On Feminist Marriages

you can love something and still be critical of it, no? Well, I love the feministing.com community but here is my 2 cents on the marriage debate, in the form of an outline for a paper that I am planning on writing in my Gender and Religion class— also, its a rather rough outline so the ideas might not all make sense yet…

Divorcing Marriage From Tradition

The Neoliberal Feminist Fantasy

I.            Introduction:

While marriage is widely accepted among feminists as a heteropatriarchal institution, many feminists still choose to get married. This paper will explore the reasons that feminists give for getting married, and how that informs the way that feminists see themselves retheorizing the patriarchal institution of marriage. To answer this question I have restricted my analysis to the Feministing.com community. I will draw primarily from two blogpostings on Feministing.com, written by the website’s founder Jessica Valenti, a prominent third-wave feminist. The first article is written in anticipation of Valenti’s wedding and the second was written about the ceremony after the event. Valenti and many of her commenters offer two main reasons for getting married: to have their love and commitment recognized publicly, and to access the privileges accorded to married couples. Though the reasons they give for having a wedding and getting married are ostensibly public and political, their feminist retheorizations of weddings and by extension, marriage are based on a neoliberal logic of privatization and depoliticization, which allows feminists to view their marriage as personal and separate from the state. Thus the degree to which a marriage is considered feminist is based solely on the couple’s personal relationship and the anti-sexist (or anti-traditional) aspects of the wedding ceremony. Apart from the inherent contradiction of such a stance, this take on marriage blatantly ignores the structural implications of marriage regarding what counts as a family in the eyes of the state and which families are worthy of certain services. Indeed, through envisioning a future utopic form of marriage, a “one size fits all,” these feminists unwittingly contribute to the intensifying normalization of marriage as the only acceptable kinship structure. With a state that increasingly supports privatization of resources and the corollary ethic of “personal responsibility,” the Feministing.com community has largely failed to understand “the cornerstone role of marriage as a coercive tool of the privatization of social costs” (Twilight 17) . If marriage is ever going to be feminist, it must be legally divorced from the state rather than simply symbolically divorced from tradition.

 

 

II.         Neoliberalism and Public v
Private

a.        What is a Neoliberal logic?

                       i.       Public v Private:
“The master terms of liberalism–public v private — have
remained relatively consistent, as have the master categories— the state
, the economy , civil society , and the family
. Different forms of liberalism define the categories somewhat
differently and assign publicness and privateness to them in varying
ways. But the most public site of collective life under Liberalism is
always the state, the “proper” location of publicness, while the most
private site is the family. The economy and civil society appear as
mixed sites of voluntary, cooperative rational action (as opposed to the
coerciveness of the state, and the passion and authority relations of
the family), with both public and private functions–though both sites
are generally regarded as more private than public. Much of the analytic
force of Liberalism then is especially directed toward distinguishing
the state from the economy and outlining the proper limits to the
state’s power to regulate economic, civic, and family life.” (Twilight
5)

                      ii.       Key terms of neoliberalism:
privatization and personal responsibility. (Twilight 12) Privatization
“describes the transfer of wealth and decision-making from the public,
more-or-less accountable decision-making bodies to individual or
corporate, unaccountable hands. Neoliberals advocate privatization of
economic enterprises, which they consider fundamentally ‘private’ and
inappropriately placed in any ‘public’ arena…” (Twilight 13)

                     iii.       “This private world appears as an
imaginary construction, not a historical reality. Inefficient,
unprofitable ‘private’ industries routinely request and receive
government support, even direct subsidies. And the greater
‘productivity’ of some privatized services depends on the substitution
of lower-paid workers and lower-quality materials rather than on any
managerial acumen. Thus the allegedly free and efficient
private-enterprise system operates, not as an empirical reality, but
rather as a phantom ideal that is then contrasted with coercive,
plodding, incompetent, intrusive post-world war II governments–from
fallen totalitarian regimes to stagnant or bankrupt welfare states.”
(Twilight 13)

                     iv.       “official national culture, which
depends on a notion of privacy to cloak its sexualization of national
membership” (Berlant and Warner 170)

b.        Consequences privatization and neoliberal logic:  
“marriage is increasingly expected to absorb the responsibilities of
various social services and resources that the states and federal
government once provided.” (Fairyington)

                       i.       For example: Temporary Assistance
to Needy Families or TANF promotes marriage as a solution to poverty. ”
The Congress makes the following findings:  (1) Marriage is the
foundation of a successful society. (2) Marriage is an essential
institution of a successful society which promotes the interests of
children. (3) Promotion of responsible fatherhood and motherhood is
integral to successful child rearing and the well-being of children.” (
Personal Responsibility)

                      ii.       The BBSM says that “The purpose
[of such proposals] is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist
definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the
bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including
childcare, Healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and
transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.”
(Beyond Marriage)

