Rachel's Musings » Matrimania

Home Ownership

Rachel — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:20:49 +0000

Listening to Picturing a Meltdown, an interview with two of the authors of a comic-style book explaining what led to our economic crisis, I realized that in addition to marriage as the foundation of society, there is another myth that claims to be oh, so important to our freedom: Home ownership. It has a lot of similarities and it is tied very strongly to marriage and the nuclear family. Just like marriage, home ownership is seen as a status symbol: I own a home, therefore I am an adult. It is the next step in our becoming adults, right after marriage (or maybe slightly before). Home ownership is supported by the government through large tax-breaks that those of us who rent don’t get. Yet, just like marriage, it has devastating consequences to our society and looking at those, it is mind-boggling why any society would support it. And I am not even talking about Marxian arguments against ownership. Home ownership is behind urban sprawl. It is behind long commutes and too little time in the home or with that spouse and those children that are supposedly signs of our adulthood. It is behind isolation. In short, it is behind the destruction of our environment and the decrease of social capital (no, not as the only thing but certainly an important factor). And home ownership is at the center of the economic collapse (together with greed). Just like in the case of marriage, though, those negative consequences are swept under the rug. Instead we portray people who don’t buy homes as immature, not really part of society, economically disadvantaged, and/or afraid of commitment (notice the similarities to singlism!). We are stigmatized instead of those who want their own large home (with a large garage for the large car). Instead of encouraging such short-sightedness, a government that is interested in the long-term well-being of its citizens would support different ways of living – living with a smaller foot-print. It would encourage employers to offer jobs closer to home so that people could walk or bike to work instead of wasting hours during commutes. Of course, that presumes that we start thinking about the long-term consequences of our actions and not (only) about our short-term gain.

Singlism in Prop 8 Attack

Rachel — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:41:43 +0000

Despite the matrimania reflected in the fight for marriage equality, I celebrated the ruling against prop 8. I think everybody should have the right to refuse to get married – and we only have that right if we can legally marry. Plus, I don’t like it when religious groups impose their morality on the rest of us, which is what Prop 8 does. But I was struck by the singlism in the comments by David Boies, one of the attorneys arguing against Prop 8, on the Rachel Maddow show (You can also watch the video of the interview here.):

We said at the beginning that we would establish three things: that marriage is a fundamental right, and that depriving gays and lesbians the right to marry harm them and harm their children, and that depriving gays and lesbians the right to marry could not help heterosexual marriage at all.

Not being married harms us, a claim based on the false belief that marriage makes us happier, healthier, and wealthier. And children growing up within single parent families are harmed – actually, children are harmed in any family other than that headed by a married couple. Both of these claims are false and singlist perpetuating stereotypes against singles. I find it frustrating that the attorneys could not find arguments for same-sex marriage that do not require put downs of singles, including the conjuring up of incorrect “evidence.” If they had not been driven by matrimania, they could have utilized the strongest argument for marriage equality: Not providing protection in case of divorce is unjust. But that would require admitting to the reality that marriages do not last forever, which contradicts the matrimanic assumption that marriage leads to infinite bliss.

Update: Here is a great post by Bella DePaulo making similar points in much more detail.

Earn Money for Meddling

Rachel — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:16:57 +0000

Now you can meddle in your single friends’ lives and earn money for doing so! Check out MatchCrew! Take a look at that website and notice how they are redefining meeting people (the only person you’re really interested in meeting is The One) and relationships (well, we know that one already: It’s only seepy relationship that counts).

Do you enjoy helping your friends meet new people?
We believe the desire to find the right partner in life is at the core of every person’s happiness, and it is a noble cause to help others to try and achieve that dream.

Yes, I enjoy helping friends meet new people! But apparently that doesn’t count if I don’t intend to help my friends meet the “right partner.” Just another friend isn’t what contributes to their happiness… This is just another way that we are taught that the only way to be happy is coupled.

And even worse:

[S]ingles that are striving to achieve the dream we all have – to find the one person we can’t live without.

No, that is not my dream! My dream is to create a job for myself that is meaningful while being connected with other people I care about and who care about me.

Of course, there’s also the obligatory self-justification:

I believe that matchmaking is a noble profession, because it gives you the opportunity to help people find personal happiness in a way that not everyone gets to experience in life. What we’re doing together, in our own small way, is revolutionary.

Revolutionary? Since when does supporting the status quo constitute a revolution?!? You are not “causing a complete or dramatic change” by institutionalizing meddling. Matchmakers have existed for a long, long time – and, yes, even those who got paid for it. Remember Yente?

I wonder what would happen if we use this tool for building relationships – you know, the kind where two or more people relate to each other, be it as friends, acquaintances or, yes, seepies…

Marriage – An Evil Institution?

