holy matrimony batman

Three conversations have coincided this week to make me have a slightly major epiphany. About marriage.

One conversation occurred on a semi-date, making this a legitimate entry onto my blog. (phewphs, i'm trying here people!)

I met a really interesting guy at a friends house, and in this case, I'm not using the words really interesting lightly. Smart, quick witted, easy to talk to, and an artist, oh and a greeny. Tick tick tick. Through our mutual friend he asked me if I would like to go for coffee the next day perhaps? Sounded swell to me. Then after facebook and web stalking him and viewing his art online and genuinely liking it a whole lot, I asked if as well as coffee, I could see his studio. I know what you dirty little monkeys are all thinking, but you can just forget about it. I genuinely wanted to see his art and workspace. You: *smirk*. Me: *rolls eyes* pfft!

So the next day we set off on a perfect, crisp, sunny long weekend day on foot towards town to see his studio (Ak uni, elam). And all the way we talked. Interesting talk. Actually, so interesting and easy that it made me realise how utterly boring most men are. yes you. you are so boring. We, i, women, bend over backwards making conversation puzzle shapes so you can put your conversation puzzle pieces in them. We bring up topics for you to talk about, and do all the right nodding and question asking. God it is all so tedious. But in this case, it was not at all so. I think it is fair to say I might never have met someone so worldly, in the truest sense of the word: so well travelled and broadly knowledged. This AND a great artist. I'm quite taken. I called it a semi-date because it wasn't one of those god-aweful, awkward, contrived, pressurised drink-at-a-bar scenario's. It was more like a really cool hang out. SO ANWYAY god before i lose the point entirely.

Said man, I'll call him the artist, he's got pretty good general knowledge, knows pretty much enough to talk about politics, history, geography, shit.. you name it. And you know, me, well, i'm smart, but i don't KNOW alot of stuff. i know alot about some stuff, but i really missed alot in school. i smoked weed and drew funny pictures of my teachers and wagged and got drunk right when things were getting, what i in hindsight now realise, were fairly critical. like history. ouch i just got a pain in my body even thinking about history class. but now i see, one should really know a little about the major events that occurred in the last few hundred years for example. because they shaped our culture, and our world, they shaped lanuage and art and philosphy and through that, shape today, and me. And besides, you just look dumb when you don't know things. And no body likes dumb people.

So i came home from this enlightening and educational, as well as truly enjoable day, with a bit of a mental list of things i wanted to read up about, you know, homework so to speak, and one of them was marxism.

So i'm reading away about karl marx, thinking shit, i'm kind of marxist! and i follow the wikipedia link about 'marxist feminism' because that sounds interesting. And here i read that marxist feminism is the theory that: the root of the oppression of women is capitalism, as it deprives women of property, economic equality and independence, and breeds unhealthy relationships between men and women. In this capitalist society, the family structure (i.e. marriage) serves to subordinate women, putting them at the service of men.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Bells go off in my head.
(This is why you should stay at school and learn, kids, so you know when someone is oppressing you).
Bells went off, and the ringing that they made sounded distinctly like the words 'fuck me, it's true'.

Just the night before, i had been talking with one of my best friends who is newly married and about to have her first baby. We talk about this and that and of course we talk about men, my complete absence of, or whomever i currently squeezing if i am squeezing (which i am not!), and her husband. And I can tell she really needs a vent you know, she tells me how he drops the cleanly washed towels on his poisonously toxic shoes and leaves them there, how he can't see the butter on the bench or anything else that needs putting away after he's made a sandwich... and on it goes. It's not particularly inspid, just home truths... and at the end of it she huffs and says crossly:
"I just feel like i'm his slave".
And this is one of the relationships i consider in the 'good' category. Well suited people who are in love. CRIPES.

And it's not just this friend, it's all my married friends. All the women feel this way, not just like slaves, but trapped. Trapped is a word I hear these days. They are totally dependent on men for financial support and their identity is suffocated out of existence by the all encompassing role of mother, the overwhelm, the expectations, the isolation.
Like the guy at the end of the bar, marriage looks less attractive the closer you get, I am finding.