 

III.         Kinship

a.        What is kinship? “if we understand kinship as a set of
practices that institutes relationships of various  kinds which
negotiate the reproduction of life and the demands of death then kinship
practices will be those that emerge to address fundamental forms of
human dependency, which may include birth, child rearing, relations of
emotional dependency and support, generational ties, illness, dying and
death (to name a few).”  (Butler 102)

b.          “kinship does not work, or does not
qualify as kinship, unless it assumes a recognizable family form”
(Butler 102) but obviously there are many configurations of kinship that
are not within the recognizable family form.

o   ” There are legions of people–straight and gay, bisexual or
transgendered, and others–whose lives are intertwined in ways that do
not fit with one-size-fits-all marriage. Yet the needs and desires we
all have–emotional and material–are as real and compelling, as
fundamental and as significant, as the needs that lead many romantic
couples to want to marry.  (Duggan 156)

c.        kinship that is not recognized is increasingly
illegitimate and denied services based on their current privatization.

 

Feministing.com on Weddings and Marriage

“Does the personal always have to be political? (And can’t
it ever be private?)”

IV.         Personal reasons for
marriage

a.        most of the reasons are centered on acquiring the rights
and privileges accorded through marriage, and on publicly celebrating
romantic, lifelong love. The rights and privileges stuff relates to
neoliberal privatization (feminists aren’t rebelling against this, by
participating in it they strengthen it). The wanting love recognized
relates to the legitimate and illegitimate kinship structures. Again, by
participating in this form of legitimation, feminists strengthen it.

                       i.       Lindsy: For me, my fiance and I
were trying to live in two countries (his and mine), to unite across a
border, buy property together, AND start a business together. The
institution of marriage is profoundly problematic. But it also endures
as the one and only way to do the things we wanted: to really be
together, to be free to literally cross borders together, entwine our
lives as a proof of our trust and sharing

                      ii.       Kristin: “marriage” for us was
more about the fact that he almost died and I wasn’t allowed in the room
even though I had medical power of attorney than it was about
commitment (we’d been together for 6 years at that point)… Because even
if you have all the same “legal” rights…at the end of the day no one
respects those documents the same way they respect a marriage license.

 

V.         Political justifications for
marriage:

a.        focus on “choice” feminism that privileges the freedom
of the individual over the rights of the community. Also, an
understanding of marriage as simply the private relationship between the
married individuals prevails, as if the social aspects of marriage are a
discrete problem (and the only problem with marriage) from the economic
privileges one enjoys from being married. In their own words, they have
tried to make their weddings “representative of the institution
we’d like marriage to be” (WID). It’s another personal responsibility
thing–each person is in charge of making their marriage a feminist one.
And on that note, we see this come through in how they talk about their
weddings ceremonies, and what make them feminist ceremonies (but we’ll
get to this later)

                       i.       Lindsy: marriage can be done in a
way that does not compromise anyone’s beliefs, yours OR your future
husband’s. Marriage is a contract, a choice, a partnership. That is why
we are fighting for marriage equality, of course– “definitions” of
marriage be damned.

1.     bell hooks calls “choice” feminism, lifestyle feminism:
“lifestyle feminism ushered  in the notion that there could be as many
versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was
slowly being removed from feminism. And the assumption prevailed that no
matter what a woman’s politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too
could fit femininsm into her existing lifestyle.” (hooks 6)

                      ii.       Margosita: I think it is a
feminist statement to marry the person you choose, how and when you
choose. Besides that, feminism is about embracing every choice. Embrace
away!

                     iii.       Jetgirl70: And at the end of the
day, remember that this marriage is not about anyone else, just the two
of you, and you two get to determine what it means and what it is.

                     iv.       Morgraene: “the best way to
convince people that egalitarian and feminist relationships are the way
to go is to have one, and make it as happy, well-founded and loving as
you can. Be the change, as they say. My gay friends, at least, don’t
begrudge me the chance to be married, they simply want that chance for
themselves. Participating in marriage isn’t participating in the
discrimination unless you cease fighting for equality for others.”

