When I think about marriage, I have to think about privilege. Marriage is basically a privileged institution for those deemed worthy (any hetero person). Heterosexual people can get married and sign up for a very long list of privileges, that gay people can not get. And single people do not get.

The way I see it, getting married is the same thing as going down to the office of “white people’s privilege” and signing yourself up for even more privileges that you only get because society is unjust and fucked up, and you happen to be in the privileged class. This doesn’t seem right to me at all. I will not go sign up for even MORE privileges that I can get just because I have sex with a man, not a woman.

Why can’t we all just decide who our next of kin is? Who gets to make decisions for us in a medical emergency? Why is it all about being a couple? Why is that the MOST important relationship? Why can’t a friend be your next of kin?

I’m not married to my partner and I have all these relationships. That’s what happens when you enter a long-term relationship with someone.

Your argument assumes a rather simplistic view of Western vs. Eastern societies. Rarely are things so neat. And reducing Indian marriages simply to the “lattice density” or some such pop sociology without acknowledging the role of caste, property, etc. in same is rather, well, shameful, imo.

As they say, you can choose your friends, but not your family…

Chet, that is a good point but not necessarily for marriage, but for knowing how one reacts to obstacles. I know that I resent the hell out of them, and become obsessed with getting around them. It’s easier for me not to smoke if I have cigarettes handy, and easier to stay if I have a free paths to the exit.

It is generally strange how this obstacle thing plays out. Some people I know don’t want to marry (again) because divorces are such a hassle, while those who actually are divorced had been living apart for more than a year (it’s the law) — so it had been a matter of walking out on a moment’s notice, maybe even more easily because they had a year to come back should they change their minds.

IME, people marry because they feel the legal package is a good deal, or they don’t because they think it isn’t. But as it’s easier to get the package than to return it, the ones that got it are more worried about whether they might have bought a lemon.

Just FYI, in the dense lattice world, when a woman marries, from her point of view, she’s not just getting a spouse relationship, she’s getting relationships with father-in-law, mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, etc., and each has an individual character, roles to be played, responsibilities, customs and little rituals that go with it. (It is similar for a man.) To simply shack up with someone is to miss a lot of life. All that in the dense lattice society becomes somewhat meaningless and difficult to maintain when a couple from the dense lattice world moves to USA which is the atomic world.

If you understand the paragraph above, then you will understand the importance of family, family reputation, how arranged marriages work in traditional Indian culture, etc. A responsible parent would want a child to marry into a family where all these relationships can healthily exist. A marriage is between families; a shacking up is between individuals. If the American family no longer extends beyond the nuclear family, then marriage as an institution makes much less sense.

Not to my knowledge, which is why I never said that there were. I was speaking about the larger context of the feminist conversation aboout marriage which is not, to my knowledge, limited to this one single thread at one single website.

Are those some actually in this thread, or are we talking about the fringes of discourse more notoriously inhabited by Tibetan molemen and the folks who insist that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is both legitimate and a deliberate leak?

Well, no, Zuzu, a few people actually are saying that - ‘marriage can’t be anything but a trap for women; therefore we should get rid of marriage. For everybody.’

If you’re not aware that that position is being taken by some, you’re just being purposefully ignorant.

or the Strawfeminist.

Sure, sure. Because there doesn’t exist a single human being who advocates a vision of feminism not personally approved by you, Zuzu.