#anti marriage

[misandresther]

Being strangled for just 15 seconds can lead to an increased risk of strokes, seizures, loss of bodily functions, and potential death days after the incident.

Normalizing strangulation as a kink is harmful. It's putting men's pleasure above women's safety.

[feministfang]

Men keep blabbering about how the real luxury in life is getting married and growing a family and every fool on this planet praises them for thinking like a good family man when the actual fact is having a family of their own is literally only a luxury for these men. It builds their social status, builds their legacy, gives them more credibility in society, makes them the authority figure which gives them a sense of manlihood etc. Whereas for women, it’s all about being a servant, being a sex slave, creating and raising kids only to name them after their useless husbands, receiving endless judgemental remarks from the society, having problems in working environment etc. Having a family is only the most luxurious thing for these men that’s why even the wealthiest men are desperate to find a perfect wife who can give them all of it and that’s why men are so flashy about it.

[bckalleycat]

i never really understood marriage but everyone's enthralled with the idea of it

the only difference between married and unmarried couples are the titles and now there's a piece of paper legally binding you to one another. but outside of that nothing actually changes.

i need a piece of paper to make you commit to me? i need a fancy ceremony to express how much we love each other? you wanna make out in front of our friends and family? no thanks, gag. also you can't testify against your spouse and that kinda gives me blackmail vibes

it's giving yet another capitalistic scheme for cash flow (just like valentine's day) and also it does feel like being leashed and collared. except instead of both the man and woman wearing the collar, it's just the woman. i think i understand where the phrase " the old ball and chain" comes from now (it's plagued me for ages)

[blackpilledkremlintsarina5294]

Governments really cater to people who are married, with kids, than the people who aren't married, with kids. It's unfortunate. I don't wish to bring anyone in this harsh world. It's not worth it, in my honest opinion.

[philipkindreddickhead]

Its so strange to see so many pro-marriage radfems.

Like a lot of yall will rightfully mock people who tell women oppression isn't oppression if you just *feel differently about it.*

Then you'll turn around and talk about how you can't wait to someday participate in an institution where men bought and sold women like cattle, keeping women trapped, constantly giving birth, impoverished, raped, abused, worked without pay, and like a host of other subjugations.

And why? Because you just feel differently about it 🥺

[misandresther]

[strideofpride]

Oh this whole interview is so good

[neurotypicalabusesurvivor]

In Rome full service sex workers were more respected then being someone's wife. Many women choose to be full service sex workers to escape marriage. Marriage has always been about sexual and domestic slavery of women by men.

The patarachy demonizes sex to protect the social construct of marriage. It demonizes sex work, it demonizes homosexaulity, it demonized pre martial sex, it demonizes none monogamy as these things naturally threaten the social construct of marriage.

Marriage was always about entitlement, and control, it never was about love.

[qwilanikan]

On Marriage in Fandom (with specific emphasis on Good Omens)

I’ve been reading a lot of GO fan fiction recently, and mostly I have been loving it! There are some amazing writers in this community and I’m so grateful to be able to benefit from their time and skill and imagination! But… I have a lot of cognitive dissonance when it comes to shipping Azicrow, and others, and the romanticization that fandoms put on marriage and them being married/husbands.

Some context:  I am a relationship anarchist.  

I wrote another post with more details about what this means to me, including my opinions on marriage as an institution, with a bunch of links to articles and resources if you are interested in digging into this a bit more.

So, I mentioned some cognitive dissonance.  I am pretty obsessed with Good Omens and with Aziraphale and Crowley and their relationship.  But, the fact that they rely solely on each other, does not align with my own values.  I don’t think it is healthy for them to have no other sources of support.  

And, of course there is a lot of discourse about them being ‘husbands’, what with the ‘ineffable husbands’ thing and such. 

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while and felt compelled to try to express after encountering it over and over. Even though there are things about their relationship that don’t align with my values, I gush over Azicrow since they are not real, it’s a fantasy.  I have lifelong friends that I rely on and trust and care about deeply.  And so I can admire that in their relationship.  But once it enters the realm of marriage it gets harder for me.  

