The Christian Science Monitor explains why the recent Proposition 8 ruling is wrong:
As a species, we need to protect female sexuality in order to assure ourselves of a future.
Marriage is a necessary defense of a woman’s sexuality and her human liberty from determined assault by men who would turn her into a slave, a concubine – something less than fully human. Human communities need to give women some additional degree of protection – through law, custom, religious decree, or sacrament…snip…
Heterosexual relationships need marriage because of inferiority: the physical inferiority of sexual defenders to sexual attackers and the moral inferiority of male sexual attackers.
Marriage is not about couples or lovers – it’s about the physical and moral integrity of women. When a woman’s sexuality is involved, human communities must deal with a malign force that an individual woman and her family cannot control or protect.
Modern marriage is only the least worst version of marriage that has emerged from all this – but it is still necessary for women. What protects women, ultimately, is that marriage laws and customs confer upon her independence something extra – dignity, protection, sacredness – that others must respect. And if this quality can be bestowed upon anyone, even those not in intersexual relationships – it reduces, even dissolves its force.
–read the whole thing here
I’m not sure if he’s saying that women need to be married in order to be protected from renegade “male sexual attackers” or that marriage to a physically inferior “sexual defender” will prevent men from perpetrating violence. Or both. In any case, it’s an awful way to think about gender differences.
Alternatively, the author’s thesis taken to its natural conclusion could lead to a rash of women desiring sacred union with pepper spray1 or puppies2 .3
Wonder what the Christian Science Monitor would make of that?
Amazing because abuse and sexual assault happens within marriages far more often than with strangers.
ACK! It burns!
Wow. So married women never get raped, abused or disrespected, huh?
If only we’d known!
Does marriage between a man and a woman dissolve the protective force of my state of holy matrimony with mace? Dang, I thought for sure it would make those scary, predatory sexual attackers respect me. I guess I’ll have to get divorced and go find me a nice 12 gauge to marry. Anyone want to come to the shotgun wedding?
Wow… and to think how many people read that and consider anything written in it to be pure fact.
Um… married women can’t be raped? Well wow, that’s news to me!
I think the person who wrote this knows some level that it’s bullshit, and their real thesis is right here: “When a woman’s sexuality is involved, human communities must deal with a malign force that an individual woman and her family cannot control or protect.” And the “malign force” is female sexuality.
Prop 8 isn’t just about gay marriage. The reason many people fight gay marriage, the reason it threatens them so much, and the reason they think it threatens heterosexual marriage, is because when two men or two women can marry, the basis of “traditional” marriage does die. Traditional marriage is not based on love and partnership, it is based on binary gender roles and the repression of women, most particularly women’s sexuality. Many people have been championing companionate marriage for hundreds of years, but until people of the same gender can marry, the last bastions of traditional marriage will stand.
Gay marriage doesn’t destroy traditional marriage. But it puts a beautiful huge hole in it.
Sounds as though it was written in the 1800′s.
More like 1300s, actually. By the 1800s, the widespread ideal was that marriage should be for love and partnership, though with strict gender-definied roles for each partner.
Hey! You’re not in spam!
Awesome!
What a horrid essay. I hardly know where to begin.
Schulman writes
[...] we need to be thinking about marriage’s role in sustaining the existence of the human species. [...] As a species, we need to protect female sexuality in order to assure ourselves of a future.
In fact, Homo Sapiens somehow evolved without the benefit of marriage, so it is hard to see why we would now need that institution to sustain the existence of the species. In general, his appeal to Darwinism is misguided. Species don’t act, they just are. And individuals owe nothing to either their species or their genomes.
His whole argument is a mish-mash of scientific, social, and moral principles, trying, by turns, to ground each in the other. If you dig to the bottom of this mess, I think you will find his core thesis most unattractive, which is probably why he is afraid to state it plainly.
Schulman is correct that the modern institution of marriage is–well–modern, and that it hasn’t always been like that. As best I can tell, he champions an older institution, where the purpose of marriage was to legally establish the property rights of a man in his wife(s) and their children.
Schulman is also correct that same-sex marriage threatens this older institution. The problem for Schulman is that same-sex marriage isn’t about property rights. Same-sex marriage is about the dignity and human rights of the same-sex couple. And once you grant such dignity and rights to the members of a same-sex couple, it is hard to see why you shouldn’t extend that same dignity and rights to women who are held as property in mixed-sex marriages. This would, of course, entail the women not being property, whereupon the older institution collapses.
Here’s a suggestion. Rather than swimming against the tide in the United States, Schulman could move to a place (any number of middle-eastern countries come to mind) where women are still property and the purpose of marriage is to protect the property rights of men. Then he can just sit back and wait for Homo Sapiens Americanus to go extinct (for failure to protect the sexuality of our females) and everyone will be happy.
I’m probably a bit dense due to lack of sleep, but I have no fecking idea what this guy is talking about. I got married so men would leave me alone?
If what this twisted fuck said was true, then the highest ideal would be the lesbian marriage, since each of those protects *two* women.
No, because there’s no man to protect them!
Archaic. Headline News reporter Sally Mallory brings us the story. “Yes, thanks Jane. The day was saved much to an attackers dismay when out of the skies came Marriage Man! Just as Sara Meskaparcher was about to be raped within an inch of her life, she was rescued to a knot tied by none other than the caped crusader of matrimony. Yes folks another life saved by the magical ritual of white dresses and preacher’s chants. Now! I’m here with Marriage Man, and the couple destined to live happily ever after. Marriage Man, tell me–This had to make your day, how does it feel to know you once again saved the world by uniting this man and this woman.” …
This has to be one of the most cynical and depressing rationals for marriage that I’ve ever read. So sad that many CSM readers will believe every word, even the ones they don’t understand.
It sounds to me like Sam Schulman wants to sound pro-feminist while protecting the traditional Christian patriarchal relationship roles. The whole opinion piece smells of smoke and mirrors.