Author Topic: Women and Marriage  (Read 23140 times)

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2008, 02:35:45 pm »
I've always wondered why in Anglosaxon cultures women change their maiden names and take their husband's upon marrying. It doesn't happen in the hispanic culture. Women keep their names and the kids receive both their father and mother's last names. I have two, my dad and my mom's as everyone else in Spain and Latin America. It is mandatory here to have two last names. In all official documents you are asked to add both last names. When I was living in the US I had to put a dash between my last names, because people thought my father's last name is my middle name and there was always some confusion or problems because of it.

Well, kinda.  In Hispanic cultures, the name women keep is their fathers'.  Women don't have their 'own' names in Western culture.  It's always the name of some man.

To make a complete break, women would have to give themselves their own name.

Offline LauraGigs

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2008, 02:53:08 pm »
Yes, the early days of marriage sucked. But we might want to remember that pre-technology, pre-sanitation, pre-contemporary rape laws — life wasn't that great for the single woman: what physical protection did she have? Having a man close to you at least partially guaranteed some sort of physical protection/stability in your life: a safe cave to live in, etc. Of course, back then a lot of the woman's legal or abstract societal protection was understood in terms of not violating the man's "property" — a damn sexist POV as we know. But it probably beat the heck out of freezing to death or being rape fodder. [Edit: I wrote this post while the other stuff was being posted about marriage in Africa, child brides (gag), etc. This may also apply there, horrible as it is.]

Another quick thing (building on Del's first point about spouses' rights) is that it protected the rights of mothers. Look at Alma at the divorce scene: men could no longer sire children and just walk away. Marriage (even in dissolution) guaranteed that a family could draw on the man's (greater) economic power, to see that mother + children were provided for.

Quote
Do you think that marriage as an institution really has evolved for women?

Yes, absolutely.  As womens' rights and the perception of women in society have changed, marriage has evolved in parallel. In some pretty obvious ways.  In just about every contemporary culture (excluding conservative Muslim or Christian culture, and maybe some tribal ones) women are no longer expected to be virgins on the wedding night, nor is there the winking double-standard that men can stray, nor the expectation that the woman will stay home — etc. etc.  Most all the sexist, "yucky" elements from the crap days of marriage have gone out the window.

So what's left, you ask? One is a sense of security and stability in your life. That's meant a lot to me, personally.
And I'm sure an argument to that would be: "What do you need that for? Cool people don't need it. Just be independent. Your own person. Have more fun, etc."  Well yeah. For a person in their twenties/thirties, it's great. I believe people totally need room to become their own person! To learn, and to mature on their own level. I always had a problem with people who went straight from school into marriage (not that it was really my business, but still): they seemed to be reflexively 'taking the next step' and expecting marriage to complete them, which to me seemed really backward (in the literal sense – that they needed to grow up first, and maybe in the general sense of the word too). I didn't get married until my late 30s.

I've always considered myself to be feminist, and at the same time, I enjoy the sense of security and permanence I get from my marriage. I don't think one necessarily cancels out the other. Do I look at other men? Hell yeah I do  ;D.  I don't think that goes away for anybody. Do I fantasize about being single and able to sleep around? Yeah... up to a point... the point where I remember how much it can hurt to give your body up to somebody who can just walk away; where I remember how uncertain casual relationships can feel, et cetera. And I realize my discomfort with that uncertainty may be my problem – that people made of stronger stuff wouldn't be bothered by it. But I look around, and I don't see a lot of those people. Not in my age group at least – they've all gotten married.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2009, 05:36:47 pm by LauraGigs »

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2008, 03:04:48 pm »
I've always considered myself to be feminist, and at the same time, I've enjoyed the sense of security and permanence I get from my marriage. I don't think one necessarily has to cancel out the other. Do I look at other men? Hell yeah I do  Grin.  I don't think that goes away for anybody. Do I fantasize about being single and able to sleep around? Yeah... up to a point... the point where I remember how much it can hurt to give your body up to somebody who can just walk away; where I remember how uncertain casual relationships can feel, etc. etc. And I realize that my discomfort with the uncertainty may be my problem – that people made of stronger stuff wouldn't be bothered by this. But I look around, and I don't see a lot of those people. Not in my age group at least – they've all gotten married.

