The Chicktionary: the ch!cktionary - Jessica Valenti, Weddings, & Social Expectations
Kim
· 2 months ago
I find it hilarious that Jessica Valenti got married. All of the bullshit she spews about feminism and her whole existence as a leader in the feminist movement, is ruined now. What a load of shit. I love how she tries to justify getting married by saying she is breaking new ground on what the definition of marriage is and how she is going to break all of the stereotypes that go along with marriage. Horseshit. She is no different than any other girl who gets married. She realized how her whole life's work was total nonsense. What a hypocritical bitch.
The great thing now is that when she gets divorced, she is going to go apeshit with the most radical feminist bullshit ever written. LMFAO. I can't wait until that happens. Hahahaha.
Lena
· 2 months ago
The way I see it: marriage is first and foremost an institution and secondly, a patriarchal institution. I think Valenti wants to change the latter but not the former, and if that's her intent, then her getting married is fine. I, on the other hand, think it's a problem that marriage is an institution in the first place. That's why I don't want to get married, even if it becomes a less gendered affair.
Nicole
· 2 months ago
I've been meaning to comment on this since you posted it, and now seems like a good time.
It really bothers me that people say feminists can't get married - and it seems like the problem here is that there are two types of feminists; there are feminists who are about choice, about women having the same freedom as and equality with men, and then there are feminists (or at least, people who call themselves feminists, depending on which definition you subscribe to) who believe that feminism is all about overthrowing the patriarchy and rebelling against the sexist contraints of society - these are the same feminists that say you can't join their club if you do get married and god forbid, change your name, or if you choose to put off your career for a few years to have children - forget the fact that there are plenty of women who *want* to do these things, for themselves, because it would make them happy; clearly it means that they're still brainwashed by the patriarchy.
It is this latter group of feminists that are part (and only part) of the reason I don't outwardly identify myself as a "feminist" (the other part is that I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the label - I understand that "genderequalitism" just doesn't have the same ring to it, but isn't that what we're really going for here?), because I don't want to affiliate myself with a group that is supposedly all about choice who's just going to reject me in a couple of years for the choices I make with my life. Because I do plan to get married, and take his last name, and possibly (though possibly not - now we're getting ahead of ourselves here) put my career on hold for children. Does this mean I was influenced by society? Yes, of course - if I didn't live in a culture where it was common (and yes, expected) for me to change my name, would it have occurred to me to do so? No. But does that mean the patriarchy is getting me down, or that I feel coerced into this decision? Hell no.
To be completely honest, it bothers me much much more that people in same-sex relationships can't get married than that feminists are going to reject me if I do. It seems like the obvious solution to this is that if people are going to continue to be picky about terminology, than the government shouldn't be involved in marriage at all - domestic partnerships and equal rights for everyone! Now, personally I don't see what the problem is - since it seems to me that there is a clear distinction between religious marriage and legal marriage (separation of church and state anyone? hellooooo?) and whether a particular religious group wants to ban gay marriage should really have no bearing on whether those people have rights as a couple under the law, but if the terminology is still going to trip people up - I think it's well worth the bureaucratic hassle of changing the word "married" on all of the governments forms to "domestically partnered" or some similar term and leaving it up to the individual couple to decide whether this makes them "married".
But likewise, even this injustice is not enough to make me not want to get married. Because to me, marriage is a lifelong commitment between two people to spend their lives together, to love and respect one another and to be faithful to one another. It is not bounded by religion or by gender, only by love. And it is a horrible injustice that today, there are people who seem to think that other people shouldn't have that, or at least the legal rights that our government chooses to grant under the same name. But unfortunately, my choosing to opt out of those rights or to opt out of calling myself "married", to opt out of referring to the man that I love and plan to spend the rest of my life with my "husband", is not going to help other people get the rights they deserve. It is okay to be married and still support equality, both between genders and between couples of different gender compositions; and by suggesting otherwise, promoters of these equalities are simply going to alienate a large constituency.
Jennifer
· 2 months ago
I would disagree that the majority of feminists are divided between those two camps. I would say that the vast majority of feminists recognize that we do live in a patriarchy and people have make their "choices" under that, but also recognize that people ultimately have the "choice" to live their lives however they see fit.