b.        “one size fits all” marriage is not actually meant to
include kinship structures outside the two-parent romantic relationship.
It is a way of saying all romantic two-person love is legitimate, but
other forms of dependency are even more so illegitimate. It is only
going to increase our inability to envision or recognize other forms of
dependency.

                       i.       Onely: Marriage isn’t going away.
Having intelligent, progressive women embrace it on their terms, as you
will be doing, is a way to gradually restructure the tradition until,
one day, maybe, maybe, maybe, it will work for everyone.
(emphasis mine)

                      ii.       “The master terms and categories
of Liberalism are rhetorical; they do not simply describe the
‘real’ world, but rather provide only one way of understanding and
organizing collective life. On the one hand, they obscure and mystify
many aspects of life under capitalism–hiding stark inequalities of
wealth and power and of class, race, gender, and sexuality across
nation-states as well as within them. Inequalities are routinely
assigned to ‘private’ life, understood as ‘natural’, and bracketed away
from consideration in the ‘public’ life of the state.” (Twilight 5)

                     iii.       “in some contexts, the symbolic
allocation of marriage, or marriagelike arrangements, is preferable to
altering the requirements for kinship and for individual or plural
rights to bear or adopt children or, legally, to co-parent. Variations
on kinship depart from the normative, dyadic heterosexually based family
forms secured through the marriage vow are figure not only as dangerous
for the child but perilous to the putative natural and cultural laws
said to sustain human intelligibility. (Butler 104)

                     iv.       “for a progressive sexual
movement, even one that may want to produce marriage as an option for
nonheterosexuals, the proposition that marriage should become the only
way to sanction of legitimate sexuality is unacceptably conservative”
(Butler 109)

 

VI.           Feminist
aspects of the ceremonies:

a.        There is a general move away from traditional ceremonial
aspects including changing last names, being “given away by the
father”, wearing white, etc. Most notably: no God language. The
takeaway–aspects of the ceremony are feminist in that they are
untraditional (ex “no craptastic wedding cake”… what does that have to
do with feminism???). They connect each of the minor traditions to
feminist values around, for example consumerism and materialism,
selectively.

                       i.       Lindsy: Our ceremony was written
by us. God was not mentioned. (We felt that, whether we believe or not,
we were entering a very REAL, EARTHBOUND contract; we wanted it to be,
“I choose you, and you choose me;” that should be bond enough, no?) We
also had our living parents participate in the ceremony. Both my MOTHER
AND FATHER walked WITH me, side by side; no “giving away” of THIS bride.
When we exchanged rings, we said, “I give this ring as my gift to you.
Wear it and know that I love you.”

                      ii.       Emilykennedy: “My favorite
non-patriarchal elements of the wedding: Purple wedding dress, that
looked nothing like a traditional flouncy pile of poo. /No diamond. / No
crap-tastic white cake./ Generally no white.”  Myopic view.

                     iii.       Other blog posters with No God
language in ceremony–shiftercat, Kristen (who eloped), homebird,

b.          On NO GOD: “many social progressives are leery of
making any kind of ethical claim for fear of playing into the hands of
the religious conservatives. Because the American Right, particularly
the Christian Right, so easily and often draws upon the language of
religion to justify its moral claims, it often seems that resisting the
Right necessarily requires resisting religion as a result, when public
discourse is structured so that it feels impossible to make a values
claim that is not religious in some general sense, the only alternative
appears to be enforcing strict secularism and rejecting religion. But
this leaves little or no room for progressives–religious or otherwise–to
make clear what they value and why.” (Jakobsen and Pellegrini 12)

 

VII.         Conclusional ideas

a.        But as one astute blogger (moonpie) points out– is ”
all this indie-wedding planning just there to distract me from examining
the underpinnings of marriage?”

b.        separating religion from state (Jakonsen and Pelligrini)
and have marriage be solely symbolic/religious.

c.        “the task at the end is to rework and revise the social
organization of friendship, sexual contacts, and community to produce
non-state centered forms of support and alliance, because marriage,
given its historical weight , becomes an option only by extending itself
as a norm (and thus foreclosing options), one that also extends
property relations and renders the social forms for sexuality more
conservative.” (Butler 109)

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