Marriage - yay or nay?

[JosieRosie]

This old chestnut again! DP and I have been together for 6 and a half years. I have many problems with marriage - patriarchal history, the wisdom and plausibility of promising to be together forever, the fact that many people still view a wife as a husband's 'property', wife legally a husband's sex slave until a mere 20 years ago. The traditional wedding ceremony (engagement ring, white dress, giving away the bride) sends me into a right frothy but I know all those things are optional these days!

Anyway, I have always been staunchly against marriage, but recently I have been thinking how nice it would be to have a day where you celebrate your relationship, and where you make your relationship more 'formal'. I'm not religious and not remotely interested in a big celebrity-type 'bash', and we're not close to our families, and are not planning any children, so I'm not sure what it is exactly that I'm finding attractive about the idea of marriage but something has got me thinking!

Please share your feeling and experiences, positive or negative, about marriage from a feminist point of view
Thanks

Oh yes, you don't want to wear a white dress or be given away. Newsflash- you don't have to.

'About from a couple of people, nobody here agrees with you, though. Hope you realise that'

I do wamster. Thank you for making me see that. And I'm devastated about it. Seeing as how MN represents the entire world Bye bye now.

It probably does, to a certain extent, represent the people that you are trying to convince about this.

Why else did you post it here, JosieRosie? You must care about the opinions here to do so.
If they don't see this as an issue on mumsnet, the rest of the world isn't going to give a s*!! Trust me on this.

Never mind. Carry on with your campaign. Carry on with the illusion that you'll be treated differently by society as a 'civil partner' and not a 'wife'.
I think you must be really young-we've all been young so not a criticism- not to be able to see that when it comes to cp's and marriage it is very much a case of : same shit, different label or, if you see them in a positive light: as being equal and therefore not worth altering the system we have.

Must be so nice to right.....

That's amazing, how did you guess? I'm actually 7 years old. Incredible.....
Grow up wamster

JosieRosie, you are the one that needs to grow up on this issue, not me.

You don't get it, do you? It is a FACT that civil partnerships are no different to marriage. Why would you be treated any differently in a cp by the financial and legal institutions than in a marriage? I am grown up enough to realise that society treats people in relationships as being in relationships not according their marital status . You're not.

As old as seven, eh? Wow that is surprising. At the age of 7, I could understand that there is no point having two systems that meant the same thing legally.