queerbychoice | Marriage Privileges Are Not the Only Privileges

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Marriage Privileges Are Not the Only Privileges

If I see one more person seriously argue that it's immoral for opposite-sex couples to take advantage of their unfair heterosexual privilege by getting legally married before same-sex couples in their jurisdiction are allowed to do so, I'm going to scream.

If you believe it's immoral to accept privileges that others don't have, have you given away all your money yet? Other people are homeless, starving to death, illiterate, brain damaged, paraplegic. Have you cut off your arms and legs and bashed your skull in yet? Other people are dead; does that make it immoral to fail to commit suicide? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE to go around preaching about how other people supposedly shouldn't accept privileges that you haven't been given, when you routinely accept so many other privileges that other people haven't been given? Exactly how ridiculously self-centered and tunnel-visioned has the queer community become, that I've actually seen at least six people seriously argue this on LiveJournal recently while giving not the slightest indication anywhere that it's ever occurred to any of them that THEY have accepted and are continuing to accept more privileges than at least 90% of the world's population possesses? The people I'm hearing complaining about this are Americans with internet access and homes and electricity and clean water and paying jobs and I've never seen any of them posting anything about not being sure whether they can scrape together enough money to feed themselves for the rest of the week. Are you annoyed at a specific opposite-sex couple who are millionaires and have more privileges than you in practically every imaginable way? Fine, but then why don't you complain about all their privileges, instead of just complaining about them having the audacity to get legally married when you and your partner can't? Why don't you ever mention anywhere that you're excluding from your wrath the numerous opposite-sex couples for whom the tax and health insurance benefits of being able to get legally married don't half make up for the economic disadvantages they have that you don't have?

And then there's the fact that the rights accorded by legal marriage do not necessarily benefit both partners equally. In jurisdictions where the divorce laws provide for very equitable distribution of property between ex-spouses, whichever spouse belongs to a group that tends to be more economically discriminated against in employment (women, nonwhite people, disabled people, etc.) may be able to have that discrimination domewhat redressed by an averaging out of their property with a less-discriminated-against spouse (provided that their spouse does in fact belong to a less-discriminated-against group). Although this certainly does not alleviate the effects of discrimination entirely, the fact remains that women who are paid a tiny fraction of what their husbands are paid and have frequently sacrificed their careers by switching to part-time jobs or giving up their jobs entirely to provide free childcare and housework for their spouse are guaranteed a certain amount of economic compensation for their labor if they are legally married in a jurisdiction with equitable divorce laws, which they would not receive if they were not legally married. If you go around yelling at them and their spouses about how dare they take advantage of their special privilege to get legally married when same-sex couples can't, you're asking the less economically privileged spouse to give up very significant legal protections, but you're mostly just freeing the more economically privileged spouse of the burden of potential alimony payments. (Okay, in some places you might also be asking a man to give up his legal right to commit marital rape, but since it's not as though even one in ten thousand rapes committed among unmarried cohabiting couples results in a conviction, the fact that it's technically illegal to rape someone you're not married to doesn't really result in much loss of privilege at all in practice. Divorce settlement economic laws are enforced far more often.)

Maybe it just makes queers feel good to be able to accuse heterosexuals of immorality instead of vice versa for a change. Is that it? Maybe queers sense something distinctly dishonest about all the heterosexuals who loudly proclaim, "I'm not homophobic, of course not, I just want it to be absolutely clear to everyone for miles around that I'm quite decidedly 100% straight," and those people's frustrated queer acquaintances have come up with this "How dare you get legally married when my partner and I aren't allowed to?" accusation in an effort to make the "I'm not homophobic, of course not!" heterosexuals finally see themselves in the mirror. Well, I fully support making heterosexuals realize they're homophobic, but that happens to be an utterly stupid basis on which to accuse them, and there are so many much better bases that queers fail to recognize because queers themselves have bought into the same heterosexist myths that the heterosexuals have: the idea that enjoying sex with a member of one's own gender is something that only a minority of people in any culture have ever taken any pleasure in, for example, is thoroughly demonstrably untrue. There are so damned many cultures in which the huge majority of people have had and enjoyed same-gender sex of their own free will, and yet still both the mainstream hetero media and the mainstream queer media continue promoting the ridiculous notion that the majority of humans are born incapable of ever enjoying same-gender sex in the least. Accuse the heterosexuals of heterosexism for believing that myth, and you'll have a definite point - but first you'd have to stop believing it yourself, and it's ever so much easier to just go around compaining that heterosexuals have failed to voluntarily give up marriage when you aren't in the position of being asked to do the same because you haven't been offered the right to marry in the first place. What you have been offered, instead, are numerous privileges like food on your table and a roof over your head, and I'm betting that you're not planning to give all those up anytime soon either.

