Meghan Murphy at xoJane thinks that marriage is a tool of patriarchy. To her, rejecting marriage is the feminist choice.
Marriage has been an institution within which women have suffered abuse, rape, murder and forced reproduction. It’s an institution that guaranteed men a maid and someone to bear and raise their offspring.
It’s not that she’s not interested in relationships or love—she just doesn’t understand what marriage has to do with that. Though it may seem a little extreme and easy to cast aside, her points are interesting to consider, if not to subscribe to.
It seems that if women were truly “embracing feminism,” they’d reject such an unnecessary tradition so firmly rooted in sexist practices and ideas. While you can’t guarantee commitment or “till death do us part,” you can guarantee is that marriage, over time, has harmed women more than it’s helped them.
What do you think? Too extreme? Spot-on? Does her argument ignore the experiences of some while propping up one experience as the dominant experience? The full article is worth a read.
4 responses
Generalizations are their own defeat. Marriage has also been an institution that has offered companionship, support, and prosperity. The offspring aren’t just men’s, but women’s, too. Embracing feminism by rejecting marriage? Marriage is an instituion, not an obligation, and is ultimately what you make it. Abused in oppressive regimes, the problem isn’t marriage, but the abuse of it, just like alcohol isn’t outlawed because of the road deaths and liver failure it has causes. In societies where women make their own choices, marriage SHOULD start with two people going into it for the right reasons. Marriage itself can’t be blamed if people enter it with the wrong motivation. And feminism is about empowering women to have equal choices. Demanding a real feminist reject marriage outright says she shouldn’t have that choice of opinion and lifestyle, again, self-defeating.
Marriage as it exists is exclusive and unfair. Marriages that are contracts between individuals without children should be limited to precisely that: a legal contract between the two parties. Society and the state should offer extra protection/status and support (financial and otherwise) to children and those caring for children, not people who choose to co-habit. More to Ms. Murphy’s point, marriage was established to manage wealth and property, including women. Enough said.
When you love someone a whole, whole lot, marriage doesn’t feel like an “unnecessary tradition.” It is an opportunity to show the other people in your like that you have a bond with your mate that goes beyond friendship with benefits. Looking at marriage as a legal contract is too analytical – it ignores the desire that should be the foundation of marriage. Not just physical desire, but the desire to be seen by others as a team for life. True, this is so contrary to marriage’s original purpose that it doesn’t really deserve the same name. But lots of institutions have changed over the years – parenthood, citizenship, employment. Rather than abandon these institutions, we are working to remove the exploitative and unjust practices within them. By participating in an equal marriage, I’m showing that it is possible to do this same in this institution.
CJ, I was with my partner for 11 years before we got married. I’d say we loved each other “a whole, whole lot,” more than either of us had loved our first spouses (who we both divorced years before we ever met each other). We got married in large part because she got a better job which meant we would have to relocate and I would be without health insurance. Getting married didn’t change anything for us but our legal relationship. We’re not closer now than we were before just because there’s a piece of paper filed with the state saying we’re married, and we’re not more of a team now than we were before just because people see us as married instead of co-habitating.
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