Lena
· 2 months ago
Nicole, I think you bring up an interesting point here, which was precisely what I was trying to get at when I explained why I didn't see Valenti as a hypocrite:
"Does this mean I was influenced by society? Yes, of course - if I didn't live in a culture where it was common (and yes, expected) for me to change my name, would it have occurred to me to do so? No. But does that mean the patriarchy is getting me down, or that I feel coerced into this decision? Hell no."
We can recognize that our decisions are informed by the society in which we live while still choosing to make "traditional" decisions. (I should add, however, that I'm wary of "choice" feminism since the things some women view as their own empowered choices -- think: Girls Gone Wild -- are very much motivated by their existence within a male-dominated society.) But while I agree that it's nonsensical for anyone to expect you/Valenti to not get married (it's not going to make marriage less patriarchal if you opt out anyway), I think more people should think about why it's even important to be able to call ourselves "married" or to call each other "husband and wife". If not for the existence of the State, there'd be no recognition of those titles, but it wouldn't make our relationships any less important.
Ultimately, my problem with marriage isn't that it's a gendered institution. That's secondary to the fact that it's an institution whose function is not to magically enhance our relationships but rather to act as an instrument for promoting state interests, namely to generate wealth. To name a few examples, procreation, division of labor, and inheritance (i.e. reproduction of wealth) are all influenced or directly controlled by marriage, whose boundaries are oh-so-conveniently defined by the State. Governments don't just issue marriage licenses out of benevolence. Marriage is used as an instrument with which to organize society and promote productivity (often at the cost of economic equality). Today, marriage in 21st century America may be a more equal institution in that women aren't stripped of any and all rights, but a more equal instrument of societal control is still an instrument of societal control. And while it might be worthwhile to work toward a less gendered notion of marriage, you can't really change how people perceive the institution itself unless you change the (capitalist) conditions in which we live.
In other words, Valenti didn't lose the good fight because she got married. She was just fighting the wrong battle to begin with.
Name
· 2 months ago
Ugh! You are so full of yourself! Diarrhea of the mouth! I'm un-following this stuck-up Harvard whore.
Jennifer
· 2 months ago
Nice. The irony of calling Lena a whore on a post concerning feminism is apparently lost on you.
chicky
· 2 months ago
I fail to see why people don't consider women who get married "real feminists". Marriage and feminism are not mutually exclusive.
Name
· 2 months ago
Ummm, have you ever stopped to consider that german lover may not want to marry you. If I were his parents, I would be dying.
Lena
· 2 months ago
Whether or not my boyfriend intends to marry me has no relevance to this discussion.
Sandy
· 2 months ago
It really bothers me that people say feminists can't get married.
I agree with that statement. I've always wondered why people make that assumption?? I personally don't feel that Valenti violated any "feminist laws" by getting married nor should she be shamed for throwing a wedding. Her personal happiness isn't something that people should be allowed to judge or scrutinize - since when has it become a crime to make a commitment to your partner for the rest of your life and knowing that he/she feels the exact same way? Marriage is only a piece of paper: the two parties involved must work at the relationship together and feel the same way abut each other. It is obvious that Valenti and her husband have a lot to give to each other and are happy together and their love between the two of them has nothing to do with feminism, patriarchy, the institution, etc. - they got married because they wanted to make that commitment, not because society told them so. I truly believe that Valenti would just as easily not gotten married and chose to be common-in-laws instead of signing papers, but she didn't because she chose not to. I thought that fighting for women's rights was about having the choice, no?
Of course, I can't kid myself that marriage is an institution and a patriarchal one at that, as you've rightfully pointed out, regardless of how much I interpret it as something more symbolic and personal than the physical attachment of two people under the legitimacy of state recognition. But I don't think that participating in the institution through marriage makes one un-feminist at all nor does choosing to have kids over a career. The fact is that one can certainly make a strong political statement by not choosing to participate in the system at all (e.g: not getting married), but you can also make just as equally a strong statement by participating in it and changing it from within (e.g: getting married, but making the whole affair a transgressive one, as Valenti has done here).