Now now, I hear what you are thinking, what about the men? Exactly, what about those poor bastards, as emeshed in this dysfunctional system, shackled to their jobs, bearing the sum and total responsibility of bread winning. How horrible for them too. And I don't have even the vaguest idea of what an alternative solution to pairing and reproducing might be. But I have to say marriage seems a fundamentally oppressive institution, in light of these points. But MAINLY oppressive to women.

And this is not all. I had another conversation, via email, within days of these conversations, with a friend of mine who has been married several years. This friend said to me how they had wanted to discuss a particular sensitive theme with their spouse and it had created a huge explosion, which supported their growing belief that marriage was not a relationship in which you could be completely honest, or completely yourself. They went on to add, that marriage is so loaded with unconscious projections and expectations and that people subconsciously think that by getting married they have the right to be outraged if their spouse does not comply with their unvoiced assumptions, and that only non-married couples still had, at least, a sense that they didn't actually possess the other person.

And I thought, you know, it's really true. I see it all the time. In relationships, we negotiate, compromise, barter, because we KNOW that person can leave us and is opting to stay, essentially. And then the knot gets tied and people starting treating their 'loved one' like property, like a pet they need to perform well so their lives can remain on course.

It reminded me of another friend of mine who's husband wants sex all the time, and she'd quite happily live without it. She gestured to her wedding and engagement rings with the thumb of the same hand and waving them at me says: but this says i have to do it. I was slightly shocked, but only slightly. Which is shocking.
Hmmm swapping sex for gold and security... doesn't it sound a bit like... slavery?

So here I am, reading for the first time about Marxist feminism, with these conversations rattling round in the recesses of my brain, coagulating and attempting to form cut and paste messages for me, and I think a funny thing: marriage, is not, really.... feminist.

I'm struck that that is funny, mainly because i've never thought of it that way before. How come, in a world that was broken in two by our feminist mothers, (MY feminist mother!) and patched back together with women in the work force, equal pay (ha HA!), women in the army etc. well HOW COME we are still reading 'princess gets married to prince and lives happily every after' to our daughters, and how come our grown up daugthers, aka me and my UNmarried friends, are even still considering marriage an option, much less treating it as a GREAT TRIUMPH?!?!?

Someone's put something in the koolaid, becuase if the world was ever truly burnished by feminisms branding, the scar it left has all but faded to white.
Ahhh, look what the women have done, a little foot stomping, isn't that cute! Now send out the magazines to show them what to buy, how to look and how to act so they can use up all that silly energy covetting prams and cooking lamb roasts.

Shudder.

Now, being the daughter of a feminist mother, with an entirely feminist family, and feminist type expectations of me like, be everything, succeed all the time, have it all, feel fabulous being stretched within an inch of your inner resources... I thought i had been doing a fairly adequate job of feigning feminism. But here's the thing. THere are two ways you make decisions that support feminist ideals. One, is because you ought to, kind of the way you ought to finish dinner because african children are starving; and the other way, is because you're outraged.

And all these conversations and events and unveilings have culminated in me a feeling of, yes, a little outrage! And this outrage, lead me to all in one moment realise that I don't have to, need to, and in fact I think I may not want to, get married.

Ta da! That's the end of the show folks. Final bow, curtains fall. I mean, i never thought of myself as a ring-chasing big fat gypsy wedding type anyway, especially compared to many of my peers. But in a way I held this loose etheral idea of me getting married, the way you see yourself sitting on a porch when you're old. It's just how it looks. I may have watched too many movies.

And I tell you something else, boy does that take the HEAT OFF!
I didn't think I was dating in order to get married (and I feel like i'm going to be sick a little just writing that out loud to you) but the idea that i will never get married, by choice, well that just feels like a big fat gust of wind just blew into my life, peeling the curtains apart and the view it reveals is across a wide sea of freedom and possibilities, as far as the eye can see.

I've also downloaded lectures from oxford university explaining capitalism... next thing you know i'll be up and quitting my oppressive office job....

Yeah so that's all I got and it aint really funny so look at this fucking hilarious cat gif.
Oh, i don't know how to put it in... i'll try something else.

Oh and yes. I will be seeing extraordinarily interesting artist man again. This time armed with some prior reading! There you go. Nice call back at the end there! you see what i did. :)