I"m glad your marriage is doing fine, Laura, but marriage doesn't guarantee security or permanence.  We all know married couples who split up, I personally have known men who stole their joint savings and then split on his wife, leaving her with nothing but the bills.  I've known men who were having trouble with their marriages go home to find the house stripped of everything, including the appliances and divorce papers waiting.  I've known men who found their wives e-mails to lovers who "couldn't wait" for him to die of his health problems.  We all know people who were married decades who still got divorced.  People who thought their marriages were stable only to discover their spouses had been cheating on them for years

Sadly, marriage is a crapshoot.  One that has a 50% chance of success and otherwise isn't a guarantee of anything other than one's legal rights.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #13 on: December 10, 2008, 03:09:21 pm »
Well, this sure is a lively little thread! Good work, Amanda.  :D

So what's left, you ask? One is a sense of security and stability in your life. That's meant a lot to me, personally.
And I'm sure an argument to that would be: "What do you need that for? Cool people don't need it. Just be independent. Your own person. Have more fun, be yourself."  Well yeah. For a person in their twenties/thirties, it's great.

For yet another perspective, here's a Salon story by a woman coming to terms with the realization that she probably won't ever be married.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/12/09/kit_naylor/

15 years without knocking boots
I didn't intend to go without sex for a decade and a half. But celibacy isn't something you necessarily plan.

By Kit Naylor

Dec. 09, 2008
|

I haven't had sex in 15 years.

I thought I was just taking a break, temporarily climbing off the middle-aged dating roller coaster of hope and despair. I didn't intend to be celibate for the rest of my life. I just wanted to get some therapy, wanted to understand why I kept choosing men who were smart and funny but critical, sarcastic and merciless like my father. I figured I'd give it a go again later, when I felt stronger, more confident. In a couple of years, say. But here I am -- 55 years old, a spinster long past my sell-by date, no kids -- and I haven't had sex in a decade and a half.

It's my own fault, I know. I'm picky. Casual sex doesn't do it for me. (I've always thought I had to be in love in order to make love.) I regard men with ambivalence, with alternate longing and fear. I've grown accustomed to being alone.

"You so value your independence that in order to ensure it you fall in love with men who are not available," my therapist said. "You do 'yearning' very well."

But it's not like I don't try. Nearly 20 years ago, when I lived in the Bay Area, I enjoyed a brief out-of-town fling with a young engineer who captivated me because he could drive a forklift. He had grease under his fingernails -- a welcome escape from the socially awkward software guys in Silicon Valley. He wasn't exactly a Rhodes scholar, but he was a great smooch, and I started to make plans. I fantasized that we'd have a long-distance relationship. I'd encourage him to go back to school, get a degree. My friends thought I was nuts; my friends were right.

And yet, I was wild about him. I wrangled a business trip to Reno, Nev., where he lived, so thrilled about the illicit rendezvous that my nipples perked up as the plane taxied to the gate. I stood outside the baggage claim area, where Young Engineer had promised to pick me up, and waited. And waited. Finally I hailed a cab to the luxury hotel I'd booked, kept the appointments I'd arranged for the next day, and scurried home early, feeling scalded and ashamed. He'd changed his mind, he explained later. He didn't think it was such a good idea.

"And you couldn't have mentioned this before I boarded the flight?" I asked him. Apparently, night school was out of the question.

So I moved back to Minnesota, where I'd gone to college, planning to surf the second wave of husbands. I'd clearly missed the first batch, but in the early '90s we were all pushing 40 and many early marriages had ended in divorce. I hoped to encounter a former college flame or two, maybe one who was older and wiser and interested in some substance. I found instead that my male peers were pursuing 25-year-olds.

"They're dating children," I wailed to my friends.

Well, maybe I could find an intellectual buddy -- not a husband but a companion, a man who made me laugh, a man who reads and with whom I had something in common. So in '93, already half in love, I fell into bed with an old pal, long divorced from his first wife. He's a financial planner -- handsome and witty, highly verbal for a numbers guy -- and I adored him. I figured we could live separately but nurture an ongoing, affectionate friendship. We'd go out to dinner occasionally, take in a movie, enjoy some skin-on-skin action and laughter in the dark.

While I dreamed of romance, he plotted his escape.

He was at least kind enough to explain what had happened, from his perspective. Sleeping with me felt incestuous to him, like boinking his sister. "I thought we could lay each other with no emotional consequences," he told me.

