MARRIAGE SUCKS

by Jeanne Leonard

    Sexism is a loaded word. When people think of sexism, they conjure up many different images: women losing jobs because of sexist employers; dirty jokes related to women, etc. These are some of the most common images of sexism.
    People who are fighting for women's rights are mostly fighting for the public rights of women. We pay most attention to women's situations in their workplaces, or in "delicate" situations where we must all watch our language describing women (televised media, comedy clubs, doctor's offices). It seems that most of our institutions (econmic, political and educational) have been accepted and made attempts to incorporate the equality of women into their frameworks. All of these institutions have been indicted for sexism and loosely scrutinized by social activists. But when many of these activists stop their marches and lay down their signs for the night, many of them go to their homes only to voluntarily participate in the most sexist social institution of all -- marriage.
    Marriage has yet to undergo the scrutiny that the other public institutions have undergone. True, there is much talk about equality in marriage and some couples have voluntarily made equal arrangements in their relationships. But the key word here is voluntarily. It is not yet mandatory (by law) that marriage be reconstructed to combat sexism. Before marriage can be altered, our attitudes related to love must be explored and challenged. Once we can transform our faulty attitudes towards love related to marriage, then we will be more armored to go in and battle the sexist mores, folkways and laws designed for marriages. Once we have been enlightened to our faulty ways of
thinking and are no longer willing to step into such a sexist institution (marriage) "blinded by love," we will see clearly that marriage is one of the most sexist in our society, and we will be able to develop equal alternative marriages that will suit all couples.
   Love is a natural emotion that arises on its own. It is a feeling, therefore it cannot be experiences through the senses -- it can only be felt emotively. It is one of the most powerful emotions, so powerful that when it is felt the effects it has can sometimes be observed. Love itself cannot be seen, but its effects can be reflected in a person's behavior. Descriptions of loved and what it is like "to be in love"' flood our culture. Movies, books, poems and songs devote countless reels, pages, lines and refrains attempting to capture love. Most of the descriptions of love are romanticized to a point of impossibility. Shulamith Firestone says in in her essay, "Love and Women's Oppressions", that these over-romanticized images of love are created for and directed towards women as a form of oppression. Firestone says that while men are basically creating thc world, women are wearing themselves out trying to create this impossible romantic state. These false romantic ideals are used as a power tool by men to keep women busy and "out of the way." At the same time, women find the romantic images great motivators that they enter marriages in an attempt to finally grasp this mercurial romantic love ideal. The romantic images portray men taking care of and shielding the woman from the outside world. The men do this out of "respect" for the woman and the woman serving the man's needs is one of the most prevalent romantcized images of love in our society. This image resembles the traditional structure of marriage where the husband is the provider and the woman is the servant. Thus, women buying into this romanticized image of love would see marriage as a natural step in validating their love relationship.
    Many women not socialized into the romantic love ideal stumble upon it after geting married. Some women are introduced to this ideal through the media, while others hear of it from their husbands. But, if the media and their husbands don't tell them about this romantic ideal, the women will eventually learn it through society. Society still sees the woman's primary job in the marriage to be the procreation of the species. Also, the monogamy of the wife; the economic support of the husband; and the servitude and dependence of the wife and children on the husband are all viewed as indigenous to marriage as well. Women who aren't aware of these things become aware of them through the course of their marriage. For instance, if the woman chooses to have a child, she may soon find that her job is in jeopardy because society does not deem maternity leave as valid an obligation as military leave -- the woman is expected to be a natural at juggling her job with caring for a child. It is considered the woman's innate resposibility to "mother." It would be unthinkable for her husband to take parent leave as well. Introducing a brand new life into the world has been designated as the woman's job. Society is set up in such a way that it coorporates with marriage based on sexism.
    Alison Jaggar tells us in her essay, "Political Philosophies of Women's Liberation", that Marxist feminists maintain that capitalism and male supremacy reinforce each other. The social needs of society (caring for sick, elderly and young) are primarily taken care of by the female (pro bono), while the men --free from those responsibilities -- do their work in the public industry for handsome wages. Naturally, women will be dependent on the men for money. Classical Marxists assert that women need to be initiated into the male dominated "public industry," if they want to achieve economic independence. This initiation of the female into the public industry would, according to classical Marxists, change marriage into an equal partnership instead of an unequal economic unit. Classical Marxists, such as Engels, maintain that monogamous marriages were set up to keep the wife a "domestic slave" of her husband. The husband is the economic provider for the family, and he expects mongamy and service (taking care of the house and children) of his wife, thus guaranteeing that his offspring really are his own and he can call them heirs to his fortune or possessions. Therefore, the husband acts as king over his own domain (wife and family), leaving his wife to fulfill her role as the faithful servant, while he is "free" to carry on in extramarital affairs.
    This "romanticized" structure of marriage where the husband is the provider and the wife the server, is not only oppressive to the woman, but it is also dangerous to her identity. Even if she delights in such an oppressive structure and does find it romantic and ideal, she may carry her role as the subservient wife and caring mother to the level of altruism, where she ignores her own needs (social life independent of the family; emotional support from her spouse) for the "good" of the family. Once the wife who gives herself to this altruistic state of being, she lives strictly for her family and begins to live vicariously through them, having no life without them. So, even when women want to be oppressed in a marriage, they still have their troubles within the oppressive structure.
