feel like I’m turning into an anti-marriage feminist

[NewFem]

So, I’m new to feminism but I’ve been having some thoughts about marriage and how it relates to women as a whole.

Marriage, I think, turns women against each other. Everything from weddings (making other women feel bad by not choosing them to be your bridesmaid for some nonsensical reason), to marital life itself is about women competing with each other and using their marital status (i.e. their relationship with a man) to one up another woman. Married women are seen and treated better than single women societally. They are showered with gifts for their wedding, for example and everyone must stop and celebrate their special day. When a woman gets married, all other women are expected to uplift her for finding a man in her life.

Whereas you rarely see any of the above I mentioned between married men and single men. Married men’s title remains Mr just like single men, nearly all married men keep their last name. Married women are distinguished above single women.

Overall I feel like marriage is a tool that brings divide amongst women and the reason why you see so many women aspiring for marriage or refusing to let go of this patriarchal institution is because of the elevated status that marriage gives them over other women. There’s no other patriarchal creation that I can think of that women - including some who call themselves feminists - generally defend so strongly. I believe the status it gives them over other women is the reason why.

Thoughts?

Single women face prejudice from society and that prejudice mainly comes from other women, married women in particular.

Examples?

People don't often say 'i want ro marry for financial protection ' because most of society hears 'gold digger'.

The problem with marriage isn't marriage. It's the fairytale. As a society we are sold a picture of our one true love, we believe this romantic story is the be all and end all.

Marriage is a legal contract. But people like to pretend its just about love and the rest doesn't matter.

You see it on hear all the time. Posters saying talking about marriage as a legal contract 'reduce the meaning of marriage'.

We need to reframe how we look at love and romance. Rather than be against marriage.

This is a very odd thread….

What a ridiculous summary. Marriage is a partnership, to build a family and a future together; to weather life's storms together.

Have been with my DH almost 30yrs and married at the register office 15years ago
Weddings I've been to have been meaningful family and friends affairs, and very moving.
You don't have to take your husband's name. You can either keep yours - handy for professionals - or do something different to make a new family name for you and your children for ease.
As a professional, I don't recognise what you say about married women being treated better than unmarried women - that's a very outdated view

I find the whole OP rather shallow and unrecognisable.

Anyone's welcome to their own opinion, but don't try and generalise for the whole population.
Marriage is in your combined approach and attitude.

Marriage, I think, turns women against each other. Everything from weddings (making other women feel bad by not choosing them to be your bridesmaid for some nonsensical reason), to marital life itself is about women competing with each other and using their marital status (i.e. their relationship with a man) to one up another woman. Married women are seen and treated better than single women societally. They are showered with gifts for their wedding, for example and everyone must stop and celebrate their special day. When a woman gets married, all other women are expected to uplift her for finding a man in her life.

I don't recognise any of this from real life tbh. Only from soap operas or bridezilla threads on MN. There is plenty wrong in many marriages, but that's to do with inequality or infidelity between the couple, not to do with the status of married women compared with single women!

And married couples get wedding gifts as a couple, it's not the bride being 'showered with gifts' . I would have thought there was more competitiveness between unmarried women trying to attract a man than between married women!

@CrispAndFrosty

Your OP sounds more anti-women than marriage does. "Making other women feel bad by not choosing them to be your bridesmaid for some nonsensical reason"? It sounds like you and/or your friends need to grow up.

I agree with the PPs saying marriage is there to give legal protections to women as part of the forming of a household partnership. Look at all the women on MN talking about their useless "partners" who do nothing and have no obligations to them, even while the woman is acting as wife to them. A marriage contract makes it a legal partnership.

You can go and do this at the registry office for a few quid and not tell anyone, if you don't like all the modern fuss.

Oh, and Mrs just used to mean a grown woman in charge of things. I use Mrs with my maiden name for a lot of things, and I use my married name for family social things.

Is there a reason why you’re insulting me when I’ve not insulted you? (Telling me to “grow up”). Is there any indication that I was talking about myself or my friends and not things that have been written right here on mumsnet.

