Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Debriefing: a wedding

293 replies

vezzie · 22/11/2010 14:01

I went to a wedding at the weekend and ended up thoroughly depressed, as I often do after weddings. Please indulge me, because I want to talk about it.
The bride is one of the most dynamic, active, imaginative and intelligent people I know. She was patronised and belittled throughout ? ?who gives this woman ???? and during the speeches she looked very uncomfortable. I have never seen her so quiet and when it was clear that she didn?t like what was being said it seemed very strange that there was no opportunity for her to own the floor in her own style. I have never heard so little of her voice, ever, and yet she was notionally the centre of attention.
I suppose what is troubling me ? and there is no natural justice in what I am about to say - is that she is so close to the top of so many pecking orders (beautiful, clever, talented, well loved, well educated, professionally respected) that it seems obvious that her husband should be so near to the top of all the male pecking orders (tall, handsome, very rich, in a very well paying job) and yet unfair that this sort of man seems almost inevitably to bring the expectations that his wife will take a very traditional and subservient role. Without wanting to imply that anyone deserves to be pushed about, because they don?t, I suppose I am upset that this woman, who is brilliant, is now going to play second fiddle to a tosser for the rest of her life.

I hate weddings. I always start off all excited and filled with love and joy and enjoy the sentimental moment where you can look at the couple and do a mental 6-Feet-Under-like montage where you imagine them surrounded by children, growing older, surrounded by grand children, retiring together etc. Then at some point I am forced to realise that the whole thing is filling me with profound unease and it is as well if I am not too drunk or I have to find a cupboard to hide in and cry.

DP said, when I was telling him how sad I was feeling on Sunday, ?Why do you take it so personally?? I just shrugged and changed the subject. Later I thought, ?Because it is like this. Suppose you were invited to a housewarming party and you bought a present and wrote a card expressing all the good wishes that you have for the people in their new house, and you dressed up and turned up ready to celebrate and saw everyone else looking beautiful and happy and joyful, and the hosts offered to show you round and then you realised during the tour that the whole thing runs on a basement floor inhabited by slaves, it would slightly put a dampener on the occasion, especially if you were the same kind of person as the slaves.? This is of course a gross exaggeration.

We are not married. I often think we should be, and then I go to a wedding and I?m back to square 1.
What do feminists do about getting married?

OP posts:
Sakura · 02/12/2010 13:23

oh, I wish I was your bezzie mate, you sound like a right barrel of laughs

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 02/12/2010 13:15

Oh Sakura - I thought you were my new bezzie mate?

Why are you being so cruel

Sakura · 02/12/2010 12:42

Maisie, Aitch, can I ask you something? Why are you so confused by the fact that the OP has mentioned some random event from her life on MN, and wants to talk about it.
In classics, there's a hilarious pom-bear thread. Why don't you go and lambast the OP for questioning whether that couple are bonkers. Go and have a go at her for posting on MN, instead of sitting down with a bottle of wine with said friend.
Or all the women who complain about their husbands.
Or all the ones who want advise about MILs
Hell, let's just shut down MN... if nobody is supposed to ask opinions about RL situations

Hmm
Sakura · 02/12/2010 12:27

imagining things that aren't there.... hmm, I think that goes for the people who have written some downright horrible posts towards the OP, accusing her of allsorts, telling her she'd said things she hadn't about her friend.

AitchTwoOh · 02/12/2010 11:12

you see? typical hysterical woman. (which i think is what the fury post was trying to say...)

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 02/12/2010 11:11

In fact, I'm so furious at the suggestion of fury that I'm simply too furious to type

Grin
AitchTwoOh · 02/12/2010 10:15

lol at fury. Grin

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 02/12/2010 09:56

Fury??! You are choosing to imagine things that simply aren't there, but not much anyone can do about that. Ho hum.

Sakura · 02/12/2010 00:46

I agree HerBeautitude, there has been fury aimed at the OP for questioning convention.

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 21:24

No conspiracy - we are actually the same person Grin. It was a bit similar, now that I read it back...!

AitchTwoOh · 01/12/2010 21:23

eeew. that Hmm looks rather angry. Wink Grin

AitchTwoOh · 01/12/2010 21:23

yes, we are conspiring to answer the point that bea just made, rather lazily adhering to her wording and sentence structure... Hmm

HopeForTheJingleBells · 01/12/2010 21:15

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ on request of its author.

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 21:05

Why not? If she was that concerned about her friend and the subservient, second fiddle role she's going to play to a tosser for the rest of her life, surely she'd want to let her know that she was there for her?

