UnEnDowd

I still haven't read the now-infamous article in which the entity known as "MoDo" liltingly (and if you ask me, lengthily) unveils her controversial "findings" that feminism has failed and that "the modern girl" should put The Art of Creative Swooning on her Christmas list and slip into a "Weener Coozy" T-shirt. But for those who have read the article--i.e. everyone but me--here is a piece in Women's eNews calling Dowd out for lame-ass research and "irritating fluff."

One fun part is where authors Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett point out that when Dowd refers to a British study about men "not liking smart women," she unwittingly alludes to data collected from octogenarians. According to Rivers and Barnett, these data suggest that, among those Brits born in 1921, the higher a woman's IQ, the slimmer her chances of getting hitched. In 1946.

The Dowd-is-a-dope angle is funny, all right, but couple of things niggle me about the authors' leitmotifs. Such as the fountains of pathos that emanate from the bizarro yet persistent belief that men "like" women at all.

This belief is a romantic disease.

In our blighted patriarchy, fundamental inequalities require a pretty loose definition of the word like when applied to describe relationships between the oppressor and members of his sex class.

When men "like" women enough to marry them--because the woman has big-baby-eyes and oozes estrogen by the gallon?--the reward for her girlish appeal is domestic drudgery, sex service, pregnancy, child-rearing, and eventually getting dumped when Mr. Dude decides he'd rather be boning his assistant. In plenty of cases, poverty attends divorce, and physical violence often obtains in addition to these indignities.

Rivers and Barnett, however, opine that a reduction in the likelihood of their eventual matrimony ought to be "really bad news for bright women." By way of lighting the end of the tunnel, they point to another study showing that gals with advanced degrees are "just as likely to be successfully married as other working women." To which I say, too bad.

Why any woman, particularly one who has her own dough, and especially one with enough education to grasp the political consequences of such a regressive, patriarchy-affirming act, would want to get married (particularly to a man) remains one of the greatest and most poignant mysteries with which I've ever been vexed to grapple in all my middlin-long and pointless life.

Comments

[PrissyNot]

Twisty - the very fact that you produce this blog is ample point to anyone's life. People do marry, they want . . . I don't know what they want . . . but it happens, and there's nothing to be done about it but divorce, which is even more pointless. I'm rambling and sleep-deprived, but YOUR life, is NOT pointless.

[nina]

Why, indeed. I finally decided there's no damn good reason, but the tragedy of reaching this conclusion is that it took me leaving two marriages to figure it out. I'm slow that way sometimes. I blame the patriarchy.

[Alice]

I married my dude so that if he were ever in intensive care they would let me in to hold his hand.

I hate the idea of the institution of marriage. I hate joining a club that won't let my gay friends in. But I was selfish enough to want the benefits the government confers on people who dance the conformist het dance.

[Lisa]

I agree with Alice. The legal benefits overall are tempting, but the most compelling reason for marrying my best friend, who just happens to be a man, is so that someone besides my crazy-ass mother has the legal authority to make decisions for me should I become incapacitated.

I realize that we're both very, very lucky. I've found a man who realizes I'm a person and not a giggling lump of meat attached to fun bags.

And he's got me.

[pj]

with all due respect to alice and lisa, there are ways to keep our "crazy-ass" mothers from being the ones who get to make the life/death decisions for us if we're in the hospital.

granted, none of them are as easy or comprehensive as marriage, but they do exist. getting a living will put together is actually relatively easy. hospitals are usually very respectful of them and, like we saw in the schiavo case, just because you're married doesn't mean your parents won't try and interfere with your legal spouse's decisions.

[Joolya]

I think it's okay to marry a man who understands that being rewarded for your ostensible - but nor actual - heteronormativity is ridiculous. I happen to be attracted to men - or rather, folks who have dicks but lack machismo - but I'd still only want to file the papers in Massachusetts if I ever decided to pick a life-partner.

[Nancy]

I agree that marriage is a misogyny-based, pointless institution.

