to think that lots of women will now be able to get financial and legal security

[PerspicaciaTick]

without having to get married.

From tomorrow you can give notice for your opposite sex civil partnership. You can actually form your partnership from January.

No need for a verbal contract or a ceremony (unless you want one). Just sign the bit of paper with your witnesses. No need to spend a fortune - you can do it all for less than £150 (or you can still go the whole hog if you want).

I think it will be really popular - or am I misreading the situation?

That to me is an odd argument.
It was a new institution. It was explicitly not a marriage, for the reasons that multiple pp have pointed out, stating it as othering to same sex couples.

Also if you rebrand, you tend to not have the original any more. Which is clearly not the case here.

Why do people get in such a lather about women who have issues with the institution of marriage. I don't really get why people care so much.

In smaller ways it's seen when women get annoyed at being called Mrs so and so when they are using their pre marriage title and initials.

I think deep down a lot of people like women to toe the line, or something. Always odd to see on MN.

Agree fraggling

There was no legally recognised rape in marriage until 1991. I was born in 87 as the product of a non-recognised rape. I have always been against the idea of marriage for that reason, amongst others. I would rather choose to get a civil partnership and don't understand why that's an issue to anyone else.

Ah you would be one of the older women on the thread who is too caught up in the past then.
Also guilty of appropriating the struggles of another group.
And more.

I'm sorry for what was done to your mum.

Thank you for posting though.
The idea that 1991 is the distant past is ridiculous.

It's so awful that I’m this day and age so many women think that’s the only way they (and other women) can achieve financial security. On MN a website primarily for women in the U.K. and other developed countries. Op has not even restricted it to women with children. This is how she thinks women get financial security- by marrying (presumably by marrying a rich man as otherwise it would be pretty pointless).

It’s sad on a women’s website that the past few hundred years of feminism has passed so many women by.

What about a fair system of child maintenance? Or a workplace that works for men and women (who primarily have the child care responsibilities). Or equal pay and representation of women in senior roles?

I have no idea why some women on MN are so fixated on unmarried women. I think it’s a big of a mix of sexism and class prejudice. It doesn’t even occur to many that women could be the higher earner and thus left worse off by marrying (despite this being the case in about 1 in 4 relationships).

If u were the op, I would consider why I care whether other women get married or enter into civil partnerships? And maybe wonder why she thinks she is in a Jane Austen book.

Now you really are grasping, my friend.

Your posts come across quite badly, very patronising.

Pot, kettle, black.

So what you're saying is you do see some kind of hierarchy of harm where same sex couple not being allowed to marry, and then being afforded civil ceremonies rather than marriage, is a greater harm than marriage has been for women, because all that for women was yonks ago with property and stuff.

Nope. I think there are obviously negative histories to both, well that's not an opinion it's a fact, but despite this would not want to see women put themselves in a worse position than they would otherwise be in by not engaging in either marriage or CP. Not least because cohabitation is hardly unproblematic either, in terms of how it can (and still does) fuck women over.

I think, and have said more than once now, it's for each individual woman to decide which negative history she is more able to make her peace with. My issue is when people, particularly people who weren't impacted by those negatives, try to ignore that negative history. So a straight woman minimising the othering and homophobia of CP can sit the fuck down, in the same way that a gay man who thinks the problematic history of marriage went away once it became open to same sex couples could also stfu.

Ah you would be one of the older women on the thread who is too caught up in the past then.

She's younger than I am. Incidentally, you seem to have interpreted that example I gave of older women as meaning it could only be older women who would be concerned, which is bizarre. Actually I was thinking of the cohort who did campaign against it before the law was changed, who would generally be of pension age or getting near to it now. Because history is important and so is acknowledging what was done by the feminists from whose efforts we now benefit.

The idea that 1991 is the distant past is ridiculous.

Where did you encounter this idea?

Kindly meant, have a think about why it bothers you so much that someone who has been personally impacted by the denial of same sex marriage but not by the rape within marriage laws has told other women about their own lived experience.

It was a new institution. It was explicitly not a marriage, for the reasons that multiple pp have pointed out, stating it as othering to same sex couples.

But it's an almost identical contract with a different name. The logic for allowing civil partnerships was that the government couldn't keep justifying denying same-sex couples rights, but they also wanted to appease people who said that gays and lesbians would sully the name of marriage. It was basically a way of saying, "We'll let you get married if it shuts you up, but we won't let you call it marriage."

'Because history is important'

And yet you said 'The flipside to the millennia argument is that the problems with CP are much more recent. I do not like that eg women in this country lost a lot of property rights on marriage, but that stopped long before I was born'

Totally disregarding the other issues with marriage in the UK such as martial rape being legal, and also the situation with marriage in other countries still actually out effectively meaning women and girls are property.

Looking through the thread to find that quote I realised you've just been arguing with everyone basically.

The institution of marriage has major baggage for a lot of women, quite a bit of which you either seem to be unaware of or disregarding. It's fine for them to have civil partnerships instead, if they wish.

