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Traditional Marriage "Equality"

By Fannie

While some folks wax on about the supposed inherent "equality" that exists in the heterosexual marriage, and only in the heterosexual marriage, I actually love it when folks are more up front about their sexism. Instead of cloaking their gender complementarist sexism in the language of equality, they just outright admit that they long for the days of old, when men were in charge and women lacked the legal and financial means to live without husbands.

In a CNN article (that I first saw at shakesville) discussing how some children of divorced parents have vowed to never ever get divorced themselves, one commenter opined:

"Divorce is always more likely in a feminist climate where the woman tries to act like the man and the man is reduced to a man-gina who can't take charge of the relationship. 'Equality' is really just a euphemism for insecure, controlling women needing to micromanage men to death. It's no coincidence that since feminism has become widespread, relationships have suffered as a result. When you have 2 people trying to steer the wheel of one car, the inevitable result is a wreck."

Notice how some people are incapable of framing men who do not seek to dominate women as anything other than womanly (oh, and they mean womanly in a bad way). Notice too how some people are utterly incapable of conceiving of traditional heterosexual marriage as anything other than hierarchy. Male dominance is, to many, still essential to marriage.

Furthermore, I disagree with the automatic assumption that divorce is always a negative. Indeed, if traditional marriage activists recognized women as fully human as they viewed men, children, and fetuses, they wouldn't consistently frame divorce as an absolute negative to be avoided at all costs.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on September 27, 2010 (boomark / email).