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Did you notice the following sentences in my entry?

"Are you annoyed at a specific opposite-sex couple who are millionaires and have more privileges than you in practically every imaginable way? Fine, but then why don't you complain about all their privileges, instead of just complaining about them having the audacity to get legally married when you and your partner can't? Why don't you ever mention anywhere that you're excluding from your wrath the numerous opposite-sex couples for whom the tax and health insurance benefits of being able to get legally married don't half make up for the economic disadvantages they have that you don't have?"

There are many kinds of privilege. If a person has more privilege overall than the huge majority of the world, I feel it's fair for a person who has less privilege than them (either by default, or due to having given up some of their privilege already) to criticize them for having too much privilege. What I object to is focusing on a specific privilege to complain about and acting like even people who have far less privilege overall than oneself, whose decision to get married doesn't half make up for all the other privileges thet're deprived of that you aren't, are somehow worse than oneself.

I also think marriage privilege itself is an incredibly stupid privilege to focus one's complaints upon due to the fact that in opposite-sex couples who do refrain from getting married, it's the woman or the poorer member of the couple who's likely to be giving up the most privileges, whereas the man or the richer member of the couple may actually profit greatly from your efforts at bringing his spouse down to your level of privilege (or quite possibly even lower than your level of privilege, because a housewife who gets abandoned by her partner and has no marriage to protect her economically will be disadvantaged to an even much greater degree than a lesbian who never gave up her job to raise kids in the first place).

hm, i think i see what you're saying.

i feel like it's important to understand that from the perspective of many lesbians and working-class women (or even just working-class in general), convenient or not, the economic benefits that married women derive from their husbands (or these days, the occasional married man from his wife) so long as they *are* married *ARE* privileges conferred by association with a (generally) dominant and more upwardly-mobile social class -- whether male, wealthy, or both.

i agree it makes no sense to criticize middle-class housewives for *being* married, since marriage is what protects them from abuse within the relationship they have. i'm not so sure though about criticizing breadwinners and house-spouses for setting up a "traditional" relationship to begin with.

a lot of working people have criticized housewives for being *housewives*, which has caused resentment from housewives. many housewives argue that the best way to raise their children is for them to stay home. some argue that *someone* should, no matter who it is, and it just happens to be them; some argue that it's actually just essentially feminine work and the lesbian feminists are trying to rob them of their femininity and are denying their own.

i tend to find it's really just working people who make criticisms like that, though, and lesbians just happen to be in that population by *necessity*. i don't think calling that a privilege makes sense.

both sides can seem to feel the other is being misogynist or male-supremacist in some way, i've always tended to side with the working people in arguments like this, i guess because that's where i come from.

from the perspective of working people, the remarks about essential femininity and fulfilling divine female roles just comes across as a narcissitic, bourgeois indulgence (even if you do believe in *some* sort of essential femininity, which most do), and a slur on working women who work for the same reason as the husbands of the people who might be criticizing do -- to feed themselves and their family. yet for doing that same work for the same reasons they are being denounced as unnatural and unfeminine and neglectful of their children while the husbands are being vaunted as "breadwinners" and "virile". that's definitely misogyny, imo.

the idea that it's *better* for just someone to stay home full time with children is not something most people seem to dispute. Sure it's *better*, lots of things are better, but we can't really afford to do anything we want just because it would be *better*, can we? So it still comes off as overprivileged lecturing. We all do the best that we can.

some housewives also don't come from situations where they *have* a choice -- like in fundamentalist cults, for example. marriage laws are vital for them because it's their only recourse if they ever want to escape. it would definitely make no sense to criticize them for being married. probably most people don't realize they have any other choice, or just don't want to go to hell.