You’re calling me anti-woman mainly because you’re triggered by something I wrote in my OP, possibly because it describes something that you or maybe your friends have done in the past and you don’t want it to be criticised.

Since you singled out the bridesmaids example, I’m guessing you upset someone by leaving them out of your bridesmaids group and now you’re feeling bad that I’ve highlighted that some women act like this.

‘Honestly, I don’t really care about any of the stuff you mentioned because those things are mostly private family decisions. What I’m talking about is more societal issues, things that affect women as a whole. Single women face prejudice from society and that prejudice mainly comes from other women, married women in particular. There’s nothing sexist about pointing that out.
Competition for men is what’s behind most female to female bullying. The perceived (and also real) status that marriage gives a woman socially is what drives women to aspire for marriage in the first place.

I’ve also never heard of a woman giving “financial protection” as the reason for wanting to get married (apart from the women here on mumsnet). It’s all about showing off to others that you’ve been picked by a man and that a man finds you more desirable (sexually attractive) than other women that drives most of the marital desire.’

🤣 ok… if you think that prejudice against single women by married women, or women to women bullying are bigger societal issues than domestic labour, childcare, parental leave, and post-divorce financial arrangements, then a) you aren’t ‘new to feminism’ you haven’t got a clue what it means and b) you haven’t got a clue how the world works.

I’m guessing you are very young, or I fucking hope you are, or I’m seriously worried about you… 😁

Also, both myself and DH are feminists, and are attempting to bring our dds up as such. Marriage is not a barrier to being a proud feminist.

@DoubleTweenQueen

What a ridiculous summary. Marriage is a partnership, to build a family and a future together; to weather life's storms together.

Have been with my DH almost 30yrs and married at the register office 15years ago
Weddings I've been to have been meaningful family and friends affairs, and very moving.
You don't have to take your husband's name. You can either keep yours - handy for professionals - or do something different to make a new family name for you and your children for ease.
As a professional, I don't recognise what you say about married women being treated better than unmarried women - that's a very outdated view

I find the whole OP rather shallow and unrecognisable.

Anyone's welcome to their own opinion, but don't try and generalise for the whole population.
Marriage is in your combined approach and attitude.

But why do you need someone to weather the storms of life with? (genuinely asking)

Of course you don’t see how married women are treated better because you’re a married woman. The same way someone who is able bodied cannot accurately describe how prevalent ableism is in our society - because whatever prejudice that does exist isn’t directed towards you.

Oh for goodness sake. If you think I live in a world where people have massive troupes of bridesmaids and friendship drama, you couldn't be further from the truth. You are the one who brought up all these things in your OP as if they are the main things that marriage means to you. If you asked me what marriage is all about, bridesmaid dramas would be the last thing I would think of. I found your OP quite insulting, actually, towards married women, of which I am one. You accused us of only wanting to get married so we could lord it over other women and create bridesmaid dramas. It sounded very much like you've been snubbed as a bridesmaid, if anything.

@NewFem It does sound as though you need to mature and broaden your experience, tbh

Sounds like you have the wrong friends and/or the wrong husband.

It’s the same as everything. Make sure you pick the right person before making monumental life changing decisions eg having children.

And if you do pick the wrong person then at least marriage will partly protect you from financial ruin. As having kids tends to fuck your career right up.

@Theeyeballsinthesky

This is a very odd thread….

I agree.

OP I think you should reconsider your social circle if married women are lording it over the unmarried women.

If you'd been listening to me the other day you'd have heard me say to my DDs if you plan on having kids with someone get married first otherwise you have no legal or financial protection. Obviously I could have said civil partnership or married.

I would prefer children particularly girls are taught the legal and financial importance of marriage/civil partnership. You still hear people talking about common law wife/husband which just doesn't exist. I've just had a friend whose partner died (in tragic circumstances) luckily she got his pension but she had no right to it but because of the circumstances of his death she got it. She would have been left with 3 very young kids to support.
Same when I was a funeral director the law is very clear a partner no matter how long the relationship is very low on the legal pecking order, regarding rights to arrange a funeral, top of the list however is husband/wife.