I see a lot of idealization of marriage in fandom without reflection or critique.  This is not unique to fandom by any means, it’s ingrained in our socialization.  

I am uncomfortable with so much emphasis on marriage (and hierarchical romantic relationships). I think organized monogamy and rule-based relationships (especially marriage) are about control and ownership, not love and respect and trust.  I don’t find that appealing at all. I wish the focus was on their love for each other, rather than creating a rule-based relationship between them and idealizing that.

I try to suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the warm fuzzies of Aziraphale and Crowley being cute. I love Aziracrow because I see their love and care for each other and their care for the world and humanity.  I want to celebrate that love and I don’t want to imagine that they are trying to control and coerce each other.  I don’t think that supports their love, I think it supports unhealthy systems in our society. 

notes:

* I want to acknowledge that this is not specific to Good Omens.  For instance this has been very present on the OFMD fandom since season two, and is just everywhere all the time.

* I have historically mostly lurked, and consumed fandom, rather than engaging publicly myself.  But this is something that I really care about and I want to be able to discuss. (Please feel free to engage with me about this!)

*I read one fic, (To reveal my heart in ink by chaoticlivi), which I loved. And something that I really appreciated about this fic is that even though Az and Crowley’s relationship was definitely sexual, and probably romantic (whatever that means… but that’s another topic), Az still continued to call Crowley ‘friend’ the whole time.  I loved that so much! There’s no reason they can’t still call each other ‘friend’ regardless of the ways that they relate might shift over time.

* Also, as occult/ethereal beings there is no practical advantage of them getting married, as they don’t need the financial or governmental benefits it gives you, so the only reason to do it is to idealize the idea of it and its hierarchical nature

[haggishlyhagging]

While male prophets were devising more varieties of marriage, some of the female prophets were arguing against it altogether. There were several bases for their stance. Some, like Roxanne Dunbar, argued against marriage because revolution was a full-time occupation, leaving no time for purely personal concerns. They called upon women to leave houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children, land, to give single-minded dedication to their salvation. It sounds absurd. Still, how does it differ, when you come to think about it, from the same rationale for celibate religious orders?

Other radical female prophets objected to marriage not only because of what they felt it did to women but also because, like their conservative opposite numbers, they saw it as a major support of the status quo. But whereas conservatives argued for strengthening marriage because they wanted the status quo protected and preserved, the radical women argued against it because they did not. They were against marriage precisely because, as Judith Brown put it, it did shore up and support the status quo:

The institution of marriage ... is a potent instrument for maintaining the status quo in American society. It is in the family that children learn so well the dominance-submission game, by observation and participation. Each family, reflecting the perversities of the larger order and split off from the others, is powerless to force change on other institutions, let alone attack or transform its own. And this serves the Savage Society well.

Still others argued against marriage not only because it was conservative, but also because it was antirevolutionary in the sense that it deflected the righteous anger of workers against their exploiters. The wife who offered an emotional refuge to her husband from the jungle warfare of occupational competition was supporting a nonhumane system. Fran Ansley is speaking here:

Women serve as "lightning rods" for men's frustrations at other factors in their environment. This can be especially serviceable for the ruling class. Often it is the man of the family who experiences most directly the real power relationships in the society. (He sells his labor to a capitalist who then exploits him; he has a direct relation to industrial production; etc.) When wives play their traditional role as takers of shit, they often absorb their husbands' legitimate anger and frustration at their own powerlessness and oppression. With every worker provided with a sponge to soak up his possibly revolutionary ire, the bosses rest more secure. Chauvinist attitudes help to maintain this asocial system of tension-release.

But it is once more a case in which the woman pays. The mental health of men, their balance, is preserved by the ministrations of their wives, who salve the wounds inflicted on them by the outside world. The real beneficiaries in this framework are employers and exploiters of men against whom the aggression of unsoothed men would wreak itself. All is at the expense of wives, says Beverly Jones: “the inequalitarian relationships in the home are perhaps the basis of all evil. Men can commit any horror, or cowardly suffer any mutilation of their souls and retire to the home to be treated there with awe, respect, and perhaps love. Men will never face their true identity or their real problems under these circumstances, nor will we.”