but then there's people who go to college to find a spouse and set up a traditional 'family' and make a clear choice to do that. is it wrong to be critical of that, too?

i definitely see your point that guilting het women for getting married hurts housewives while their husbands profit from it. i guess you're right it would make more sense to guilt people for being het, since that would hurt their husbands too. and i'm all about that, ahem. ;)

on the other hand, whether we attack the husbands of housewives for setting up a system of economic dependency, or via heterosexuality itself, most housewives will still *rush* to their defence first thing, because that is a *threat* to their security and way of life as well. so we *always* end up attacking housewives by proxy by attacking their husbands. like in the ms. boards feminist group, it's amazing how much all the working people and all the lesbians walk on eggshells to carefully avoid criticizing any proud housewife's husband for any reason. this includes avoiding any criticism of heterosexuality by lesbian feminists. it's like an attack on the homeland.

cont.

does this make poorer women freer in some sense? are poor women privileged over middle-class housewives because they *can* go it alone if necessary, even with children? what if the middle-class housewives chose to surrender their financial autonomy and the poor working wives never had such a choice to begin with? or does it even matter to ask the question when regardless of the answer the whole thing is set up to benefit men anyway? it seems like it does end up mattering even when we don't want it too. it's confusing.

i feel like there's a distinction between women who are forced by male-supremacist traditions or religious cults into traditional marriage and dependency and bourgeois women and men who are just dippily deadset on their traditional little heterosexual game. i feel like we can be supportive of one and still critical of the other.

queer working people probably don't realize they're talking "suicide" when they say "don't get married" to middle-class housewives, and middle-class housewives probably never consider that they are slurring working women by gleefully patting themselves on the back for their wonderfully "feminine" and "unselfish" sacrifices.

but what do we do about that? i don't like the capitalist system that working people depend on to survive and raise their kids within, but the system of husbandry that housewives depend on seems really even worse. does it just seem that way though, or would you say it really is? to me it seems like it's still a form of enslavement to capitalism via the husband, and now it's also enslavement to husbands as a middle-man between capitalism and "the home". if we criticize that though it seems like an endorsement of soulless capitalism where everyone is just a commodity and all work, including child-rearing, is bought and sold on the market. but it's not that working people on the whole *like* that system either. most outside of Scandanavia can't even afford day-care anyway. grandpa and/or grandma look after the kids (spoil them rotten, if they can ;)) while the parents are at work, or else the kids fend for themselves. i'm sentimentally attached to that idea. hell, in middle-class households, they just dump their elders into homes when they get too old to be useful! talk about commodifying care!

if we just slash the pay of husbands and equalize wages and institute same-sex marriage it seems like at least some way to try to erode the male-supremacist stranglehold. what else do we do?

i think i agree with your conclusions that opposing heterosexuality *as* such is the best thing to do (i would say male-supremacy just as much, too, and capitalism also, at least unless the whole "everything is equal insofar as it is a commodity" bit gets at you too).

but, among the upper-class, women and men are generally independently wealthy, and among the lower-class, everybody works. among the peasantry, which is still most of the world, everyone toils. certainly where *i* come from, housewife-ship is almost unheard of. i'd only read about housewives in books and never met one until rather recently in my life, when i left for college. i didn't realize they still existed at all until i was maybe of middle school age, i had thought that they disappeared with the 1950s.

i guess i think middle-class housewives who've actively made a choice to be housewives *are* privileged, though it's still not dominance so it also comes with tradeoffs

if we criticize traditional relationships, we alienate people who even if power privileges them in some ways, aren't in power themselves. if we don't, though, it feels uncomfortably like endorsing servitude.

so i guess you're right, the right thing is really to criticize the heterosexual (and male-supremacist) sexual model of dominance on the whole.

but i think it's still sound to criticize actively getting married in most cases in our society, among those who choose to and have other options. i think it would make perfect sense to say that Heinz and Kerry are simply "drinking from the straights-only water fountain".

does that make any sense?

"i agree it makes no sense to criticize middle-class housewives for *being* married, since marriage is what protects them from abuse within the relationship they have. i'm not so sure though about criticizing breadwinners and house-spouses for setting up a "traditional" relationship to begin with."