"There are always emotional consequences," I said.

It was too bad. I miss him, and I miss male companionship. I adore men -- they are so different from women -- and I'm intrigued by the way they think. I had a grand passion once, with one of the men I nearly married (the luckiest of my lucky escapes), and before I caught him in bed with another woman we used to spend hours making love, rolling around together like dolphins, suggesting games: "OK, you be the gladiator, and I'll be the Roman maiden."  I was never athletic; in bed was the only place I knew how to play.

I suppose I could Internet date, but the very idea exhausts me. It feels like applying for a job I'm not sure I want. And it's so unfair, so hopelessly based on superficial things that I could weep. Cruise the online personals -- just scan the 40- and 50-something entries -- and you'll see that even men built like Danny DeVito demand youth and beauty. They say they're seeking "slender" or "slim" women at least 10 years their junior. Do I really need to pay a monthly fee for this sort of rejection?

Other women's husbands are off-limits, because adultery is a betrayal of the sisterhood and, besides, all you get there is a person you already know is capable of lying to and cheating on his wife.

And as for girl-on-girl diversions, the spirit's willing, but the flesh just can't get into it. Plenty of lesbian friends have hit on me over the years, and it's flattering, but I simply cannot go there. I wish men found me as attractive as other women do. Hell, I wish men were as affectionate with me as their dogs are. Dogs love me. These days, men, not so much.

OK, so I've gained some weight with menopause, and I am no longer a beauty, but that's not really the problem; plenty of zaftig women have husbands and lovers who adore them. I know I could walk into any bar in town and leave with some guy willing to come home with me for a one-night stand -- but that feels so sordid and ugly to me. I have known what it is to enjoy sex with love, in the context of a committed relationship -- comfortable, familiar, married sex, if you will -- and anything less than that feels sad to me. I would rather sleep alone than give myself away.

I guess I could dig up my old sex toy. It's probably around somewhere, the batteries long since corroded. My friend Katie brought it as a hostess gift when she came to visit from New York years ago. It's an enormous dildo, an unfortunate shade of orange, with veins and everything. I examined it dubiously. "I'm not entirely sure I would know what to do with this thing," I told Katie.

She laughed. "Trust me. You'll figure it out."

We left it on the couch and tottered off to bed. The next morning, my landlady let in a painter to touch up some woodwork and there, hiding in plain sight, sat the monstrous orange schlong. I was so mortified I tossed it in a Nordstrom bag and hid it in the back of my linen closet. I could easily buy another one online, but I'm inclined to take a lesson from my friend Gini, who says of hers that she falls asleep with the damn thing in her hand.

So what do you do?

I'm not sure. I know that, eventually, the longing lessens. It never goes away entirely -- I still tear up at Hallmark commercials -- but it's like quitting smoking. After a while your motor shifts into idle, and you just stop thinking about it.

And I suppose it would help to leave the house. I am quite reclusive, as most writers are, and unless some drywall guy who reads Russian literature shows up on my doorstep, it is highly unlikely that I will meet an available straight single man any time soon.

I hope I find love again, I truly do. But -- unwilling to risk any further rejection -- I am too attached to my comforts, to my books and threadbare oriental rugs and the two cats. As an oft-married friend exclaimed the first time she saw my little house, "This is exactly how I would have lived if I hadn't had all those husbands."

But we all crave human contact. "So," I resigned myself, scheduling a back massage, "welcome to the wonderful world of the middle-aged, celibate single woman. You now have to pay people to touch you." It's funny how comforted I can feel simply by hands rubbing my body. I know some men are willing to offer extra for a "happy ending" -- for them, sensuality isn't achieved unless it ends in orgasm -- but for me, I'm perfectly content just letting someone rub my shoulders, my back. Having enough money to get a massage or a facial every week for the rest of my life -- that's the kind of happy ending I crave.

Of course living with a spouse or a partner doesn't necessarily guarantee great sex -- or any sex for that matter. I suspect many married couples are celibate; some have probably gone without sex as long as I have. They are partners who coexist platonically, like siblings.

At least I've been spared the trauma of divorce. And because I live alone I have time and energy to devote to friendships, which are emotionally quite sustaining. Life presents us with many different ways to love. Who's to say the sexual kind trumps everything else?