Besides, Valenti's marriage status, and I believe she knows this as well, is not going to change anything other than her personal life and the papers filed away in the state somewhere - it's not going to stop her being the amazing feminist that she is nor will it stop her from continually striving to push progression into society today. :)
Heathcliff
· 2 months ago
Sorry to burst your bubble, but marriage is anything but a patriarchal institute. Firstly, it's an empirical observation that women and children stand more to gain by it than men, who lose a significant amount of disposable income and personal freedom by tying the knot. The institution is not thrust upon unsuspecting and naive young girls because it benefits man, but rather because it benefits society. (Don't forget that men are also pressured into marriage.) The late Patrick Moynihan built his career on a statistical analysis of single-parent households which demonstrate clearly the social value of marriage. When asked why African-Americans had not assimilated 10 years after desegregation, Moynihan found that the degree of "derelict" behavior in the community (as measured by drug use, unemployment, infidelity, and time spent in prison) is strongly correlated to the number of parents contributing to a child’s upbringing. Realizing that result should not be race-dependant, Moynihan then expanded the purview of his study to include all ethnicities. The statistics can be summarized this way: Aside from being men, the single thing that most incarcerated prisoners have in common is that they were raised in a single-parent household.
You might argue that the important point of this research is only that two concerned parents participate in the family, and that they need not be married. But marriage actually plays an important role by creating an exit barrier for the primary bread-winner, by threat of alimony. So much for the patriarchy of marriage.
Lena
· 1 month ago
Don't worry -- my bubble hasn't been burst. A single study demonstrating correlation (not proving causation) is insufficient proof for two-parent households being "better". One alternative explanation off the top of my head: single parent households may be less well-off, which means that lack of education and vocational access may be responsible for drug use, unemployment, etc., not the lack of two parents.
It doesn't make much sense to argue that marriage isn't patriarchal, when its customs and laws have historically been determined by men or institutions governed by men (religion). "Giving away" the bride? Proof of virginity? Changing last names? All of these are patriarchal practices. Perhaps you might argue that marriage is LESS patriarchal these days, but granting women more rights doesn't mean social attitudes have changed significantly. Besides, the emancipation of Western women has been a very recent phenomenon, and marriage has been around much longer than free women, so to characterize it as non-patriarchal not only glosses over the entirety of its history but also ignores how the institution manifests itself beyond the West.
Heathcliff
· 1 month ago
We aren't talking about non-Western marriages. Likewise, I don't see what the historical context of marriage brings to bear on the question today.
In my view, the correlations in Moynihan's study prove causation unless your position is that single parents only bread criminal children. I choose to believe lack of discipline, or a viable role model, leads to criminal behaviour. There's simply more to do here than a single mother can handle.
H'98
· 1 month ago
Ironically, I can see the truth in both Heathcliff and Lena's statements. This is from the viewpoint of one who has already been married almost a decade.
Statistics show that marriage benefits husbands more than wives in terms of increased lifespan and general health (compared with unmarried men and women). Indeed, while married men live longer than single men, single women live longer than married women.
Yet, it really IS true that ever since I graduated from college (and even during my senior year of college), it was always the women around me who were more eager to get married than the men - in spite of the statistics described above. The men have never appeared to be in much of a hurry, even if they knew that their health and lifespan would increase upon entering marriage.
Why is this? I think it's because of an overall societal pressure for women to have children, and to make them feel as though they're somehow inadequate if they don't have kids. My own belief is that if women weren't so worried about their biological clocks, then they could afford to be as casual as men about marriage - and that would be a HUGE relief to women everywhere.
I also believe that there is not much benefit to parents from having kids. There IS a benefit to society, because we need the next generation to pay our Social Security and Medicare. But to individual parents, it is just a lot of hard work and suffering, and we cannot even guarantee our children's affection at the end of all of it (again, this is coming from someone who has 2 kids). So in all honesty, I would NOT recommend having kids as an imperative to young women. If you want them, that's fine; but stop and ask whether you want them because you love children so much, or because you are being pressured on all sides to have them at all costs.
If young women stopped feeling that kids were an absolute necessity, they would be free to make much more rational choices about whether marriage and starting a family should really be part of their lifestyles.
Sandy
· 1 month ago
Aside from being men, the single thing that most incarcerated prisoners have in common is that they were raised in a single-parent household.
