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And
wasn't it feminists who fought so hard to procure the
basic rights that used to be obliterated by marriage?
Because of the women's rights movement, we can maintain
our own bank accounts; we can make our own health care
choices; we can refuse sex with our husbands and prosecute
them if they don't comply. In the feminist imagination,
"wife" can still conjure up images of cookie-baking,
cookie-cutter Donna Reeds whose own desires have been
forced to take a backseat to their stultifying helpmate
duties. But it's neither 1750 nor 1950, and Donna Reed
was a mythical figure even in her own time. Marriage,
now, is potentially what we make it.
Which
brings me to the "surprise" portion of our program.
As long as the yeti of the antifeminist world--the hairy-legged
man-hater (everyone claims to have seen her but actual
evidence is sparse)--roams the earth, we need to counteract
her image. And as long as wives are assumed--by anyone--to
be obedient little women with no lives of their own,
those of us who give the lie to this straw bride need
to make ourselves as conspicuous as possible.
I
want to take the good from marriage and leave the rest.
I know it's not for everyone, but the "for as long as
we both shall live" love and support thang really works
for me. Sure, I didn't need the wedding to get that
love and support, but neither does the fact of marriage
automatically consign me and my man to traditional man-and-wife
roles. Like so many relationships, married and un-,
ours is a complex weave of support, independence, and
sex. We achieve this privately--from the mundanities
of you-have-to-cook-tonight-because-I-have-this-deadline-tomorrow
to sleepy late-night discussions on more profound matters,
like the meaning of life or how many steps it takes
to link Kevin Bacon to John Gielgud by way of at least
one vampire movie. But also publicly--with our name
change, for example (explaining to folks like the Social
Security Administration and whoever hands out passports
that, yes, we both need new papers, because we each
have added the other's name was, and I mean this quite
seriously, a thrill). And it's this public nature of
marriage that appeals. It's what allows me to take a
stab at all this change I've been yammering about.
I
won't pretend I meet with success all the time. Disrupting
other people's expectations is hard, and sometimes it's
neither possible nor desirable to wear the workings
of one's relationship on one's sleeve. An appropriate
cocktail party introduction is not, "This is my husband,
Christopher, who knows how to truss a turkey, which
I don't, and who, by the way, doesn't mind at all that
I make more money than him. Oh, and did I mention that
the last time our toilet got scrubbed, it wasn't by
me?"
Plus,
some people's perceptions can only change so much. My
90-year-old grandfather, who has been nothing but open-minded
and incredibly supportive of my feminist work, persists
in asking what my husband is going to do for food whenever
I leave town on my own. Each time, I say the same thing:
"Christopher knows perfectly well how to feed himself.
In fact, he's cooking dinner for me right now." And
then my grandfather gives a little surprised chuckle:
those crazy kids, what will they think of next? And
my accountant, who's been doing my taxes for years and
knows my husband only as a Social Security number, automatically
assigned Christopher the status of "taxpayer" and put
me down as "spouse" on our first joint return. Yeah,
it was a tad annoying, but so far it's the sum total
of the eclipse of my identity by his. Not so bad, really.
By
and large I do believe that we're culturally ready to
accept changes in the way marriages are viewed. Increasing
rates of cohabitation and the growing visibility of
long-term same-sex partnerships are changing popular
notions of relationships. Even trash TV holds promise:
Fox's Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? debacle
laid bare many ugly things about American capitalism
and media spectacle, but there was one fairly unexpected
result. The show was presented as a display, however
crass, of old-fashioned marital values--a trade of youth,
beauty, and fecundity for wealth, security, and caretaking,
complete with the groom's friends and family on hand
for that lovely arranged-marriage feel. But it turned
out to be nothing of the kind. The bride, as it happened,
just wanted the lark of a free trip to Vegas, and the
groom, a boost to his moribund show-biz career. That
the concept saw the outside of a Fox conference room
proves that modern marriage is in dire need of feminist
attention. But the widely expressed outrage and disgust
that followed the show are evidence that the general
public is more than ready to discard the notion that
a woman's ultimate goal is the altar.
It's
true that the most important parts, the actual warp
and weft of Christopher's and my relationship, could
be achieved without a legal marriage (and I could have
kept my third-wave street cred). In the end, though,
the decision to marry or not to marry is--no matter
how political the personal--an emotional one. I wanted
to link my life to Christopher's, and, yes, I admit
to taking advantage of the universally understood straight-shot-to-relationship-legitimacy
that marriage offers. But it is a testament to the feminists
who came before me, who offered up all those arguments
about marriage's oppressive roots and worked tirelessly
to ensure that my husband owns neither my body nor my
paycheck, that I can indulge my emotion without fear
of being caught in those roots. Instead, I can carry
on their struggle and help forge a new vision of what
marriage is.
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