I think if you criticize the opposite-sex couples for setting up relationships in which the women are economically dependent upon them, you are still missing the point that it's the employers who decided to pay women less than men. It's not as though if everybody on earth suddenly resolved to marry only people who made the same amount of money as them (and presumably a whole lot of people converted to queerness in order to be able to locate a spouse who did make the same amount of money), that would in any way alter the fact that gay men would be much richer than lesbians. The question of whether women are better off in egalitarian relationships with very poor partners where they and their partners are both economically oppressed by the outside world or in unequal relationships with rich partners whose privileges they can be partially sheltered by is very debatable.

"i don't like the capitalist system that working people depend on to survive and raise their kids within, but the system of husbandry that housewives depend on seems really even worse. does it just seem that way though, or would you say it really is?"

I would say that marrying a rich guy and giving up your job is a gamble that pays off for some women but destroys the lives of others. It's not inherently either better or worse, more liberating or more oppressive, than marrying a person who earns an equally low salary and continuing to work; it's just a different option for attempting to cope with the exact same root oppression. Different options work better with different men or for different women.

Criticizing the employers for paying men and women unequal salaries is the only thing that's really going to improve women's situations. The fact that the employers pay women less even when they do work equal numbers of hours is what causes the husbands and wives to both decide that it's more advantageous for the woman to just quit her silly job that barely pays more than a babysitter's salary anyway and just stay home and take care of the kids herself instead of working to earn a pittance that mostly gets spent on paying a babysitter.

"certainly where *i* come from, housewife-ship is almost unheard of. i'd only read about housewives in books and never met one until rather recently in my life, when i left for college. i didn't realize they still existed at all until i was maybe of middle school age, i had thought that they disappeared with the 1950s."

I have only the faintest memory of my mother having ever worked. She worked part-time up until my brother was born, and then quit and never went back. I was three years old at that time. So to men, housewifehood is extremely real.

"i guess i think middle-class housewives who've actively made a choice to be housewives *are* privileged, though it's still not dominance so it also comes with tradeoffs"

I agree that they are privileged, provided that their husband doesn't abandon them and leave them with a practically nonexistent resume and no money to make up for it. My mother would also agree that she was privileged. In fact, she spent a great deal of time reiterating to me that she considered becoming a housewife to be a very feminist decision for her because, er, my father was making her do all the housework anyway when they were both working the same number of hours at the office (and it was even the same office and the exact same job, so there was no possible way he could have been said to be working harder than her), so becoming a housewife was the only way she had open to her to stop working two jobs, one paid and one unpaid, and start working only the one at home. She'd been married for nine years by the time she quit her paid job entirely, so she knew my father pretty well and was confident enough that they'd stay married and that she knew what she was getting into by deciding to stay married to him that she felt the gamble was worth taking. And they did stay married, and my mother has always seemed to be quite entirely pleased with the results of her decision to become a housewife. She would never deny that it was a privilege. She would never criticize working women for working; she instead feels sorry that they have to still work probably the equivalent of two jobs while their husbands, if their husbands are anything like my father, work only one job. She is quite glad that she was able to get out of doing that.

you are still missing the point that it's the employers who decided to pay women less than men

I think in many cases that's true, but in *many* others, professional women who make *higher* salaries than their husbands actually give up their careers and become housewives. Isn't the salary gap to some extent perpetuated by the idea that men must be paid a higher salary so they can support their "family" while women only need to support themselves unless they're single and with children? Men with employment in any relationship are assumed to be heads of household and are given salaries large enough to subsidize the labor of their wife who is assumed to be under their dominion. Women in a relationship are assumed to be under dominion and are given smaller salaries, though they also have families to support, they are not allowed to. The only way I've ever heard of women being able to haggle for higher salaries is if they are single and have children to support.