Rachel — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 03:26:49 +0000

In her 2007 essay “Gay Divorce: Thoughts on the Legal Regulation of Marriage,” Claudia Card argues that marriage is an evil institution. An evil institution consists of two foreseeable and causally linked components: “Culpable wrongdoing and intolerable harm” (30). Marriage, according to Card, meets these criteria. Spouses – predominantly women – are exposed to intolerable harm, including death, through domestic violence. The emergence of such violence was foreseeable and it is tied to the institution of marriage that the threat of violence can only be mitigate by abolishing the institution. And, finally, there are people who have the power to do just that (31). Card refers the reader to her 2002 book The Atrocity paradigm: A Theory of Evil for more information. Since I don’t have the book, I will leverage her analogy to slavery to extricate some underlying assumptions to Card’s argument. Slavery, too, is an evil institution. Slaves are exposed to violence, which is foreseeable and causally linked to the existence of the institution. But what exactly constitutes the link? Surely with laws against such violence it should be preventable, thus the abolishment of the institution should not be a requirement to the end of violence within the institution. But, at least according to Card, laws do not prevent the violence. So there must be something inherent in the institution that overrides the law, at least in the minds of the violent perpetrators. I suggest that this something is a power imbalance: Slave owners have power over slaves. This power is inherent in the institution and cannot be legalized away except with the abolishment of slavery itself. Slavery without this power imbalance would be absurd.

If we apply this underlying assumption to marriage, it gets really interesting! If we assume that a power imbalance that enables the violence is created by the institution, there must be a power imbalance within marriage. Clearly there is: Men have (generally speaking) power over women. If we then take the next analogous step, we get to this conclusion: Marriage as an institution creates though the intimate access clause the power imbalance between men and women that leads, at least in some cases, to the violent abuse of women within marriage. That is, marriage is an essential component of patriarchy. I am not sure if I am putting words into Card’s mouth here but this seems to be her underlying claim. To me it raises at least one question: If we abolish marriage, would patriarchy also go away?

Wedding Rings

Rachel — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:57:19 +0000

I’ve been reading a lot about stereotypes and prejudices lately. Fifty years after Allport wrote his Nature of Prejudice, a compilation came out that reviews and updates his work. Underneath stereotypes and prejudices is the process of categorization. Allport suggested that and empirical research confirmed it. When we see something or someone, we categorize the perception – fast and unconscious. The categories are probably culturally determined, so it would be difficult to content that it’s natural, say, to categorize people by gender. Just like bones, there is no such thing as something entirely natural. But there is a process that allows us to categorize.

As I was mulling this over, I realized that married people – especially married women – are identified. In some cultures, it is through a different kind of hair covering. In others, it’s through a wedding ring. We learn to categorize wedding ring wearers as married and those without the band as unmarried. Once a person is categorized, all the stereotypes are flooding our system (they are primed by the environment – in this case, the presence or absence of a wedding ring). Wedding ring wearers are considered happier, healthier, and wealthier. People without the ring are lonely losers. Since couplemania and singlism are still largely unrecognized prejudices, we are unlikely to counter-act these beliefs to reduce the influence of the prejudices. This then perpetuates the myths that, well, married people are just somehow better (or at least better off) than singles. I never realized the importance of the obvious marker of marriage but clearly, it helps to maintain the status quo.

Is Marriage an Outdated Institution?

Rachel — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:18:47 +0000

Somehow I stumbled on the World Values Survey, a cross-national survey that asks among other things “Is marriage an outdated institution?”. I don’t have time to dig into the data a whole lot but I thought I’d share some interesting things (the data is available online!):

Overall, 83% of respondents think that marriage is not outdated.
Indonesia is the most traditional country with 96% of the respondents disagreeing that marriage is outdated.
Andorra is the most progressive country. Almost 40% think that marriage is outdated.
In the US, barely 13% think that marriage is outdated.
Across all countries, slightly more than 15% of women and almost 20% of men think marriage is outdated.
Not surprisingly, if you are married or widowed, you are pretty likely to think marriage is modern (87% and 85% respectively)
People who are separated had it with marriage: Close to 32% – the highest across marital status – think marriage is outdated.
The less involved in a religion a person is, the more likely they are to think that marriage is outdated: Only 12% of those who attend a religious service more than once a week vs. 26% who practically never attend a service.

If you want to play around with the data yourself, choose Online Data Analysis from the shortcut menu. This will give you access to an online tool for quickly doing some cross tabs. It looks like there are other interesting variables that the survey captures.
Disclaimer: I haven’t looked at the survey methodology, thus I don’t know how representative the survey results are. So, when you read the nuggets I found above, please read the percentages as “percent of survey participants.”