    Shulamith Firestone recognizes this oppressive structure of marriage. In another essay, "Marriage and its Alternatives", Firestone asserts that marriage is archaic and simply needs to be "thrown out." She suggests three different alternatives to marriage. First she suggests "single professions," where individuals live their lives single and dedicated to their profession. "Living together" is Firestone's next suggestion. This concept is self-explanatory. The couple lives together, but they are not bound by contract. Firestone's third alternative is called a "household." In the arrangement of the household, ten or fifteen people of varying ages enter a contract to live together for seven years. After seven years, the household reviews itself and members decide whether they want to remain part of the household or not. If any one of the members had problems during the seven years, she or he could present his case to the courts and possibly be granted a transfer. Firestone says that households would combat power relationships, possessives and "family chauvinism." The sexist and oppressive structure marriage could not exist in a household. The household would call for everyone (even the children) to be economically independent and free from possessive (monogamous) relationships. Instead, each household could create and assign its own, unique conditions to live by. Roles found in traditional marriages would be non-existent.
    While it seems true that a household would get rid of most of the problems associated with a traditional marriage, it seems that a household would not be ideal for everyone. It is a nice alternative, but it should be one among many. There is obviously something to marriage, or not so many people would be getting married. But marriage as we know it today is very sexist and ridiculously impossible to maintain.
    Love is the initial reason for a couple to get married. But marriage is constructed in such a way that it entails much more than love. Somewhere, somehow, procreation of the species, economic support, maintenance of the home, care of children, and monogamy all became associated with marriage. Most of these tasks were unequally divided and used for power -- leaving the woman less powerful in the relationship than the man. Marriage is a contract. Yet, because it is mixed with love, people step into marriage forgetting that it really is a legal contract, and what's more -- they don't even care. Love is powerful -- more powerful than this institution that attempts to put it on a leash and tame it. So when we're in love, it makes sense that we want to institutionalize love. After all, we've even institutionalized God with organized religions.
    But the traditional, oppressive structure of marriage should be changed. Because marriage is a contract, we need to take this into serious consideration, as we do all of our other contracts. The fact that marriage is a contract stemming from love is what makes it so difficult. We all enter contracts: we pay the asphalt company to fix our driveway; we have the landscaper plant our trees; we pay our dentist to take care of our teeth; we send our children to school to learn. In all of these contracts, we know what to expect and are in agreement over these terms, and we are usually satisfied. Yet in marriage the terms of the contract are ambiguous and most couples don't even discuss the contract until after they are committed to it. Most of the things associated with marriage are not even specified prior to the entrance into the contract: wives are shocked to find that they are expected to stay at home with the kids; husbands are angry to learn their spouse doesn't want to have children; men and women alike have difficulties sharing their incomes. None of this makes any sense when one looks at what marriage is attempting to institutionalize (love). The contract calls for a love relationship to continue indefinitely. Yet, couples have expectations from the relationship that aren't even related to love, or specified in the contract. When I find out I have a tumor in my breast, I don't call my dentist and reprimand her or him for not detecting this lump. I don't tell the asphalt company how disappointed I am in them for not painting  my garage. I don't expect my landscaper to purchase a new "Welcome" mat for my front porch. I don't expect my child's teacher to buy my child a new protractor. These expectations are illogical. Simply because my dentist has been trained in the field of medicine does not make her or him automatically responsible for my whole body. My contract with her or him is specific to my teeth. My contract with the asphalt company is for my driveway to be fixed. Even though my garage door "resides" next to and has a direct relationship to my driveway, my contract with the asphalt company specifies only its obligation to my driveway. The same hold true for my contract with schools and the landscaping company -- the terms of the contracts are specific, so that I have no other expectations that may initially seem inappropriate (because of proximity and relatedness of the different tasks). So when I enter a marriage contract based on the indefiniteness of love, it should not automatically follow that I must have children, or that we (as a married couple) become an economic unit. We don't necessarily need to throw out marriage as Shulamith Firestone suggests, but we should develop a whole new contracting system for marriage. People need to be aware that they are entering a contract. The significance of this concept (marriage as a contract) needs to be punctuated. But the contracts need to be more specific and come in many different varieties. Marriage should not be one uniform institution, but many different forms of an institution. If couples desire their love to be combined with economics, then this should be specified at the outset redering an "Economically-Based" Marriage. Or if couples are looking to have children then they should enter a "Family Based" Marriage. If couples find they need to combine economics and family, then this should be yet a whole new marriage contract labeled "Economic, Family-Based" Marriage. Do couples expect monogamy from each other? Should only the woman be monogamous to the man or the man only to the woman? Should neither be monogamous? The question of monogamy should be addressed upon entering the contract and labeled accordingly: "Monogamous, Economic-Based" Marriage, or "Semi-Monogamous, Family-Based Re lationship."
    None of the present conditions of marriage should be assumed or taken for granted as inherent to marriage. Marriage is a contract based on love alone and any other terms (children, economics, monogamy) should be specified in the initial contract. This way people's awareness would be heightened because they would be forced to question their own assumptions about marriage and the traditional roles of the husband and wife. If couples were required to explore dhe marital institution from the beginning, then sexism in the marriage may occur far less frequently, or people may not choose to get married -- they may opt for one of Firestone's suggestions (single profession; living togedher, households). At any rate, the mandatory regulations or marital types would challenge people to temporarily abandon their romanticized ideals, and carefully examine as a contract. People could determine for themselves what they want out of a marriage, and through dialogue with their spouses on these issues they may begin to question particular sexist assumptions that they or their spouse have about marriage. With this understanding, if a man or woman still wanted a sexist relationship, where the man reigns as king over the household and the woman's needs are ignored, at least this arrangement could be a well thought out, conscious decision of both parties. But my guess is that most couples will opt for an equal partnership.