Employers do this, but if people keep choosing to get involved in relationships like this surely that will help to perpetuate it. Particularly when there are alternatives to this, although you raised another really good point against double-working households.... that in essence they're really triple- or quadruple-working households, with the wife doing twice or thrice the work of the husband -- one paid job and then unpaid house labor and childrearing.

but surely we should obligate husbands to either do houselabor and childrearing or get out and pay compensation. i'd go so far as to say make housework a facet of the marriage contract, if that's what it takes to really get through to husbands. one reason that they can get away with not doing that sort of labor is *because* they are being paid so much money they can effectively afford to hire a live-in maid. another reason is culture obligates women to tolerate their husbands' refusal to work when surely it should be obligating husbands to work as much as anyone else does.

particularly if we're talking about a post-graduate salary that is 45,000 v. 75,000, say. that may be less than 75,000, but to just give it up in the name of placating some lazy husband who doesn't like to do housekeeping or look after the kids.... of course women struggling to get by on 12,000 a year with children are going to look at that and say, "oh wow, lucky YOU." but in either case it feels like we have two solutions that give the husband *everything* and take away practically everything from the wife. that's not a fair structure.

i feel like it would be better if we just attacked the structure fundamentally than saying, "how can we make this slightly more bearable for people lucky enough to be in the middle-class"?

Criticizing the employers for paying men and women unequal salaries is the only thing that's really going to improve women's situations.

i agree with you, though i don't think that's the only issue that perpetuates this. even if salaries were equal, women would still be stuck with housework and childrearing, and still be working more for less money.

cont.

hm, in trying to shorten this i got confused.... in the first quote thingie what i meant to say was true in many cases but also not true in many cases was people becoming housewives because they make less than their husbands, not that employers choose to pay men more than women, which is obviously true in all cases where there is a gap. :p sorry. :o

another issue i feel is since culturally men are permitted and even encouraged to be disinterested in the nurturing of children, it's considered acceptable for men not to be involved in a primary way in the raising of children. many housewives support this for good reasons: their husbands could be very evil and twisted in some ways and they may want to protect their children from the sociopathic lack of compassion and empathy that characterizes men as such (as social, not biological, entities!). so just saying men (social!) should be involved in raising children seems too simplistic. do we *really* want *men* (social!) to be raising children? *look* at them? some of them are pretty dangerous around kids, or just treat kids like little automatons or toys or worse.

that goes back i guess to criticizing manhood itself fundamentally, and heterosexuality also. but i guess the more radical and comprehensive the solutions become, the less immediately relevant they seem....

still, if you're saying we should be concentrating on critiquing heterosexuality, i'd say the same should be true for manhood and womanhood.

I agree that they are privileged, provided that their husband doesn't abandon them and leave them with a practically nonexistent resume and no money to make up for it.

if the husband is wealthy, and they are married, then marriage laws still leave them pretty privileged. when poor women are left by their husbands or forced to leave them, they are awarded very little in child-support and tend not to bother pursuing even that at all because they simply *do not have the time* or *energy* to deal with it and it's not like it's enough to live on anyway.

In fact, she spent a great deal of time reiterating to me that she considered becoming a housewife to be a very feminist decision for her because, er, my father was making her do all the housework anyway

well, it's nice when you can afford to make a "very feminist decision". i imagine she also thought that teaching you that you must never, ever leave someone you are in a relationship with, regardless of how they treat you or what they do to you, because divorce cheapens you, was also a "very feminist decision".

forgive me if i politely demure. :p

so becoming a housewife was the only way she had open to her to stop working two jobs, one paid and one unpaid, and start working only the one at home.

that is really tough. but that brings us back to focusing attention for this on men, who cause these problems more or less by existing as such. :p

though also the other ways she had open to her may have been *way* too radical for her to even possibly consider, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. like, say, living on a lesbian-feminist commune, for one. it was the 70s. ;)

cont.