I would just like to point out that such a study totally reinforces the stereotypical, heternormative family that is consistently being upheld by society everywhere. I agree that single-parents households do have an effect on children's well-being and upbringing, but I believe it is more because of the lack of resources and income rather than the lack of an additional parent, as Lena has mentioned.
A majority of my friends come from single-parent households (mothers were the breadwinners, fathers were long gone and did not contribute child support) or their fathers were never home (working overseas or long hours/weekends), which left the mother as the 24/7 caregiver and, while it was very difficult, all of them continued to go on to university (they had to borrow student loans, but they had the grades for it), are working considerably good jobs now, and have never once used the "fatherless child" excuse as a disadvantage. If anything, their "unfortunate" background made them more grounded, strived harder for success, and they were stronger people who took life as a good challenge.
Also, what if the household had two parents, but they were two gay men or two lesbians? I hardly doubt that study would still be upheld, which is a shame because there is absolutely nothing wrong with gay couples wanting to have children. Having a different sexual orientation does not mean you'll be a bad parent or the child will grow up "weird" or whatever they are saying these days.
Finally, the term single-parent household has somewhat changed. Of course, a majority of single-parents are still single mothers on welfare struggling to balance work and children at the same time while living on minimal resources. However, what about the successful women who make six-digit incomes and chooses not to get married or have a domestic partnership, but will adopt/give birth to a child of her own? She will be a single mother, but hardly one that will be considered "poor" because of her privileges and the child will certainly share the same benefits.
What about the children who are predominately raised by their grandmothers, as it often happens in communities in other parts of the world and even within the Western world? I know some of my friends were babysat by their grandmothers while their mothers had to work and none of them preferred their by-gone father over the care of their grandmas.
The point is, if marriage is supposed to be good for a family, then this definition of a family is an extremely narrow one and one that excludes a majority of the different types of households that exist today.
Besides, ever know someone who lives with a mom and a dad and still has problems despite them being married and living in a suburban upper-class area?
All Comments
The great thing now is that when she gets divorced, she is going to go apeshit with the most radical feminist bullshit ever written. LMFAO. I can't wait until that happens. Hahahaha.
It really bothers me that people say feminists can't get married - and it seems like the problem here is that there are two types of feminists; there are feminists who are about choice, about women having the same freedom as and equality with men, and then there are feminists (or at least, people who call themselves feminists, depending on which definition you subscribe to) who believe that feminism is all about overthrowing the patriarchy and rebelling against the sexist contraints of society - these are the same feminists that say you can't join their club if you do get married and god forbid, change your name, or if you choose to put off your career for a few years to have children - forget the fact that there are plenty of women who *want* to do these things, for themselves, because it would make them happy; clearly it means that they're still brainwashed by the patriarchy.
It is this latter group of feminists that are part (and only part) of the reason I don't outwardly identify myself as a "feminist" (the other part is that I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the label - I understand that "genderequalitism" just doesn't have the same ring to it, but isn't that what we're really going for here?), because I don't want to affiliate myself with a group that is supposedly all about choice who's just going to reject me in a couple of years for the choices I make with my life. Because I do plan to get married, and take his last name, and possibly (though possibly not - now we're getting ahead of ourselves here) put my career on hold for children. Does this mean I was influenced by society? Yes, of course - if I didn't live in a culture where it was common (and yes, expected) for me to change my name, would it have occurred to me to do so? No. But does that mean the patriarchy is getting me down, or that I feel coerced into this decision? Hell no.
To be completely honest, it bothers me much much more that people in same-sex relationships can't get married than that feminists are going to reject me if I do. It seems like the obvious solution to this is that if people are going to continue to be picky about terminology, than the government shouldn't be involved in marriage at all - domestic partnerships and equal rights for everyone! Now, personally I don't see what the problem is - since it seems to me that there is a clear distinction between religious marriage and legal marriage (separation of church and state anyone? hellooooo?) and whether a particular religious group wants to ban gay marriage should really have no bearing on whether those people have rights as a couple under the law, but if the terminology is still going to trip people up - I think it's well worth the bureaucratic hassle of changing the word "married" on all of the governments forms to "domestically partnered" or some similar term and leaving it up to the individual couple to decide whether this makes them "married".