While I sometimes calculate that I have a better chance of being clobbered on the head with a piece of falling asteroid than I do of ever making love again, I also count my blessings. I'd rather want sex a couple times of month and not have it than not want it a couple times a week and have to have it because I'm afraid if I don't he'll find somebody else.

And, hey, the toilet seat is always down, and I control the TV remote. The cats don't criticize; I haven't been subjected to Monday Night Football in years. Things could be a lot worse. And I hear a $15 pocket rocket can do wonders. It's also a bit more discreet than a fluorescent orange dildo.

As for the financial planner, he eventually married a woman some 15 years his junior. I went to their wedding. She is lovely, but they divorced within a couple of years. "She has no sense of humor," he complained. "She's so earnest about her career, and she's not all that enthusiastic in the sack."

"Well, what did you expect?" I asked him when he called to tell me they were through.

"I expected somebody like you, only younger," he admitted. We haven't spoken since.

We are -- finally -- no longer friends.

-- By Kit Naylor


Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.



Offline LauraGigs

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #14 on: December 10, 2008, 03:10:28 pm »
Quote
Sadly, marriage is a crapshoot. 

Sure — everything you say is true, Delalluvia.  I was just posting about my own experiences in particular.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #15 on: December 10, 2008, 03:18:18 pm »

Good article.  Sadly, this looks similar to the route I'm going to go down.  Men are disappointments, having tried hard to imagine myself bisexual failing and finding I'm extremely happy the less people are around - including lovers.

Well, this sure is a lively little thread! Good work, Amanda.  :D

For yet another perspective, here's a Salon story by a woman coming to terms with the realization that probably won't ever be married.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/12/09/kit_naylor/

15 years without knocking boots
I didn't intend to go without sex for a decade and a half. But celibacy isn't something you necessarily plan.

By Kit Naylor

Dec. 09, 2008
|

I haven't had sex in 15 years.

I thought I was just taking a break, temporarily climbing off the middle-aged dating roller coaster of hope and despair. I didn't intend to be celibate for the rest of my life. I just wanted to get some therapy, wanted to understand why I kept choosing men who were smart and funny but critical, sarcastic and merciless like my father. I figured I'd give it a go again later, when I felt stronger, more confident. In a couple of years, say. But here I am -- 55 years old, a spinster long past my sell-by date, no kids -- and I haven't had sex in a decade and a half.

It's my own fault, I know. I'm picky. Casual sex doesn't do it for me. (I've always thought I had to be in love in order to make love.) I regard men with ambivalence, with alternate longing and fear. I've grown accustomed to being alone.

"You so value your independence that in order to ensure it you fall in love with men who are not available," my therapist said. "You do 'yearning' very well."

But it's not like I don't try. Nearly 20 years ago, when I lived in the Bay Area, I enjoyed a brief out-of-town fling with a young engineer who captivated me because he could drive a forklift. He had grease under his fingernails -- a welcome escape from the socially awkward software guys in Silicon Valley. He wasn't exactly a Rhodes scholar, but he was a great smooch, and I started to make plans. I fantasized that we'd have a long-distance relationship. I'd encourage him to go back to school, get a degree. My friends thought I was nuts; my friends were right.

And yet, I was wild about him. I wrangled a business trip to Reno, Nev., where he lived, so thrilled about the illicit rendezvous that my nipples perked up as the plane taxied to the gate. I stood outside the baggage claim area, where Young Engineer had promised to pick me up, and waited. And waited. Finally I hailed a cab to the luxury hotel I'd booked, kept the appointments I'd arranged for the next day, and scurried home early, feeling scalded and ashamed. He'd changed his mind, he explained later. He didn't think it was such a good idea.

"And you couldn't have mentioned this before I boarded the flight?" I asked him. Apparently, night school was out of the question.

So I moved back to Minnesota, where I'd gone to college, planning to surf the second wave of husbands. I'd clearly missed the first batch, but in the early '90s we were all pushing 40 and many early marriages had ended in divorce. I hoped to encounter a former college flame or two, maybe one who was older and wiser and interested in some substance. I found instead that my male peers were pursuing 25-year-olds.

"They're dating children," I wailed to my friends.

