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.