And your contributions have essentially amounted to quoting one sentence then, either through genuine ignorance or bad faith, claiming it means something it doesn't. Although inbetween your blatant, minimising of homophobia and some previous posters lack of understanding of the impact of structural factors, this thread is quite a good example of how MN as a collective often struggles with understanding the need for models of feminism that apply beyond quite a narrow group of women. Can't have these uppity gays saying anything uncomfortable can we!

Blatent minimising of homophobia?

And don't ascribe views to me like 'uppity gays'.

Your posts are heading into personal attack territory now.

You really don't like it when people disagree with you, do you.

Personally I would say the millennia of brutal oppression of gay men and lesbians through illegality, violent supression, forced marriage, corrective rape, and the fact that it is still illegal in many countries around the world, including attracting the death penalty in some, a pretty major issue.

I see what you say about CPs being othering but it feels like a drop in the ocean compared to the other stuff. Not to say it shouldn't be raised.

Or are you going to look only the the UK again and say, well that stuff was sorted before I was born. Same as with womens issues around marriage.

I think you have a narrow viewpoint tbh and the personal attacks are because you're not sure where else to go.

You have minimised homophobia. It isn't a personal attack to say that (do consult MNHQ though) it is what you have done, and trying to enlist state sponsored murder of gays and lesbians into your argument that CP is preferable won't change that.

I explained in good faith how it felt living through that and yet even now you barely acknowledge it. The idea that someone who experienced a discrimination you didn't (you'd have told us if you had) might have insight that you don't clearly hasn't even occurred.

And the other criticisms you level, again it's pot kettle black. Your response to someone disagreeing with you on which negative connotations they can better live with is distortion, invention, bullshitting and getting annoyed that they've debated anything on that thread. That says a lot.

If you want to disagree, you have that right to your own (narrow) viewpoint, but dismissing it as a drop in the ocean to someone who experienced what you didnt shows a real lack of awareness. If I'm being kind.

Why should I be able to marry or civil partner a woman, but only marry a man?
Gay marriage is legal.

You implied that I think in terms of 'uppity gays'.

Your words not mine. That is definitely a personal attack.

And you've not actually addressed any of my points.

'into your argument that CP is preferable won't change that.'

I haven't argued that CP is preferable. All I have said is that some women prefer it as they feel the institution of marriage has a load of baggage for women. And you have taken serious umbrage at that, shown a woeful lack of understanding of why women might feel like that (paraphrase: oh that was sorted ages before I was born, in the uk so, so what) and etc.

Well the thing is fraggity, the way in which you chose to respond to someone disagreeing with you based on their own lived experience of being bisexual was dodgy. You could say I accept that was a disgrace but I still think it's legitimate for women to think the other baggage is worse for these reasons, and I think you should give more weight to x and y. That would've been ok. Instead, you barely acknowledged the homophobic connotations of CP and engaged in distortion and invention, which when done in response to points made by someone who was very clear that they're speaking based on their personal experience of being bisexual, begs the question of why you're doing that. You problematised merely the act of disagreeing with you and some others on the thread and attributed it to bad faith.

Put bluntly, if you'd responded to a post from someone talking about feeling a particular way probably due to being bisexual simply by saying I think you're wrong because of these reasons, we wouldn't be having this sub-discussion.

As for addressing your points, a number of them have simply been things you've invented. The claim that I'm taking umbrage at some women preferring CP is yet more of that. For the rest, your argument is that others might legitinately weigh the factors differently to me which is... fine. Exactly what I've said throughout the thread. It's bemusing that you don't get this.

Huh?

I responded to your point 'The flipside to the millennia argument is that the problems with CP are much more recent. I do not like that eg women in this country lost a lot of property rights on marriage, but that stopped long before I was born'

And its all gone from there.

I found your 'oh it was all ages ago' point very dismissive of the reality of marriage for women both here up to much more recently than the property rights point you mentioned, and around the world to this day, a bit crass tbh.

I pointed out that rape within marriage was only made illegal here in 1991 to which you replied oh well I was a child then.

I think you have a hierarchy of oppression in mind and you want to show that gay people are above women in that hierarchy and so women should put their discomfort around marriage to one side.

In fact both groups have been and continue to be oppressed around the world, it's not a competition, and telling women off for quite rational feelings about marriage is a pretty shit move.

And if you'd literally just said you felt my point was dismissive and crass, we wouldn't have had the problems we went on to have. Because that's fine: I'd still take the view that you were wrong, but it's within the boundaries of reasonable debate. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, you felt the need to make things up, minimise the homophobia of CP and how it felt to experience that and attribute discussion of it to a hierarchy of oppression (speaking of dismissive and crass...) and problematised the simple act of disagreement with you. So here we are.

It's wrong for women to have a problem with the institution of marriage.

Yes we will indeed have to agree to disagree.

No, there you go making things up again. At this stage it's hard to tell whether you're doing this on purpose or your comprehension skills really are that poor. I'd think you were wrong in your description, as well as a massive hypocrite. There really is no way you could legitimately draw the conclusion that I meant anything else from my last post.

Anyway, you agree whatever you like. I'll be talking about my lived experience of being othered and excluded and how this pertains to the institution of civil partnership. If you don't like that, and your posts actually make it pretty clear you don't want that said whatever you might claim, tough shit.