Some argued against marriage because it was so oppressive for women. They translated the material presented in chapter 3 into polemics. This was how Judith Brown saw it:

The married woman knows that love is, at its best, an inadequate reward for her unnecessary and bizarre heritage of oppression. The marriage institution does not free women; it does not provide for emotional and intellectual growth; and it offers no political resources. Were it not for male-legislated discrimination in employment, it would show little economic advantage. Instead, she is locked into a relationship which is oppressive politically, exhausting physically, stereotyped emotionally and sexually, and atrophying intellectually. She teams up with an individual groomed from birth to rule, and she is equipped for revolt only with the foot-shuffling, head-scratching gesture of "feminine guile." ... Marriage ... is the atomization of a sex so as to render it politically powerless. The anachronism remains because women won't fight it, because men derive valuable benefits from it and will not give them up.

Some argued against marriage because it did not provide a suitable unit for the rearing of children. "There is," said Roxanne Dunbar, “little reality in the human relations in this society, and least of all in marriage. Ask the children what they think of the institution which supposedly exists for their upbringing, their beneft. All the love between ‘man and woman’ in the world will not make that tiny unit any less lonely, any less perverted to the child who is raised within it.”

A few, finally, fought marriage because they hated men. In reply to the "official" position against man-hating among the female prophets, one of them— Pamela Kearon—made a plea for open recognition of its existence in the displaced form of hatred of other women: "there is no dearth of hatred in the world. I agree.… People do not react to oppression with Love.... When women take their hatred out on others, those others are likely to be other women.... If hatred exists (and we know it does), let it be of a robust variety. If it is a choice between woman-hating and man-hating, let it be the latter."

It is doubtful whether these antimarriage arguments had much effect on the marriage rate. But the fact that they could be articulated, whether accepted or rejected, cannot help but affect the future of marriage. The idolatry of marriage was finally being challenged.

Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

It seems to me that it could be possible to safely engage in ethical h*teros*xuality as long as you don't live with him, are independent, have your own money and are in no way financially dependent on him, maintain your own social circle and separate friends, don't clean up after him, don't marry him and do not get p******t. He's there to provide you with companionship, entertainment and intimacy. But breaking any of this rules results in being very susceptible to fall into dangerous teritory

[pigeonriot]

i bring a certain "we should abolish the institution of marriage all together" vibe to the conversation that the liberal ✨love is love✨ ✨marriage equality✨ lgbts dont like very much

[misandresther]

Women were never created from men's ribs, not ever. It is HE who emerges from HER womb. Framing the father as the life giver is a patriarchal lie, it's not true.

[neurotypicalabusesurvivor]

Therapy is a punishment for being born neurodivergent.

It expensive.

You often are forced to go to maintain your job.

Despite having to manage your neurotype your still expected to perform the same amount of work as Neurotypicals.

All so neurotypical don't have to learn how to manage their neurotypes.

[haggishlyhagging]

In an organizational age, the insistence on the part of the anarchist-feminists that equality was based on individual refusal to participate in an unjust society seemed anachronistic to many radical as well as conservative women. In addition, their conviction that the assertion of personal independence was necessarily connected to a rejection of marriage and the nuclear family structure further alienated them from many who may have agreed with other aspects of the anarchist argument. As Richard Sennett has pointed out, the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a particularly infelicitous period for attacks on family structure. Such attacks directly threatened the emergent belief that the family offered the most secure refuge from a chaotic, unstable, constantly changing industrial society. Finally, the anarchist-feminist contention that one of woman's first steps toward equality should be complete self-support not only offered even greater insecurity but also contravened a growing national trend toward sentimentality about the family. Women who were disastisfied with contemporary economic or social conditions had other choices, particularly socialism, which did not threaten explicitly the existing family structure. In fact, much American socialist literature declared that socialism would purify marriage. As a result, anarchist-feminists could not hope to gain the support of most radical women.

-Margaret S. Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920

[vegantinatalist]

I couldnt find a flag for the 4B movement so i tried making one? 4 hangul b's in blue and a pink x, to symbolize girls saying no to them.

Let me know what yall think