But likewise, even this injustice is not enough to make me not want to get married. Because to me, marriage is a lifelong commitment between two people to spend their lives together, to love and respect one another and to be faithful to one another. It is not bounded by religion or by gender, only by love. And it is a horrible injustice that today, there are people who seem to think that other people shouldn't have that, or at least the legal rights that our government chooses to grant under the same name. But unfortunately, my choosing to opt out of those rights or to opt out of calling myself "married", to opt out of referring to the man that I love and plan to spend the rest of my life with my "husband", is not going to help other people get the rights they deserve. It is okay to be married and still support equality, both between genders and between couples of different gender compositions; and by suggesting otherwise, promoters of these equalities are simply going to alienate a large constituency.
"Does this mean I was influenced by society? Yes, of course - if I didn't live in a culture where it was common (and yes, expected) for me to change my name, would it have occurred to me to do so? No. But does that mean the patriarchy is getting me down, or that I feel coerced into this decision? Hell no."
We can recognize that our decisions are informed by the society in which we live while still choosing to make "traditional" decisions. (I should add, however, that I'm wary of "choice" feminism since the things some women view as their own empowered choices -- think: Girls Gone Wild -- are very much motivated by their existence within a male-dominated society.) But while I agree that it's nonsensical for anyone to expect you/Valenti to not get married (it's not going to make marriage less patriarchal if you opt out anyway), I think more people should think about why it's even important to be able to call ourselves "married" or to call each other "husband and wife". If not for the existence of the State, there'd be no recognition of those titles, but it wouldn't make our relationships any less important.
Ultimately, my problem with marriage isn't that it's a gendered institution. That's secondary to the fact that it's an institution whose function is not to magically enhance our relationships but rather to act as an instrument for promoting state interests, namely to generate wealth. To name a few examples, procreation, division of labor, and inheritance (i.e. reproduction of wealth) are all influenced or directly controlled by marriage, whose boundaries are oh-so-conveniently defined by the State. Governments don't just issue marriage licenses out of benevolence. Marriage is used as an instrument with which to organize society and promote productivity (often at the cost of economic equality). Today, marriage in 21st century America may be a more equal institution in that women aren't stripped of any and all rights, but a more equal instrument of societal control is still an instrument of societal control. And while it might be worthwhile to work toward a less gendered notion of marriage, you can't really change how people perceive the institution itself unless you change the (capitalist) conditions in which we live.
In other words, Valenti didn't lose the good fight because she got married. She was just fighting the wrong battle to begin with.
I agree with that statement. I've always wondered why people make that assumption?? I personally don't feel that Valenti violated any "feminist laws" by getting married nor should she be shamed for throwing a wedding. Her personal happiness isn't something that people should be allowed to judge or scrutinize - since when has it become a crime to make a commitment to your partner for the rest of your life and knowing that he/she feels the exact same way? Marriage is only a piece of paper: the two parties involved must work at the relationship together and feel the same way abut each other. It is obvious that Valenti and her husband have a lot to give to each other and are happy together and their love between the two of them has nothing to do with feminism, patriarchy, the institution, etc. - they got married because they wanted to make that commitment, not because society told them so. I truly believe that Valenti would just as easily not gotten married and chose to be common-in-laws instead of signing papers, but she didn't because she chose not to. I thought that fighting for women's rights was about having the choice, no?
Of course, I can't kid myself that marriage is an institution and a patriarchal one at that, as you've rightfully pointed out, regardless of how much I interpret it as something more symbolic and personal than the physical attachment of two people under the legitimacy of state recognition. But I don't think that participating in the institution through marriage makes one un-feminist at all nor does choosing to have kids over a career. The fact is that one can certainly make a strong political statement by not choosing to participate in the system at all (e.g: not getting married), but you can also make just as equally a strong statement by participating in it and changing it from within (e.g: getting married, but making the whole affair a transgressive one, as Valenti has done here).
Besides, Valenti's marriage status, and I believe she knows this as well, is not going to change anything other than her personal life and the papers filed away in the state somewhere - it's not going to stop her being the amazing feminist that she is nor will it stop her from continually striving to push progression into society today. :)
You might argue that the important point of this research is only that two concerned parents participate in the family, and that they need not be married. But marriage actually plays an important role by creating an exit barrier for the primary bread-winner, by threat of alimony. So much for the patriarchy of marriage.
