fitzroyalty

What’s the point of marriage? In our modern society, does it serve any useful purpose? Why do we define a romantic and sexual relationship with a legal contract?

In the past, marriage may have had a purpose. It defined women as the property of men, and allowed men to control women, their fertility and their children. It supposedly defined paternity and allowed for complex property law based on inheritance. It also defined the obligations of each partner to the other and supposedly made men responsible for providing for their children.

Now, none of this is relevant. People are not property. A relationship is a voluntary and conditional thing that each party can enter into or exit from at any time for any reason. We have laws defining the financial and legal responsibilities of parents as individuals, so that each parent is responsible for the welfare of their children regardless of the children’s other parent.

We are also gradually moving towards a legal system which sees it as each individual’s responsibility to financially support themselves, so when divorce or separation occurs, each parent is obligated to financially provide for their children but not for each other. The existing situation where a non-custodial parent has been financially destroyed by excessive child maintenance payments (which effectively means ex-partner maintenance) is being replaced by a situation where payments for child support are more transparent.

Equally, joint ownership of real estate and other property can be effectively managed through property law, not through marriage law.

Rather than some marginalised people having to fight for legal equality because of relationship discrimination, such as to allow de facto partners (gay or straight) having access to sick partners in hospital, superannuation payments, and so on, it would be far simpler to define each person as an individual and allow them to nominate a significant partner for legal purposes, similar to an enduring power of attorney.

For social security payments and other government payments, the present system makes no sense. It determines what each person is eligible for based on who sleeps in the same bed as them, not on what income they receive. I could live separately from my partner, for example, but still be financially supported by them. This arrangement, however, would be invisible to the government. Conversely, just because I cohabit with someone I may have sex with, why does that alter how the government defines me? I may be in a cohabiting sexual relationship where I am not financially supported by my partner. How could I prove this when all the government wants to know is who I’m fucking and where?

The underlying assumptions about relationships, money, property and identity held by society and the government are an antiquated nonsense. Living in a government recognised cohabiting sexual relationship (in other words, heterosexual) gives me more legal rights and opportunities in some circumstances. Why is this the case? This is pure discrimination.

Marriage should disappear. It’s legal shadow, ‘de facto’ marriage or relationships, should also disappear. Each of us should be considered by the law in all areas to be an autonomous individual with rights and responsibilities. Who I choose to fuck and where I choose to fuck them is no one else’s business. It is not economic activity. It is social activity. Sex is a recreational activity like golf or dining out.

Except, of course, it is economic when the government sees sex as work that earns income. “In economic terms, marriage is simply one form of prostitution.”

As one blogger (perhaps) satirically wrote: “Marriage? What are you crazy? It only makes sense if you can marry up and cash in.” Another US blogger, Christopher Paige, writes:

Ultimately, the Gay Marriage Campaign will destroy marriage, at least marriage as it currently exists. Instead of seeking to have gay marriages approved, Gay Rights Groups would probably do much better, from a legal perspective, to litigate to have all marriages declared null and void, on the grounds that all marriages are contracts for sex. Once sex is removed from marriage, the state won’t care if the parties marrying are of the same sex or of the opposite, or even if the parties are related. Can you imagine “religious/family values groups” arguing in court that they need marriage to include the “contracting for sexual services” provision?

Today I decided I need to know more about the history of the metric system of measurement. The internet is such a helpful thing. Wikipedia publishes this very amusing world map, which shows the countries which are yet to completely adopt the metric system. In blue is the US, Liberia and Myanmar.

A separate entry records the progress of the metric system in the US. NASA is leading the way by deciding that future missions to the moon will be measured using the metric system. It seems the moon will join the rest of the world before the US does. How surprising.

The myth is that women perform their beauty rituals in order to please men, that they are oppressed in so doing, and that men will not accept them in a more ‘natural’ or less altered and adorned state.

I think the reality is far different. Here’s why:

1. The idea that men expect women to groom and alter their bodies in particular ways rests on the false premise that all men want the same thing, and therefore that there is a clear goal for women to achieve: remove all body hair, starve yourself to become thin, grow your hair long and bleach it blond, and wear lots of makeup. Men are disparate; they don’t all find the same things attractive. There is therefore no stratghtforward beauty ideal for women to attain if they are trying to please men, because don’t or can’t know what particular men find attractive.
2. There is little evidence that men actually find the things that women commonly do to their bodies attractive. Many men, for example, are horrified at the idea of breast implants. I hate the perpetually startled (and stupid) facial expression created by excessive eyebrow plucking. And I don’t care if my partner has done her bikini line or not; it doesn’t make her any more or less attractive. When I want to go to the beach, I go. If my partner complains that she can’t go because she hasn’t done her bikini line, she can sit at home and stew while I go to the beach alone and enjoy myself. Perhaps she can choose to wear less revealing (and more comfortable) clothing.
3. The extent of women’s beauty behaviour appears to many men to be a form of irrational obsessive compulsive behaviour and self mutilation, which a symptom of mental illness. Men may not be as emotionally sophisticated as women but we can spot loony girls very quickly. If you have more shoes than CDs, that’s a problem. If I can’t see the bathroom counter because it’s completely convered in product, that’s a problem. If you take so long to get ready before we go out that I come to resent you, that’s a problem for me. If you spend all your money on clothes and handbags but then have no money to go on holiday, you get left behind. Why should men pay for you?

It is impossible to have this discussion without referencing stereotypes and using generalisations. Assume that men and women are equally insecure and emotionally fragile. How they deal with this is where they differ. One of the major generalisations is that men tend to externalise their emotional responses, while women internalise them.

Thus, men drink too much, get into fights, drive too fast and have car crashes. They use their emotionally instability against other people. Women tend to develop eating disorders, engage in self harm like cutting themselves, and make irrational purchases. They inflict their emotional instability on themselves. In suicide, men tend to choose violent means, such as guns. Women tend to choose nonviolent means, such as drug overdoses.

When women choose to suffer for beauty it is to compete against other women for status, not the attention of men. I think the feminist theorists like Sheila Jeffreys who endlessly blame men for the state of beauty politics are refusing to accept that women have power and agency in relation to their bodies. Women make choices. Some choose to engage in irrational, self-destructive beauty rituals. Men don’t make them do this. Equally, men cannot stop them. As a man, I don’t want to be unfairly blamed for these circumstances.

After my misanthropic rant yesterday I was cheered immensely when I read in the Age that an attempted robbery of an Indian take-away in Melbourne was thwarted when a worker threw a statue, thought to be of Ganesh, at the robber, who fled. Ganesh is my favourite mythological character (though I am also very fond of Thor). Ganesh is the god of problem solving, conflict resolution, education and wisdom. He certainly solved the robbery. Below is a picture of a statue of Ganesh in the Art Gallery of NSW collection, which I saw earlier this year.