Heloise was no "spinster by choice." She only joins a convent after her enraged uncle finds out about her secret marriage and pregnancy and castrates Abelard (her much older lover).
I think the fact that she joined a convent was a move of desperation, not independence. In the Middle Ages, there wasn't much else you could do in that situation but become a nun and secretly pine away for your man.
I certainly hope she's not a feminist role model.
-- Jane Crawford
Nothing makes me giggle quite as manically as an article by an overeducated, painfully upper-middle-class white woman. Amy Benfer's bourgeois, privileged musing about the imagined dilemma that she and her fellow (I note the irony of using this word) inhabitants of the ivory tower face in making what most of us pathetically realistic people consider a fairly straightforward choice made me holler with delight. As my boys and I often say to each other: Niggah please.
I'm not speaking as a reactionary or even a social conservative. I read Horowitz for the humor, not for confirmation or reinforcement. I support the ERA. I'm all for domestic partnership benefits and recognizing gay marriage. But really, was there a single thought expressed in Ms. (must be politically correct with the suffix) Benfer's article that wasn't just silly? Who gives a dadgum about any of the women quoted, or for that matter, even referred to in the article? They all sound either bitter or pathetic.
Most important, the article loses sight of the fact that anyone who can make a decision regarding whether or not to get married based purely on a philosophy of whether marriage as an institution impedes one's personal freedom is part of a privileged elite. I'm with Andrew Sullivan. Let's concentrate on how we can improve what most people agree is a wonderful institution in theory, and expand it to be more inclusive. Comparing marriage to serfdom in the 21st century is silly. Less musing over theory, more living in the real world, please. Nuff said. Gotta go beat my wife now.
-- Joseph Bates
The litany of tortured justifications invoked by conflicted feminists for indulging in the politically incorrect act of getting married reveal them to be, in one way at least, very much like the proper young bourgeois matrons of generations past -- they still worry a lot about what the neighbors will think.
-- Dick Eagleson
Jennifer Foote Sweeney calls it paternalistic to condemn marriage because marriage is a choice. But it's a choice to participate in a political and economic system that affects everyone. By Sweeney's logic, those abolitionists who condemned the use of cotton because it required complicity with slave labor were paternalistic -- clothing, after all, is a matter of personal choice, much like marriage.
Full disclosure: My parents never married. They've lived together for the past 25 years in what, to my 18-year-old eyes, seems to be a pretty healthy, committed relationship. I'm certainly not anti-relationship or anti-male. But I don't understand the necessity of legally codifying your partnership to another adult.
To me, the most telling point is that marriage is inherently unequal. It is a way of institutionally recognizing some relationships above others. Right now, the inequalities are particularly obvious: If I fall in love with a man, we can enjoy benefits such as tax-free inheritance; if I fall in love with a woman, we can't. But more generally, marriage is a way of placing a value on just one type of loving relationship. The polyamorous love and the platonic love don't count.
The choice I make, as a feminist but more broadly as a person who cares about other people, is not to take part in an institution I find restrictive and reprehensible. I reject Sweeney's view that whether we participate in institutions that may be immoral is of no political relevance.
-- Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
Feminism is a joyless fraud.
-- Art Wallum
I couldn't have put it better myself. The point is to educate women (and everyone else) about all the choices, and then (what a radical idea) trust them to decide for themselves. There's something wrong when my own choice to get married to the man I love puts my feminist credentials up for public review. I love my husband and my principles too! Thanks, Jennifer.
-- Sue Lewis
I'm a feminist who can rarely stomach being around women because I can't take all the whining, sniping, jealousy, and insecurity common among the "enlightened." At 25 years old, I'm not sure how to negotiate my own life while upholding any set of often-contradictory feminist ideals, let alone knowing how someone else should do it. Thank you for a long-overdue call for everyone to back off.
-- Lisa Nosal
Jennifer Sweeney's piece reminded me of that old joke: Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Next page: We'd all be much better off with a larger dose of tolerance and compassion for everyone's choices