It doesn't make much sense to argue that marriage isn't patriarchal, when its customs and laws have historically been determined by men or institutions governed by men (religion). "Giving away" the bride? Proof of virginity? Changing last names? All of these are patriarchal practices. Perhaps you might argue that marriage is LESS patriarchal these days, but granting women more rights doesn't mean social attitudes have changed significantly. Besides, the emancipation of Western women has been a very recent phenomenon, and marriage has been around much longer than free women, so to characterize it as non-patriarchal not only glosses over the entirety of its history but also ignores how the institution manifests itself beyond the West.
In my view, the correlations in Moynihan's study prove causation unless your position is that single parents only bread criminal children. I choose to believe lack of discipline, or a viable role model, leads to criminal behaviour. There's simply more to do here than a single mother can handle.
Statistics show that marriage benefits husbands more than wives in terms of increased lifespan and general health (compared with unmarried men and women). Indeed, while married men live longer than single men, single women live longer than married women.
Yet, it really IS true that ever since I graduated from college (and even during my senior year of college), it was always the women around me who were more eager to get married than the men - in spite of the statistics described above. The men have never appeared to be in much of a hurry, even if they knew that their health and lifespan would increase upon entering marriage.
Why is this? I think it's because of an overall societal pressure for women to have children, and to make them feel as though they're somehow inadequate if they don't have kids. My own belief is that if women weren't so worried about their biological clocks, then they could afford to be as casual as men about marriage - and that would be a HUGE relief to women everywhere.
I also believe that there is not much benefit to parents from having kids. There IS a benefit to society, because we need the next generation to pay our Social Security and Medicare. But to individual parents, it is just a lot of hard work and suffering, and we cannot even guarantee our children's affection at the end of all of it (again, this is coming from someone who has 2 kids). So in all honesty, I would NOT recommend having kids as an imperative to young women. If you want them, that's fine; but stop and ask whether you want them because you love children so much, or because you are being pressured on all sides to have them at all costs.
If young women stopped feeling that kids were an absolute necessity, they would be free to make much more rational choices about whether marriage and starting a family should really be part of their lifestyles.
I would just like to point out that such a study totally reinforces the stereotypical, heternormative family that is consistently being upheld by society everywhere. I agree that single-parents households do have an effect on children's well-being and upbringing, but I believe it is more because of the lack of resources and income rather than the lack of an additional parent, as Lena has mentioned.
A majority of my friends come from single-parent households (mothers were the breadwinners, fathers were long gone and did not contribute child support) or their fathers were never home (working overseas or long hours/weekends), which left the mother as the 24/7 caregiver and, while it was very difficult, all of them continued to go on to university (they had to borrow student loans, but they had the grades for it), are working considerably good jobs now, and have never once used the "fatherless child" excuse as a disadvantage. If anything, their "unfortunate" background made them more grounded, strived harder for success, and they were stronger people who took life as a good challenge.
Also, what if the household had two parents, but they were two gay men or two lesbians? I hardly doubt that study would still be upheld, which is a shame because there is absolutely nothing wrong with gay couples wanting to have children. Having a different sexual orientation does not mean you'll be a bad parent or the child will grow up "weird" or whatever they are saying these days.
Finally, the term single-parent household has somewhat changed. Of course, a majority of single-parents are still single mothers on welfare struggling to balance work and children at the same time while living on minimal resources. However, what about the successful women who make six-digit incomes and chooses not to get married or have a domestic partnership, but will adopt/give birth to a child of her own? She will be a single mother, but hardly one that will be considered "poor" because of her privileges and the child will certainly share the same benefits.
What about the children who are predominately raised by their grandmothers, as it often happens in communities in other parts of the world and even within the Western world? I know some of my friends were babysat by their grandmothers while their mothers had to work and none of them preferred their by-gone father over the care of their grandmas.
The point is, if marriage is supposed to be good for a family, then this definition of a family is an extremely narrow one and one that excludes a majority of the different types of households that exist today.
Besides, ever know someone who lives with a mom and a dad and still has problems despite them being married and living in a suburban upper-class area?