@NewFem In the same way it's nice to go through life with friends who support each other?
I was a professional single woman into my 30s.
I'm not going to waste any more time on this.

@AnneLovesGilbert

You are making way too much of the other women thing, which is sexist in itself.

You are. And you’re pretending men don’t get as involved in stag dos - way more in my experience than women do in hen dos! - and weddings. Three of the biggest most ridiculous weddings I’ve been to were driven by the grooms wanting a big fat wedding.

You’re still mostly talking about weddings and not marriage.

And gifts/celebration aren’t confined to weddings. People do this for house purchases, new jobs, babies, promotions, even divorces.

Gifts/celebrations for house purchases, new jobs, promotions or even graduation from university are nowhere near common or as universal as weddings. There isn’t an entire industry dedicated to indoctrinating young girls with the idea that “your graduation day is the best day of your life” or “your job promotion day is your one special day”.

There’s also zero obligation to give a gift for any of the events you mentioned. In fact, most people would laugh at someone who threw a party for starting a new job, it’d be seen as ridiculous so it doesn’t happen often. Having a party for purchasing a house would be seen as showing off and having a gathering to celebrate you being divorced would see most people being branded as “bitter” and “still not over your failed marriage”. None of the things you’ve said would be seen as joyous celebrations - more people wanting to show off and prove things to others. Which would see them mocked.

People are readily mocked for ostentatious weddings and stag or hen dos.

You’re still talking about weddings when you said your problem was with marriage.

And wedding gifts aren’t given to the bride but to the couple.

Oh wow, I just got to the bit where working hours, workplace prejudice and childcare costs are classed as "private family decisions", in contrast to bridesmaid choices and wedding gifts which are profound "societal issues".

I give up on this thread, though also wonder if Andrew Doyle has created a new character after the success of Titania McGrath

@NewFem You sound like a not-so-bright sociology student trying on a bit of research?

@lazylinguist

Marriage, I think, turns women against each other. Everything from weddings (making other women feel bad by not choosing them to be your bridesmaid for some nonsensical reason), to marital life itself is about women competing with each other and using their marital status (i.e. their relationship with a man) to one up another woman. Married women are seen and treated better than single women societally. They are showered with gifts for their wedding, for example and everyone must stop and celebrate their special day. When a woman gets married, all other women are expected to uplift her for finding a man in her life.

I don't recognise any of this from real life tbh. Only from soap operas or bridezilla threads on MN. There is plenty wrong in many marriages, but that's to do with inequality or infidelity between the couple, not to do with the status of married women compared with single women!

And married couples get wedding gifts as a couple, it's not the bride being 'showered with gifts' . I would have thought there was more competitiveness between unmarried women trying to attract a man than between married women!

No, it’s married women acting and wanting people to acknowledge that they’ve “won” by, as you put it, attracting a man that creates that competition. Amongst single women, there isn’t much competition over men because there are plenty of men to go around and there’s no such desire to “keep” a man who has “chosen” you.

(Obviously I’m speaking generally and not about any particular woman I know, just general mentalities I’ve noticed )

@FakeFruitShoot

Marriage is an overhang of a patriarchal society that disincentivises women from being financially independent. I don’t believe a heterosexual nuclear family is the only environment to raise children or the only way to live

I don't think this is an argument against marriage. I think it's an argument for widening the meaning of marriage. I think an exclusive partnership of support and interdependence is useful for many humans, and I believe you should be able to confer the "benefits", if you like, of marriage (such as tax breaks, legal protection around property, expectation of support with shared children etc) onto any relationship- asexual, romantic, emotionally supportive etc. I think a pair of heterosexual single mothers or sisters, for example, should be allowed to form an exclusive partnership where each is protected if the other dies or leaves.

I don't think a sexual or romantic attraction is a good basis for building a life together, necessarily.

