Feminist analysis of the royal wedding

[DontdoitKatie]

This is one of the times when you realise how very lonely seeing things through a feminist lens can make you.

Patriarchy in all its glory.

Nottheone, what are you basing that on?

Sorry- only just got back to this- slightly tangental now, but basically the fact that the vast majority of people have next to no interest in raising children that aren't their own (unless they cant have their own). In most species, males are actively hostile/dangerous to the dependent offspring of their mate which were not fathered by them.

Monogamy suits humans because our children are dependent for a long time relative to other species.

eg if you're a lion, your young are independent within a couple of years, so you can go and find a new fella and not worry about the kids. With people, your children are dependent for at least half your fertile life, so you have to take the child onto your next relationship.

I guess it depends what we mean by serial monogamy. If we mean 2/3relationships, I'd say that might happen- I mean it does. if we're talking 10 relationships, each bearing children, I'd say that's never going to happen.

My worst nightmare though. If Dh and I don't work out, that's it for me as far as marriage and kids are concerned.

the thing that is striking me today, not about the wedding itself but the commentary: they keep going on about how it was very modern, a new type of royal wedding, etc. Well, it was in some ways, but not (as we are saying on here) in terms of sexual politics. And by and large people don't seem to have noticed that.

"That's the tricky thing, isn't it?

Marriage can protect people - men, women, children - from all sorts of nastiness. It works very well for me, and definitely for dh too. "

Marriage protects women under patriarchy. Men have designed society so that mothers who do not marry lose out in some very important ways. Society ensures that single mothers are poorer, for example. Men are less likely to approach and bother a woman who has a man in the background. If women lived in communities together, or in a matriarchal society, there would be no need for this "male protection from other men". The entire problem comes about because women are picked off, segregated, and paired up one on one with men.

Marriage protects men because men are very fragile creatures. Again, this is why they've designed it this way.

And that last point has got me thinking. Men control the media, the parliament, the royal family, the laws, everything. We have to ask ourselves WHY they love marriage so much. WHY they are desperate to sell marriage as a good thing to women. Dittany is right about the Royal wedding being one big propaganda campaign. Well, WHY would it be needed? If women were so desperate to get and pair up with men why do men invest so much effort into it.

THat wedding yesterday was patriarchy in all its glory. The pomp and splendour of any nation is built on the low paid or unpaid work of women at the bottom rungs of society. Women have and raise children, for free; they do the bulk of the cleaning and cooking for those children; they are channelled into the pink ghetto and are underpaid, while men at the top rungs of society rake in the money for doing fuck all, basically.

The church and ceremony was filled with men and there was just one woman in white. What I took away from it was that men would happily do without women at all, except they sort of need women, especially when it comes to having babies. So they'll let one in.
Except it's such a bad deal for a woman, having to basically be a brood mare [ if Kate is allowed to choose not to have children I'll eat my hat . Her role is to produce and heir and a spare] that they have to sell it to women as a good thing. That's what all the pomp and ceremony is for, and it is blatantly manipulative.

I agree with dittany, it's almost as though they're mocking us.

(she did look lovely though, and WHAT was Pippa's dress made of?!?!?!. Stunning)

NotTheOne, "Monogamy suits humans because our children are dependent for a long time relative to other species. "

Nothing natural about monogamy at all.If it was natural, then why, historically, have so many countries around the world given women the death penalty for adultery?

And one woman living with one woman is an utter disaster. Two women a week are murdered by their spouse/husband. WOmen are more likely to be raped by the man they live with than a stranger. Look at the amount of fathers who sexually abuse their daughters. Not ALL do it, obviously, but enough do to tell us there is possibly something wrong with the nuclear family set-up.

I am NOT saying men are predisposed to abuse their daughters; what I am saying is that why is male-female monogamous pair-bonding regarded as the default, when there are clearly some problems with it.

There are big problems with it, but I'm not sure what the alternatives are.

Some men are violent to women/children. They're still going to be violent if they have one partner or five though.

I still think that my point that most people are not going to put themselves out too much to bring up children who aren't their own stands. When push comes to shove, genes win.

Do you think they made the class condescension so obvious (ooh, let the plebs have another long weekend!) to slip the gender propaganda through?

Nottheone, that's speculation though isn't it?
People do look after others children. It is very common for siblings to care for each others children, and smaller communities, tribes, clans etc. behave like families.
Children are mainly independent by 7 and can generally be wholly independent by 12/13. It's only our society that keeps them on a leash til they're 18. (And older if the helicopter parents at Uni stories on MN are to be believed)
In a stronger community setting the one-to-one focus of mother to child we have would be diffused throughout the community. Once a child is weaned the mother is just one of several potential sources of teaching and care.

Theants - I wouldn't get too hung up on the 'I do this, am I anti-feminist?' thing. We all do some things that are feminist and some things that aren't, whether we're feminists or not.
I think it's clear that the double standard itself is anti-feminist, but we live in the real world and we are all influenced by a sexist culture so we can't start beating ourselves up for anti-feminism every time we do anything that reflects that.

"There are big problems with it, but I'm not sure what the alternatives are"

Plenty of alternatives out there.
Feminists could alter laws so that corporations CANNOT discriminate against women, and make sure it's enforced.

You could have a socialist government that supports mothers through university like they do in Iceland

Loads of other laws could be passed to help women financially. What we have instead is the Condems targeting women (who are poorer already) for the cuts rather than men (who are already wealthier). WHich means mothers are forced to pool resources (i.e live with) with the father of her children in order to give her children a reasonable start in life.

You could have intergenerational houses, two sisters living together, a group of friends. Or women living alone with their children. Loads of possibilities once you start thinking about alternatives.

Timewasting I agree that when you live in a fairly primitive set up it works. I don't think it works in modern western society where people's lives don't revolve around the village and the fields and where people have a sense of collective responsibility because their own outcomes depend more directly on the outcomes of the whole village (shared crops etc)

So yes, we could dismantle the nuclear family if we want to go back to living in communities like that, and dismantle the whole Uk economy, but I'm not sure it's really justified.

Has anyone mentioned the historical context?
I know someone mentioned the physical passing of Kate's hand from her dad to William. It basically symbolises the transfer of ownership or guardianship if you prefer. Hundreds of years ago women were seen as a chattel, firstly the property of their father than of their husband. In rich and particularly royal families, marriage was a contract which came with land and could start or stop wars. Women wore fancy clothes as a way of displaying their husband's wealth.

For this reason I can never decide if it's better to have my father's name or my husband's name. I don't have one which is solely mine.

I think helping women get out form underneath the subjugation of the patriarchy would be well worth it.
I don't think modern society is great, and our economy is totally exploitative, so nothing to lose as far as I'm concerned.

It is not a case however of how it is now, versus how it was then. Things can change and they do, and it would likely end up nothing like anything we've seen so far.

Communities can exist within this crappy society anyway. As Sakura says, two sisters could live together. My Mum could move in with us. Even the mums at playgroup are a sort of self-organising society.

yeah that was very striking wasn't it?
it made me wonder about the origins of the best man - one man to officiate, one to give her away, one to be given away to and one to give the groom a hand in case she struggled?

must look into Roman wedding ceremony since so much of it is based on that; of course the Roman foundation myths involved mass rape (The Rape of the Sabine Women).

oh, just googled and apparently it is exactly that