She would never deny that it was a privilege. She would never criticize working women for working; she instead feels sorry that they have to still work probably the equivalent of two jobs while their husbands, if their husbands are anything like my father, work only one job. She is quite glad that she was able to get out of doing that.

well that's nice and all, but feminist revolution is not really what it brings to mind. :p this is only a privilege that is relevant under a system of male-supremacy. it might make more sense to create structures where spouses could get out of relationships where men were not working and if they are the primary caregiver they can get a stipend of some sort so that they could pay for some sort of help, or something that penalized husbands for not working in the home. i don't know. something.

i agree with you that people who are already housewives depend on marriage laws, but i'm not seeing why the structure of breadwinner/housewife shouldn't be criticized to begin with as a part of criticizing male-supremacy. if people are feeling forced into that circumstance by life, maybe we should try to find another way out for them. like those communes, for example, or by cooperatives of collectives of mutual support out there. something that breaks dependency on a husband in a marriage. i feel like if we could really break that, it would hurt men (the bad ones) a lot....

hm but i guess your point is that criticizing people for marrying and becoming a housewife when they are doing it just because the cultural forces are kind of forcing them to, because they have kids, and he isn't taking care of them and he isn't working in the home and if you don't do it no one will and if you leave him you have to work the same amount as before with even less money than before, so what the hell else do you do....

yeah i hear you. that's f'ed up.... people in situations like that should *not* be criticized for getting married.

we should all chip in to help create other solutions for them and then encourage them to take them, maybe? or if it becomes evident the husband is a lout before the marriage, surely we should drive home that husbands not doing anything around the house or being nurturing enough are not people one should have children with or marry?

but otoh, not all het. marriages are that situation. some are just Heinz/Kerry, where i think it does make sense to say "you suck for getting married." :p

*finally shuts up* :o

"I think in many cases that's true, but in *many* others, professional women who make *higher* salaries than their husbands actually give up their careers and become housewives."

Really? I don't know of a single instance of any woman who ever gave up her job to stay home and take care of the kids when she was being paid more than her husband was. Can you name one?

"Isn't the salary gap to some extent perpetuated by the idea that men must be paid a higher salary so they can support their 'family' while women only need to support themselves unless they're single and with children? Men with employment in any relationship are assumed to be heads of household and are given salaries large enough to subsidize the labor of their wife who is assumed to be under their dominion. Women in a relationship are assumed to be under dominion and are given smaller salaries, though they also have families to support, they are not allowed to."

Yes, of course, but that's the employers who are to blame for perpetuating that.

"Employers do this, but if people keep choosing to get involved in relationships like this surely that will help to perpetuate it."

The employers are the ones who make their relationships like this by paying the people in the relationships unequally!

"but surely we should obligate husbands to either do houselabor and childrearing or get out and pay compensation."

I'd love to, but it's awfully hard to enforce when the question of who's doing more work usually comes down to his word againsth ers and the outside observers have no proof of who's telling the truth.

"still, if you're saying we should be concentrating on critiquing heterosexuality, i'd say the same should be true for manhood and womanhood."

Yes, of course. I support critiquing all of those.

"if the husband is wealthy, and they are married, then marriage laws still leave them pretty privileged."

Yes, I agree.

"well that's nice and all, but feminist revolution is not really what it brings to mind. :p this is only a privilege that is relevant under a system of male-supremacy."

Yes, of course: that's why I said that both options (marrying a rich guy and being dependent or marrying a poor person and being equal) are just coping options and neither one of them really changes the underlying system that is the root problem.

"it might make more sense to create structures where spouses could get out of relationships where men were not working and if they are the primary caregiver they can get a stipend of some sort so that they could pay for some sort of help, or something that penalized husbands for not working in the home."

Actually, I think we kind of have that in California already.

"i agree with you that people who are already housewives depend on marriage laws, but i'm not seeing why the structure of breadwinner/housewife shouldn't be criticized to begin with as a part of criticizing male-supremacy. if people are feeling forced into that circumstance by life, maybe we should try to find another way out for them."

I support trying to find other ways out for them; I just don't support the idea that given the current options, the breadwinner/housewife option isn't still sometimes the most advantageous one available to some women. Such as for my mother.

"hm but i guess your point is that criticizing people for marrying and becoming a housewife when they are doing it just because the cultural forces are kind of forcing them to, because they have kids, and he isn't taking care of them and he isn't working in the home and if you don't do it no one will and if you leave him you have to work the same amount as before with even less money than before, so what the hell else do you do...."

*nods*

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Marriage Privileges Are Not the Only Privileges

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part 1

part 2

hmmm.... true that part 1

Re: hmmm.... true that part 1

hmmm.... true that part 2

hmmm.... true that part 3

Re: hmmm.... true that part 3