Well, maybe I could find an intellectual buddy -- not a husband but a companion, a man who made me laugh, a man who reads and with whom I had something in common. So in '93, already half in love, I fell into bed with an old pal, long divorced from his first wife. He's a financial planner -- handsome and witty, highly verbal for a numbers guy -- and I adored him. I figured we could live separately but nurture an ongoing, affectionate friendship. We'd go out to dinner occasionally, take in a movie, enjoy some skin-on-skin action and laughter in the dark.

While I dreamed of romance, he plotted his escape.

He was at least kind enough to explain what had happened, from his perspective. Sleeping with me felt incestuous to him, like boinking his sister. "I thought we could lay each other with no emotional consequences," he told me.

"There are always emotional consequences," I said.

It was too bad. I miss him, and I miss male companionship. I adore men -- they are so different from women -- and I'm intrigued by the way they think. I had a grand passion once, with one of the men I nearly married (the luckiest of my lucky escapes), and before I caught him in bed with another woman we used to spend hours making love, rolling around together like dolphins, suggesting games: "OK, you be the gladiator, and I'll be the Roman maiden."  I was never athletic; in bed was the only place I knew how to play.

I suppose I could Internet date, but the very idea exhausts me. It feels like applying for a job I'm not sure I want. And it's so unfair, so hopelessly based on superficial things that I could weep. Cruise the online personals -- just scan the 40- and 50-something entries -- and you'll see that even men built like Danny DeVito demand youth and beauty. They say they're seeking "slender" or "slim" women at least 10 years their junior. Do I really need to pay a monthly fee for this sort of rejection?

Other women's husbands are off-limits, because adultery is a betrayal of the sisterhood and, besides, all you get there is a person you already know is capable of lying to and cheating on his wife.

And as for girl-on-girl diversions, the spirit's willing, but the flesh just can't get into it. Plenty of lesbian friends have hit on me over the years, and it's flattering, but I simply cannot go there. I wish men found me as attractive as other women do. Hell, I wish men were as affectionate with me as their dogs are. Dogs love me. These days, men, not so much.

OK, so I've gained some weight with menopause, and I am no longer a beauty, but that's not really the problem; plenty of zaftig women have husbands and lovers who adore them. I know I could walk into any bar in town and leave with some guy willing to come home with me for a one-night stand -- but that feels so sordid and ugly to me. I have known what it is to enjoy sex with love, in the context of a committed relationship -- comfortable, familiar, married sex, if you will -- and anything less than that feels sad to me. I would rather sleep alone than give myself away.

I guess I could dig up my old sex toy. It's probably around somewhere, the batteries long since corroded. My friend Katie brought it as a hostess gift when she came to visit from New York years ago. It's an enormous dildo, an unfortunate shade of orange, with veins and everything. I examined it dubiously. "I'm not entirely sure I would know what to do with this thing," I told Katie.

She laughed. "Trust me. You'll figure it out."

We left it on the couch and tottered off to bed. The next morning, my landlady let in a painter to touch up some woodwork and there, hiding in plain sight, sat the monstrous orange schlong. I was so mortified I tossed it in a Nordstrom bag and hid it in the back of my linen closet. I could easily buy another one online, but I'm inclined to take a lesson from my friend Gini, who says of hers that she falls asleep with the damn thing in her hand.

So what do you do?

I'm not sure. I know that, eventually, the longing lessens. It never goes away entirely -- I still tear up at Hallmark commercials -- but it's like quitting smoking. After a while your motor shifts into idle, and you just stop thinking about it.

And I suppose it would help to leave the house. I am quite reclusive, as most writers are, and unless some drywall guy who reads Russian literature shows up on my doorstep, it is highly unlikely that I will meet an available straight single man any time soon.

I hope I find love again, I truly do. But -- unwilling to risk any further rejection -- I am too attached to my comforts, to my books and threadbare oriental rugs and the two cats. As an oft-married friend exclaimed the first time she saw my little house, "This is exactly how I would have lived if I hadn't had all those husbands."

But we all crave human contact. "So," I resigned myself, scheduling a back massage, "welcome to the wonderful world of the middle-aged, celibate single woman. You now have to pay people to touch you." It's funny how comforted I can feel simply by hands rubbing my body. I know some men are willing to offer extra for a "happy ending" -- for them, sensuality isn't achieved unless it ends in orgasm -- but for me, I'm perfectly content just letting someone rub my shoulders, my back. Having enough money to get a massage or a facial every week for the rest of my life -- that's the kind of happy ending I crave.