No, of course, much better to make massive assumptions based on her preferences for both wedding style and groom and feign concern from the safety of an online forum Wink

HerBeatitude · 01/12/2010 20:51

Oh god I don't think I would advise sitting down with friend and bottle of wine. Grin

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 20:48

I'm not sure that anyone got angry about the questionning of the traditional - many on here didn't have a 'traditional' wedding, and those who did, did so out of choice. There were simply far too many assumptions made by the OP about her friend's wedding based on the fact (it would appear) that she didn't approve of the form the wedding took and that she thought the groom was a tosser.

What's really strange (to me) is that she was obviously very upset Hmm by the whole event and the effect it had on her friend, but chose to come on here rather than sitting down with her friend and a bottle of wine, and making sure she was OK, had in fact enjoyed her day and was safe in her marriage to the tosser. Is suspect it's because she knows that her friend would kick her bum if she knew that her wedding had been compared to finding a basement full of slaves.

AitchTwoOh · 01/12/2010 20:38

i didn't see people getting angry at the questioning of the traditional tbh bea. i saw vezzie making all sorts of assumptions about anyone who disagreed with her (in my case, that i 'have the whole world on your side, with its padded cards with pictures of pwitty bwides in white fwocks on'.) to me, that clarified what the initial post was really about. not discomfort at her friend being done down by the patriarchy, but distaste at the fact that she wanted a traditional wedding. this is about snobbery i think, more than it is feminism. and the fact that vezzie thinks her friend has married 'a tosser'.

HerBeatitude · 01/12/2010 20:18

What I found interesting, is how angry people seem to be by the questioning of the "traditional" (traditional being quite recent inventions of course). That thing of the MIL being so bloody rude is quite fascinating - if it were her son speaking, or son in law, most people wouldn't dream of heckling or interrupting at a wedding - it's almost tantamount to singing "it should have been me" at the "does any man here know of any just cause..." bit. It is the most crass bad manners and yet she felt entitled to behave that way, I presume, purely because the speech-maker was a woman, which shows how all her normal well-mannered boundaries were simply thrown away by one small (?) change in convention.

Unless of course, she is the MIL from hell and disrupts every formal occasion with attention-seeking nuttiness. Am interested to get Chaya's feedback on this.

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 19:53

OK, a alight exaggeration on my part! Belitted, patronised, clear (to whom, I wonder?) that she didn't like what was being said, subservient, will spend the rest of her life playing second fiddle to a tosser. Fairly strong stuff to project, based on assumptions and personal feelings about other people's (esp. your friends) weddings and marriages.

Anyway, I seem to recall another post about feminism (can't remember exactly what it was about) that we also disagreed on - so I suspect we'll not agree on this one either! Smile

HerBeatitude · 01/12/2010 19:34

"uncomfortable" isn't quite the same as abject misery, is it?

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 19:00

Fury? Hardly...it's nothing more than a typical MN debate!

Don't forget to add the friends who make massive assumptions about woman's feelings at the wedding, the marriage itself and the bloke she's chosen to the list of hijackers...

I'm sure that people do post about their friends - but they sure don't wrap it up in false feminist pretences, imagining abject misery on the part of her friend where she doesn't know it exists, and asking to be indulged.

HerBeatitude · 01/12/2010 18:43

Blimey there's some fury on this thread jsut for the OP thinking aloud. What's with the "how horrible of you to post about a friend on an anonymous internet forum" stuff? Don't we all do that all the time? It's an interesting thread. One thing struck me was Chaya's MIL - how fucking appalling was her behaviour at a wedding FGS - to heckle during a speech? Would she have done that to a male speechifier?

I think you can make your wedding exactly how you like it - in theory. In practice of course, you are often hi-jacked by in laws, mothers, mad aunts, sub-conscious assumptions that come and bite you on the arse...

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 14:59

That post made no sense did it - kids are off school with the snow and keep disturbing my chain of thought. Better go - will get no peace

Maisiethemorningsidecat · 01/12/2010 14:54

I agree with that to an extent, definitely. However, it comes down to choice again - if you choose to give up your job (and you're right, it's usually the woman) then there are certain risks associated with that - which is why I haven't chosen that route.

There's another thread on the go at the moment with about 800 posts, mainly from women defending their choice to stay at home - so I think I'd better not go any further with that view! Grin

marantha · 01/12/2010 14:37

The downside is that the right to be seen as an individual in one's own right is taken away when it comes to certain aspects of life.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing: just that I feel that concentrating on the romantic side of marriage can sometimes mean that people do not take a good look at what rights they lose/gain by marriage.