I have to say, I'm surprised by successful women and feminists who choose marriage. It's an institution built on women's subservience in exchange for "protections" for the woman and child. After a series of long-term relationships with men, I have now been happily unmarried to the same man for the last 22 years. I feel no need nor wish to be married. I am feeling the financial pressure to join the ranks as I age, but this only makes me more reticent.
Surely, my partner and I have gone through the same things as married couples. Tell me what makes marriage so alluring. I'll wait.
Jimmy & Roselyn Carter. Rare but wonderful example of how 2 people can make & keep vows by that helped them become a formidable - & apparently happy - team.
Lotsa ways to do it right, in this interesting world…
Loved those two so much. But I don't need vows to be a good partner. That's the head-scratcher for me. "An unnecessary contract," I guess I'd call it, and for women like me, one with way too much baggage.
It's (almost) funny to me that you (as a woman) think that marriage is an institution built on women's subservience. I don't know of a single marriage in which that's true (or even might be true). It's damn sure not true in my marriage.
Women's equality had much more support in our history and even in our Constitution than is commonly appreciated. I haven't yet seen anything that the first generations of Americans said about these particular observations by Montesquieu. But I know a lot of Americans thought a lot about what he wrote. In The Spirit of the Laws I was surprised to find Montesquieu had written the following:
In despotic governments, women do not introduce, but are themselves an object of, luxury. They must be in a state of the most rigorous servitude. Every one follows the spirit of the government, and adopts in his own family the customs he sees elsewhere established.
In republics women are free by the laws, and restrained by manners.
Montesquieu also said suffrage was the quintessential speech of sovereigns:
In a democracy the people are in some respects the sovereign, and in others the subject [of the laws].
"There can be no exercise of sovereignty but by their suffrages, which are their own will." By suffrage, "the sovereign’s will is the sovereign himself. The laws, therefore, which establish the right of suffrage, are fundamental to this government. And indeed it is" vitally "important to regulate, in a republic, in what manner, by whom, to whom, and concerning what, suffrages are to be given."
Consistent with that fundamental principle of our Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment (declaring "[t]he right of citizens" to "vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of sex") essentially acknowledged that women are (and since at least the Fourteenth Amendment should have been recognized as being) fully part of the sovereign people.
“You take away our freedoms we’ll take away your seats” should be a self fulfilling prophecy.
I have to say, I'm surprised by successful women and feminists who choose marriage. It's an institution built on women's subservience in exchange for "protections" for the woman and child. After a series of long-term relationships with men, I have now been happily unmarried to the same man for the last 22 years. I feel no need nor wish to be married. I am feeling the financial pressure to join the ranks as I age, but this only makes me more reticent.
Surely, my partner and I have gone through the same things as married couples. Tell me what makes marriage so alluring. I'll wait.
Jimmy & Roselyn Carter. Rare but wonderful example of how 2 people can make & keep vows by that helped them become a formidable - & apparently happy - team.
Lotsa ways to do it right, in this interesting world…
Loved those two so much. But I don't need vows to be a good partner. That's the head-scratcher for me. "An unnecessary contract," I guess I'd call it, and for women like me, one with way too much baggage.
It's (almost) funny to me that you (as a woman) think that marriage is an institution built on women's subservience. I don't know of a single marriage in which that's true (or even might be true). It's damn sure not true in my marriage.
Women's equality had much more support in our history and even in our Constitution than is commonly appreciated. I haven't yet seen anything that the first generations of Americans said about these particular observations by Montesquieu. But I know a lot of Americans thought a lot about what he wrote. In The Spirit of the Laws I was surprised to find Montesquieu had written the following:
In despotic governments, women do not introduce, but are themselves an object of, luxury. They must be in a state of the most rigorous servitude. Every one follows the spirit of the government, and adopts in his own family the customs he sees elsewhere established.
In republics women are free by the laws, and restrained by manners.
Montesquieu also said suffrage was the quintessential speech of sovereigns:
In a democracy the people are in some respects the sovereign, and in others the subject [of the laws].
"There can be no exercise of sovereignty but by their suffrages, which are their own will." By suffrage, "the sovereign’s will is the sovereign himself. The laws, therefore, which establish the right of suffrage, are fundamental to this government. And indeed it is" vitally "important to regulate, in a republic, in what manner, by whom, to whom, and concerning what, suffrages are to be given."
Consistent with that fundamental principle of our Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment (declaring "[t]he right of citizens" to "vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of sex") essentially acknowledged that women are (and since at least the Fourteenth Amendment should have been recognized as being) fully part of the sovereign people.
Nice to choose joy!