Of course living with a spouse or a partner doesn't necessarily guarantee great sex -- or any sex for that matter. I suspect many married couples are celibate; some have probably gone without sex as long as I have. They are partners who coexist platonically, like siblings.

At least I've been spared the trauma of divorce. And because I live alone I have time and energy to devote to friendships, which are emotionally quite sustaining. Life presents us with many different ways to love. Who's to say the sexual kind trumps everything else?

While I sometimes calculate that I have a better chance of being clobbered on the head with a piece of falling asteroid than I do of ever making love again, I also count my blessings. I'd rather want sex a couple times of month and not have it than not want it a couple times a week and have to have it because I'm afraid if I don't he'll find somebody else.

And, hey, the toilet seat is always down, and I control the TV remote. The cats don't criticize; I haven't been subjected to Monday Night Football in years. Things could be a lot worse. And I hear a $15 pocket rocket can do wonders. It's also a bit more discreet than a fluorescent orange dildo.

As for the financial planner, he eventually married a woman some 15 years his junior. I went to their wedding. She is lovely, but they divorced within a couple of years. "She has no sense of humor," he complained. "She's so earnest about her career, and she's not all that enthusiastic in the sack."

"Well, what did you expect?" I asked him when he called to tell me they were through.

"I expected somebody like you, only younger," he admitted. We haven't spoken since.

We are -- finally -- no longer friends.

-- By Kit Naylor


Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.




Offline opinionista

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #16 on: December 10, 2008, 03:22:48 pm »
Well, kinda.  In Hispanic cultures, the name women keep is their fathers'.  Women don't have their 'own' names in Western culture.  It's always the name of some man.

To make a complete break, women would have to give themselves their own name.

You got a point there. However, I feel like my father's last name is mine too. He gave it to me, but now it belongs to me. He cannot take it away. It is part of me. I don't know if you get my meaning.
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. -Mark Twain.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #17 on: December 10, 2008, 03:28:58 pm »
You got a point there. However, I feel like my father's last name is mine too. He gave it to me, but now it belongs to me. He cannot take it away. It is part of me. I don't know if you get my meaning.

I do, sort of.  But he could if he wanted to.  Or used to he could.  That's the difference between legitimate children and illegitimate children.  Hypothetically, if a father could prove their children were illegitimate, he could insist the children's names be changed.  Not sure about the U.S.

Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #18 on: December 10, 2008, 03:34:15 pm »
Well, this sure is a lively little thread! Good work, Amanda.  :D

Thanks K!  I figured this kind of thing is always a hot topic.  I really think it's fascinated and can be debated endlessly and viewed from so many perspectives.

I meant to comment on the long article you posted a while back, "The bride was 7: In the heart of Ethiopia, child marriage takes a brutal toll".  But, honestly it's so depressing that it's hard to even read it let alone think of things to say.  It's sort of a "speechless" moment.
 :'(


And, Laura, I'm really glad you're including your more positive and optimistic perspective here.  I think it's important to listen to very different perspectives in the course of this conversation.

I do agree with you that in some cases modern marriage has evolved for women.  I think a lot of feminist women (and men) have worked hard to improve marriage.  And, that kind of effort shouldn't be overlooked.  So many people are very conscious of all the dilemmas within the traditional concept of marriage... that alone helps things to progress I think.

But, there are so many caveats to the idea of an improved state of marriage when thinking about contemporary women and different groups (Muslim women, tribal women, women in conservative Christian communities, conservative Mormon communities, etc., etc.) and individual cases of things like domestic violence and things like social pressure to marry... that it's hard for me to really say that marriage in general has evolved.









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Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: Women and Marriage
« Reply #19 on: December 10, 2008, 03:37:35 pm »
You got a point there. However, I feel like my father's last name is mine too. He gave it to me, but now it belongs to me. He cannot take it away. It is part of me. I don't know if you get my meaning.

I understand what you mean here opinionista.  I think of my last name (my father's name) as a part of my identity because I've always had it all my life.  It would be hard to imagine all of a sudden calling myself something else.

The duration of the association with the name seems important.  And, also practical things like my degrees are in my current name, etc.  I wouldn't be willing to change it really.  Not that it matters (since there's no chance of me marrying a man)... but hypothetically speaking.




the world was asleep to our latent fuss - bowie