But what are you saying, Twisty? Men should only marry other men, since men are incapable of loving women?

Or are men incapable of love, period? Are women capable of love? What about hermaphrodites?

And what about Mister Rogers? You best not be saying my boy Fred only thought with his dick - them's fightin' words.

[flea]

I, too, draw the line at Mister Rogers.

[Sarah Brodwall]

Two words: residency permit! I wouldn't have been able to stay together with the love of my life if we hadn't gotten married. Sometimes you don't have any choice but to work within the system.

[Elise]

"Why any woman, particularly one who has her own dough, and especially one with enough education to grasp the political consequences of such a regressive, patriarchy-affirming act, would want to get married (particularly to a man) remains one of the greatest and most poignant mysteries with which I've ever been vexed to grapple in all my middlin-long and pointless life."

Well ... some of them are kind of cute. And if you get them young and train them up right, they're very handy for doing the heavy lifting. Also I made my husband take my last name, which was sort of fun.

[Lisa]

With all due respect to you, PJ, marriage is a pretty good deal as long as the partners negotiate and agree to the terms of the agreement. There are some benefits that simply are not available to non-married couples, even with legal agreements. Health care benefits come to mind. And no matter how carefully crafted your legal arrangement is, anything not specifically addressed in documentation will automatically revert to the authority of your nearest blood relative in the absence of an actual marriage.

We have two children, too, which is a lot for a person to deal with alone. I'm glad the other person responsible for their existence is legally obligated to be around and help.

Anyway, as Elise pointed out, some of them are kinda cute. My partner is 6 years younger than I am (see! I caught him young!) and has an ass you can bounce a quarter off of. That's not all bad.

[Hattie]

My daughter and her partner have the same problems that hetero married couples do. Of course a lot of the bad behavior my daughter's partner indulges in is male-inspired. That is, her partner does boorish things like leaving her power tools on the dining-room table and refusing to fix dinner while complaining that she's hungry. Her love of expensive toys (new car, fancy furniture and home improvements, etc. etc.) and her aversion to domestic tasks takes a toll in money and time on my busy daughter. She's also a big-time snorer.
My daughter, for her part, ignores her partner's feelings!
The one thing I do think is good is that they share child care tasks equally, although the kid spends most of her waking hours in day care, and they leave her with a babysitter twice a week. None of this seems to harm her, I must say, but it's real expensive.
Avoiding men won't solve problems, because the patriarchy is ingrained in all of us. I don't see much gain in my daughter's life from the hetero life I have led, married over 40 years to the same man.

[Daphne]

Twisty, you obviously can't just *say* "why would we marry?" You must point to some studies that show, have shown, continue to show, that marriage decreases women's life spans; increases men's; and that married women are less happy than single women. Yet we all believe (oh and I am so loathe to say "we all believe," based on a particular person in my office telling me "EVERYone knows" such-and-such the other day) that we'll be miserably lonely without a guy. And a baby or three. And truth is that the same woman quoted parenthetically above is MUCH more pleasant now that she has a long-term boyfriend than she was as a quickly ageing 35-year-old.

[Nancy]

We have two children, too, which is a lot for a person to deal with alone. I'm glad the other person responsible for their existence is legally obligated to be around and help.

Being a child's father makes you responsible for their existence - and thanks to DNA testing, this is a testable proposition.

And being married to someone does not legally oblige you to be around and help. Marriage is no guarantee of a committed, present father.

As for the other benefits of marriage - domestic partner laws should take care of that advantage.

No, marriage is only of value to traditionalists who like the idea. Of course some people don't like to admit they're a traditionalist, so they fall back on practical considerations. But there are few, and getting fewer all the time.

And to some people, marriage gives men rights over women's reproductive decisions - like the spousal notification law defended by Supreme Court nominee Alito. Better to stay out of men's clutches, whether you have children together or not.

