Thursday, June 11, 2009

You're Not Really Making That Argument, Are You?

sam schulman, misogyny, women, feminism, gay, marriage, same sex, homophobia,
Sam Schulman argues, in a screed against gay marriage, that gay marriage is bad because it bypasses antiquated notions of the rights of women. (And by antiquated, I mean people 100 years ago would have found them old fashioned.)

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality. The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage. Yes, Sam, because married women are never raped or degraded. Ever. In the history of time. And if we let the gays marry, there will be rape everywhere. Everywhere! Do you suppose Sam thinks that all rapists are married gay men? This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. It may have existed in most societies, that doesn't make it necessary. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch , is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood--and sexual accessibility--is defined.

And here we're have Sam's main point: women themselves cannot control who they have sex with, that's the job of men, specifically their fathers and their husbands. In Sam's mind, the thought that I control my own sexuality and choose my own partners is unthinkable, and shouldn't be allowed. This is so misogynistic I don't really know what to say, other than to hope Sam doesn't have any daughters.

Again, until quite recently, the woman herself had little or nothing to say about this, while her parents and the community to which they answered had total control. this was not a good thing, Sam. The guardians of a female child or young woman had a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon. because virginity was a commodity, Sam. This reduced women to the status of objects for sale, not human beings. and that's not a good thing, either. This may seem a grim thing for the young woman yes, Sam, it is a grim thing. As a human being, I deserve the same rights of self determination as any man.--if you think of how the teenaged Natalie Wood was not permitted to go too far with Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. your comparing a system of degradation and sex-based slavery to a fucking movie?! But the duty of virginity can seem like a privilege, even a luxury, if you contrast it with the fate of child-prostitutes in brothels around the world. false dichotomy. virgin for sale and child rape are not the only two choices. there's a whole panorama of fun in between. No wonder that weddings tend to be regarded as religious ceremonies in almost every culture: They celebrate the completion of a difficult task for the community as a whole. keeping penises out of girls' vaginas.

This most profound aspect of marriage--protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex--is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. well, i suppose we could sell lesbian girls to other lesbians in the same manner, though i'm not sure why we'd want to. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status in the way the status of blacks under jim crow was "special" of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)--these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers. why should they? they don't apply to people living in the twenty-first century at all, whether gay, straight or somewhere in between.

The whole post is like this, and I can only take so much misogyny in one day, but nowhere does Sam prove that antiquated notions of the rights of women in any way are good arguments against same sex marriage.

I will leave you with this gem, though:

And is the public, having accepted so rapidly all these rights [that gay people now have] that have made gays not just "free" but our neighbors,

Yes, Sam, you never had gay neighbors before this. Uh-huh.

10 comments:

  1. So his whole argument is one giant Appeal to Tradition? Wow, logical fallacy for teh win!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's this long "ALL WIMMINZ VAGINAS BELONGS 2 ME" interspersed with, oh, yeah, what was I supposed to be talking about . . ."HOMOS!"

    ReplyDelete
  3. In A.D. 2009
    War was beginning.
    Captain: What happen ?
    Mechanic: Somebody set up us the homo.
    Operator: We get signal.
    Captain: What !
    Operator: Main screen turn on.
    Captain: It's you !!
    CATS: How are you homo !!
    CATS: All your vagina are belong to us.
    CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
    Captain: What you say !!
    CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
    CATS: Ha ha ha ha....
    Operator: Captain !! *
    Captain: Take off every 'ZIG'!!
    Captain: You know what you doing.
    Captain: Move 'ZIG'.
    Captain: For great justice.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, Makarios is apparently trolling me. I'm assuming he followed from your blog. His argument is... less than convincing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I should have replace ZIG with REASON or LOGIC.

    ReplyDelete
  6. sorry about that. his arguments are always less than convincing.

    and . . . fixed

    In A.D. 2009
    War was beginning.
    Captain: What happen ?
    Mechanic: Somebody set up us the homo.
    Operator: We get signal.
    Captain: What !
    Operator: Main screen turn on.
    Captain: It's you !!
    CATS: How are you homo !!
    CATS: All your vagina are belong to us.
    CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
    Captain: What you say !!
    CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
    CATS: Ha ha ha ha....
    Operator: Captain !! *
    Captain: Take off every 'LOGIC'!!
    Captain: You know what you doing.
    Captain: Move 'LOGIC'.
    Captain: For great justice.

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a completely pointless rant by an obvious douche.

    The whole point of marriage evolving into modern day 'romantic marriage' is because historically marriage has been shit for both parties (parentally arranged marriages don't tend to give much of a fuck what the man wants either) but particularly towards women.

    He's just pissed that women don't just give up and submit to men (more specifically him) any more. I'd guess he's got a very close relationship with his hand.

    ReplyDelete
  8. What really cracks me up about all this good ol' day syndrome, which there is some here, is watch an episode of Twilight Zone called "A Stop at Willoughby". This episode was aired in 1960, which is around the time people today long for. The episode is about a man that is tired of his modern life and longs for a town that seems to be set around the 1920's or so.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow I am sorry not the 1920's but the 1880's. He sees the town as some sort of Heaven. Much like these good ol' days people do with the 1950's.

    Here is the synopsis of the story on wiki.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Stop_at_Willoughby

    ReplyDelete
  10. Statement from the American Anthropological Association:

    "The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies."

    ReplyDelete

Comments are for you guys, not for me. Say what you will. Don't feel compelled to stay on topic, I enjoy it when comments enter Tangentville or veer off into Non Sequitur Town. Just keep it polite, okay?

I am attempting to use blogger's new comment spam feature. If you don't immediately see your comment, it is being held in spam, I will get it out next time I check the filter. Unless you are Dennis Markuze, in which case you're never seeing your comment.

Creative Commons License
Forever in Hell by Personal Failure is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at foreverinhell.blogspot.com.