marriage, intersecting interests, and the woman perspective [View all]

[iverglas]

I'm saying "woman" perspective from now on, because I'm not talking about the perspective of any individual woman, or the perspective that stems from a particular analysis.

I'm talking about the perspective in which women and women's interests as women are central. Anyone can take this perspective on any issue -- women can, men can, feminists can, members of any other disadvantaged group, or any privileged group for that matter, can. "The woman perspective" is a concept similar to, say, "the African American perspective" or "the LBGT perspective". We just don't have as unambiguous a descriptor for "woman": female, woman's, feminist ... none of them work the same way.

And obviously, when I talk about women's interests as women, I am talking about women's equality interests, not the interests of any woman or women in maintaining second-class status, or maintaining the privilege they have, or perceive themselves as having, as a result of or despite that second-class status. Women's interests in their own physical safety, their own economic welfare, their ability to flourish as persons in the public and private spaces they inhabit.

My view of marriage is that it is a patriarchal institution that arose and has long been used as a tool for the oppression of women. Its purpose was to control women's sexuality and keep women economically dependent, all in order to protect men's economic interests. Obviously, this mostly means the economic interests of men of the property-owning class, but in the effort to do that, all men were put in positions of power over their wives: physically, economically, and in all other aspects of the marriage, family and household.

Modern innovations abound: marriages in which the partners have equal economic input and power, marriages in which the women and children do not take the husband/father's surname/identity, marriages that involve equal sharing of domestic duties; laws prohibiting the physical and sexual abuse of wives by husbands, laws that require some sharing of property and income on marriage breakdown, laws that no longer result in automatic custody for fathers. The personal variations are still, by far, the exception to the rule; they are idiosyncratic variations on an institution that maintains its characteristics essentially intact. The formal alterations still have little effect on the reality of large numbers of women's lives, and in some cases have had perverse effects (e.g. more easily dissolved marriages, with custody routinely going to women and women and children living in poverty).

The idea that a personal, sexual relationship is a subject of public scrutiny and is subject to public policies outside the control of the parties to the relationship is one I find oppressive. (I also just find the public rituals associated with such relationships just plain vulgar.)

This is not to say that I do not recognize the need for protections for vulnerable parties to those relationships -- in almost all cases, women are in a weaker economic position and are vulnerable not just to economic exploitation, but also to abuse, as a result. Levelling the playing field somewhat by policies that require sharing of assets and income on marriage breakdown is progress, very recent progress of course. But it doesn't address the inequalities and resulting exploitation and oppression that exist within subsisting marriage relationships.

Obviously those inequalities exist within informal relationships as well. The mere fact that the relationship is not formalized can amount to exploitation, for instance, if the woman is then not entitled to sharing of assets and income on separation.

And obviously doing away with marriage would not do away with the inequalities that women suffer in the broader society, which are a main source of their inequalties within marriages.

Marriage is an institution that women are socialized to aspire to adopting as the paradigm for their lives to a much greater extent than are men. It affects women's lifes to a much greater extent than it affects men's lives, given that the paradigm is still overwhelmingly one in which women have primary responsibility for childrearing and household maintenance, and thus unequal opportunity for a life outside the family, in economic and other terms. The institution is patriarchal and oppressive. In my opinion, but of course. And of course in the opinion of many feminist thinkers. The institution was not created, does not exist and does not function in women's interests.

So ... what of same-sex marriage, and the activism to legalize/legitimize it, and the intersection between women's interests and the interests of the LGBT community?

Well, I have some thoughts, and they coincide with those of some members of the LGBT community.

I'm going to post some of them here, in a separate post because I know very long posts are difficult to follow. If you will bear with me and wait ...