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.