[Twisty]

Nancy, I'm saying that marriage, which institutionalizes male domination and fetishizes monogamy, is not beneficial to women. I further suggest that same-sex marriage which mimics the hetero power structure merely inducts queers into an indentured servitude previously unique to the hetero nuclear family, which ekes out its existence in thrall to forces of commerce against which it is powerless.

I'm also saying that men, on the whole, hate women. I do not know whether they are capable of love.

Marriage has nothing to do with love, and even less to do with Mr. Rogers, to whom I cannot remember alluding in my post.

[magikmama]

I got married to get health insurance. I had to have a c-section, and without health insurance it would have cost more than I had made in the past year before taxes.

Yeah, it sucks.

I love my husband, and we have a decent relationship, but marriage kind of destroyed what had been a carefully developed partnership, because we BOTH began to assume things just because we were married. It took years to get over that.

[Dim Undercellar]

My S.O. and I are most likely never going to be married. It's a trap - easy to get into, hard to get out of, and it allows one party to be a complete asshole with impunity. The benefits are nothing that a "Power of Attourney" statement can't mimic, and the drawbacks are ginormous.

The most degrading, dangerous lie the Patriarchy sells women is that they are nothing without a man.

[SneakySnu]

Twisty, your beautiful rant reminds me very much of a seminar I attended about 10 years ago with Eve Sedgwick (the course had the wonderful title "Three" "Victorian" "Women"). She argued this precise point while we were reading--if I remember correctly--Virginia Woolf.

I got married last year because, like others here, I needed a certain set of documents. Prior to this decision, I had already made the potentially patriarchy-affirming choice of not pursuing an academic career in the U.S. in order to be with my partner, who is a diplomatic officer (not from U.S.). I don't doubt you would admonish me for this. It took me years to decide and not without considerable angst to this day.

On the other hand, this life has offered me lots of freedom (the financial part helping a lot) to do my work outside the constraints of an institution and read lots of political blogs, all while really slacking off on any housework that might need to be done.

And we get to live in really cool places like Cuba, where we're going in about 5 months.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm holding out hope for myself, though I feel terribly implicated in your critique.

[anon]

I used to be a traditionalist. Even after a really crappy marriage, I was a traditionalist; I thought I needed to be married, and almost tried it again (and thank goodness I didn't, as it would have turned out badly in a whole different way than the first).

Now I'm almost sure I don't need to be married, even though I have a lovely companion and I suspect we have a lifetime deal.

That cultural imperative is just so strong, that it's very hard to swim against the current, even when it's obvious how weighted marriage is in favor of the man, and how many women end up on the losing side of that (despite the cries of men everywhere who are shrieking about "child support").

There are a substantial number of men who do seem to hate women. There seems to be an even larger group, though, for whom women are so unimportant or so objectified that indifference is probably more accurate.

[emjaybee]

(shrugs)

I like being married. I like my husband, and I take serious umbrage at the suggestion that he is incapable of love or of liking me due to my being a woman. I mean, I hate the patriarchy at least in part because it says such vile things about *men* as well as women, after all. He is my best friend, I wouldn't have married him otherwise. The ceremony we went through was mostly an excuse for a party; we were de facto committed to each other long before that. Being married simplified many things for us as a couple, and it was the best decision for us, legally and practically. That doesn't mean the whole concept couldn't or shouldn't be improved.

If marriage didn't exist, it wouldn't affect our relationship much, presuming we would still have the legal rights that married couples have in some other form. I have no problem with the idea of breaking down marriage and re-structuring how we give out those rights. So long as I could choose to live with him, raise kids with him, and be the person who looked out for his interests, I wouldn't really care what legal form all that would take.

In the meantime, I offer no apologies for making use of this particular social construct just because others have misused it and continue to do so.

[speedbudget]

Thank Bob for Twisty. She always manages to clearly state what I've been thinking for a long time. I don't see the need for marriage. I always said that if it came to the point where I would want to state to the world that "this is my dude," it would be done without involving the state. Those commitment ceremonies that gay/lesbian couples are having sound like just the ticket. Mine would involve a pool, swimsuits, and a friend of mine who is ordained by the Universal Church on the internet to perform unions. And Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" would be playing while I walk down the "aisle."

