious question, is marriage no longer a male supremacist
institution
>? I assume we all agree it was at one time.
Sure, when it meant transfer of custody / power over women from the father to the husband, including power over her earnings, any assets, her labor, her every move, children, etc. But there was really no free state of 'not marriage'
for most women in these situations as the family, mostly the father but also other relations, had control until marriage, so I'm not sure it's marriage per se but the system of male supremacy as expressed through it that is the culprit.
^^^^^ Charles: This is an interesting point. It would seem that diminution in the male supremacy of marriage means a major diminution male supremacy overall. I guess fathers are not exercising the same power. Seems to me the women's liberation movement might make a bigger deal about these achievements. But maybe declarations of victories is not always the best tactic to lead to further gains.
^^^^^^
I think marriage now affords important protections to women (or to the more powerless spouse, usually the woman). Mostly, it provides some pressure on the man to not up and leave at any moment he is dissatisfied (and some guarantee to the woman), which is why there are so many jokes about balls-and-chains and marriage being like prison; it really does have some restraining effect on men. It affords women some protection and guarantees when we put ourselves in a state of dependency by having children--especially in the U.S., as there is no paid parental leave or free childcare--it's very hard to have a child without some other income coming in. So women are taking a bigger risk, it pushes men to have a stake in the whole operation.
Marriage affords legal protections, the same ones that you list as liabilities are safeguards from the woman's standpoint (1/2 a pension--in the face of otherwise, no pension for years raising children or working some low-pay, no pension woman's job; in states with divorce laws that take into account the work a woman does at home as well as at her job, the divorce means she at least gets some of the money/ assets accumulated during the relationship.
Unfortunately, it's still true that on average men's financial situation improves after divorce while women's suffers. Of course, the sexist stereotype is that she 'took him to the cleaners.' The stats just don't bear this out.
What's really going on is a devaluing of women's work in the home, so he thinks he owns everything cause it was bought with 'his' paycheck so if she gets *anything* it's regarded as highway robbery.
^^^^ Charles: Yes, as I said to you off list, my women's liberation theory is evidently mufty on marriage, although I have by "empirical" experience really had a suspicion for a long time that marriage is now actually much more favored from a feminist/womanist standpoint.
Sort of based on my experience listening to "girl-guy" type talk on talk radio and otherwise, women and men saying "men are like this , and women are like this", I have been thinking that women favor marriage ( again in general). It's usually discussed in terms of "commitment". Men are unable to commit. So, this was some basis for my thinking that a feminist position today supports marriage. I guess I have had too abstract an approach in thinking that the longer term feminist idea was to oppose, or at least criticize, marriage as male supremacist, but I hadn't thought of it in the terms that you say above and below, i.e. the alternative to marriage was not a liberated state for women in the past, that the law of marriage has actually become a major area of advance of feminism. I don't know how we deal with this being a sort of feather in the cap of the bourgeoisie indirectly.
So, pace Engels, monogamy is no longer ( if it was before) the world historic defeat of the female gender.
It is not abolition of the double standard on cheating/adultery, but acceptance of commitment that is wanted.
>In terms of the basic right to sex and pleasure,as discussed on this
thread,>isn't promotion of marriage a capitulation to "puritanism" and
sexual >repression, in some ways ?
Well, I saw a study a few years ago that married people have more sex than unmarried people. (I assume the sex was with their spouses.) Also, the Puritans get a bad rap on this, someone did a book--I remember she/he quoted a Puritan preacher that husband and wife owe each other, as a fundamental right, the 'pang of pleasure.' Here it is, Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (JHUP, 2002). I think he says that denying 'conjugal fellowship'was grounds for excommunication and divorce was permitted from an underperforming husband.
^^^^^ CB: Well, there goes another stereotype I had in mind. Marriage can often be relative, sexual bliss.
Yea, "puritans" becomes an imprecise usage at some point.
^^^^^
>Isn't promoting marriage kind of like supporting Kerry ?
I think it's a bit more like supporting affirmative action in that we wish men were better on these issues of commitment and sharing work but they aren't, so we have to have some legal framework to encourage that or, if it doesn't work out, compensate the spouse who's doing the childrearing/housework.
I think divorce is much more an ongoing thing where there are kids involved.
^^^^^ CB: Yes
^^^^
Without children it can have an ending.
In terms of it being a dialectic--couldn't marriage/singlehood (to use Lise Vogel's term) be the basic opposition? And couldn't it be like peace/war--peace doesn't necessarily lead to war although it precedes and (we hope) follows it. So marriage might not be the cause of divorce, other things could be (male supremacy, imperfect empathy, outside pressures that make people crazy or cruel, changes in our life goals and desires over the decades). You also imply all divorces are terrible bitter things--that's not my observation. Or, at least, are divorces worse than breakups where marriage was not involved?
^^^^^^
CB: Yes, I didn't mean that there are no amicable divorces.
Another general idea about marriage that I have had floating around in my head for a while is that it is too "heavy" for people, in the sense that it requires one to depend on the other person for so much, too much. So, any small failure or weakness on the part of one's partner can be magnified, because it can suggest that the person may not be able to meet _all_ the critical co-obligations, and thus partners are too readily anxious, which leads readily to arguments and long lasting feuds. Marriage pushes one to hold the other to a very high standard, and thus creates pressure.
On the other hand, I can't really describe an alternative institution, that meets the needs that marriage does, such as responsibility for children.
^^^^^^^
And if
so, was the marriage certificate to blame for the discrepancy, or was it just a sign that both parties had invested more hope in--and displayed more public commitment to--the relationship, so it was a harder letdown?
Jenny Brown
^^^^^
CB: I'm trying figure how to think about this. "It" is not the marriage certificate. "It" is not that couples who are not married don't have analogous problems.
To reiterate , a problem set that might be "inherent" to marriage per se is the tendency to tension because so much is at stake in the relationship with one person. There are too many critical dependencies on each other, such that there is tremendous pressure to live up to very high standards. It is thereby fraught with too much tension and thus prone to crisis. The bundle of relationships and dependencies that is marriage has to be placed into other relationships some. How I am not quite sure. To be dependent on one person as a co-economic unit, lover, friend, co-parent means that weaknesses in any area get magnified because they suggest weakness in all areas, and then ohhh, ohhh, "I'm with this person for the rest of my life and they might messup". I don't know if you follow what I am saying. "Commitment" means commitment to high performance continuously from now on. And there is roughly a 50% chance you will fail. It's like committing to go to law school from now on, or something, with 50% chance of success at itl. A very high percentage of people making this decision to commit have had failed relationships previously ,whether in marriage or out of it. Of course, a big problem is that 99+% of the men making this decision are not feminists in the least, so they have no motivation to make commitment to meet the standard of being good feminists.
But I wonder if it is empirically true that men have trouble committing. What percentage of men never get married ?
In general, your critique of what I said clarifies theoretically somewhat , what I have suspected from empirical observation how I have to "update" my women's liberation theory on marriage. Also, what about the issue of more public announcement that the women's movement has won big gains historical in the law of marriage ? That's pretty significant. It seems as important as Roe v. Wade, no ?
Thanks , sister.