I agree this is an odd thread, but I do agree with this from @FakeFruitShoot

I think an exclusive partnership of support and interdependence is useful for many humans, and I believe you should be able to confer the "benefits", if you like, of marriage (such as tax breaks, legal protection around property, expectation of support with shared children etc) onto any relationship- asexual, romantic, emotionally supportive etc. I think a pair of heterosexual single mothers or sisters, for example, should be allowed to form an exclusive partnership where each is protected if the other dies or leaves.

I don't think a sexual or romantic attraction is a good basis for building a life together, necessarily.

No, it’s married women acting and wanting people to acknowledge that they’ve “won”

It isn't though. I haven't seen this ever. You've clearly got a massive bee in your bonnet about weddings and seem to be under the impression that women are a load of bitchy, backstabbing harridans who settle back in smug arrogance when they've 'bagged' the prize of a man. What a very weird view! Whatever your views stem from, they certainly don't resemble feminism as you claimin your OP!

Marriage is a contract, but it is a very unique contract in so far as it does not come with small print or really any explanation of what it will involve and it is culturally supposed to be based on love and emotion, which would hardly be the basis of any other contract.

I do not really buy the argument that marriage protects women and children either. It depends where you are and what the situation is. In a situation with two people on equal salaries and a jointly owned property? What is exactly the protection? In Scotland, where finances and child arrangements need to be agreed before you get divorced, refusing to agree these can be a form of control and accessing legal help to go to court when someone is blocking a settlement is financially prohibitive. So who is being protected? Not the child who is the means of blocking the divorce when the marriage has broken down anyway. Not the wife who cannot access a divorce 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe the lawyers who make the money?

@Luredbyapomegranate

‘Honestly, I don’t really care about any of the stuff you mentioned because those things are mostly private family decisions. What I’m talking about is more societal issues, things that affect women as a whole. Single women face prejudice from society and that prejudice mainly comes from other women, married women in particular. There’s nothing sexist about pointing that out. Competition for men is what’s behind most female to female bullying. The perceived (and also real) status that marriage gives a woman socially is what drives women to aspire for marriage in the first place.

I’ve also never heard of a woman giving “financial protection” as the reason for wanting to get married (apart from the women here on mumsnet). It’s all about showing off to others that you’ve been picked by a man and that a man finds you more desirable (sexually attractive) than other women that drives most of the marital desire.’

🤣 ok… if you think that prejudice against single women by married women, or women to women bullying are bigger societal issues than domestic labour, childcare, parental leave, and post-divorce financial arrangements, then a) you aren’t ‘new to feminism’ you haven’t got a clue what it means and b) you haven’t got a clue how the world works.

I’m guessing you are very young, or I fucking hope you are, or I’m seriously worried about you… 😁

Like I said, most of the things you’re mentioning seem like personal family decisions to me.

For example, division of labour. I know that traditionally, women did most of the housework. However, I’m struggling to see today how the decision between a man and woman of who gets to clean the kitchen etc. becomes a general societal problem? (Genuinely curious)

I’m guessing you’re a married woman? Which is possibly why you feel like personal marital problems become everyone’s issue.

This is because married life in a way makes your marriage the center of your world, so you imagine that everyone, including people outside your own relationship should be concerned about issues that really only affect the both of you - who have chosen to enter that union willingly (I’m not speaking about you as an individual, I mean the general “you”).

You are still making me laugh OP, the PP saying you have created an odd thread is correct.

Here’s a reading list for you, just so you can get a grip on what feminism actually is, and what the key societal issues are. Some of these books are very current, some of them are classics, but overall they will be useful

Invisable women - Caroline Perez

Men Explain Things to Me - Rebecca Solnit

We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Feminism is for everybody Bell hooks

Caitlin Moran - More than a woman

The women’s room Marilyn French

A room of one’s own Virginia wolf

The second sex Simone de Beauvoir

The female eunuch Germaine Greer

The Bell jar Sylvia Plath

Vindication of the rights of women Mary Wollstonecraft

Amanda Foreman’s the ascent of woman is a great BBC series