[bitchphd]

I don't care about the marriage issue, but I will say for the record that I DO care about the Dowd-bashing. It seems like any time the woman writes honestly about her personal life, everyone piles on about how "silly" she is. From feminists, I detect a li'l bit of internalized misogyny: it's okay for women to be successful as long as they do it in a mannish way--that is, by not getting too personal. The minute they seem conventionally feminine--weak, interested in marriage, whatever--we pile on.

I disagree with Dowd's analysis and many of her assertions: I haven't found that men are uninterested to successful, aggressive, conventionally attractive women (and Dowd IS conventionally attractive). Quite the contrary. But I see no reason to question her statements about her own life, and if anything I rather support the fact that she's trying to work out her personal life in a public context by trying to bring feminist analysis to bear. God knows we don't see that in the pages of the NYT all that often.

[Josef K]

I'm getting married next year for many reasons, but the main one is that we want to show the world we're spending the rest of our lives together. We didn't think we needed to get married to prove this, but, judging by many people's reactions, we sure did.

I don't think getting married makes me a willing victim of the patriarchy. My current relationship has less heteronormative baggage than most of the gay relationships I've been in.

[tisha]

http://www.slate.com/id/2129131/ click here for the FrayWatch (Slate magazine) on the blogging about the Dowd article.

I loved the post commenting on the Roiphe article "Is Maureen Dowd Really Necessary?"

Here it is:
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Dear Ms. Dowd and Roiphe--If I could enlighten both of you to one thing about most of us heterosexual men, it would be that anytime we appear to be hiding the fact that we want to have sex with you or apologizing for wanting to have sex with you or for wanting sex, liking sex, being sexually attracted to women (dumb and smart), etc, etc, it is almost always because we think it will lead to us having sex with you or we think you are ugly.How we conduct ourselves while doing the above depends on which of the two factors (you're hot or you're ugly) is motivating us. We are trying to be either sensitive thus attractive or un-interested and a turn-off, but it is all about whether we want you in bed.And no matter how much you may delude yourselves into thinking so, we do not ever really feel guilty over being genetically inclined to do these things. We only pretend to be, or condemn it when we see it in other guys, if we want to have sex with you and we think it will help to ease your feelings.Every guy who denies these things to his woman does so because he wants to have sex, doesn't want to be bitched at, or both. Women don't want to believe this about their men so they pretend it isn't so. Which only makes his goals that much more attainable.
****************************************
(. . . yup, pretty much sums it up.)

[Nancy]

I'm also saying that men, on the whole, hate women. I do not know whether they are capable of love.

Marriage has nothing to do with love, and even less to do with Mr. Rogers, to whom I cannot remember alluding in my post.

Saying that men on the whole hate women has nothing to do with marriage either.

The point about Mr. Rogers is that you characterized men thus:

When men "like" women enough to marry them--because the woman has big-baby-eyes and oozes estrogen by the gallon?--the reward for her girlish appeal is domestic drudgery, sex service, pregnancy, child-rearing, and eventually getting dumped when Mr. Dude decides he'd rather be boning his assistant. In plenty of cases, poverty attends divorce, and physical violence often obtains in addition to these indignities.

You were lumping all men in with assholes. Now you modified a little by saying "on the whole" which presumably leaves room for non-assholes, but in your initial post I came away with the overwhelming impression that you feel that men are incapable of love for women.

And now, as you've admitted you don't know whether men are capable of love. Presumably for women or anything else.

So where does Mr. Rogers fit in? Is he a man or not? Was Mr. Rogers capable of love?

And how do you determine such things? By asking? By actions?

And are you unsure of men, or all of humanity?

I didn't want to get too overanalytical, because I really enjoy the bitter, stimulating brio of your literary style, and on the whole I agree with you. That's actually why I mentioned Mr. Rogers - I was trying to be sort of light but serious at the same time.