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Marriage has been divorced from love Even conservatives fail to grasp its value

This is female fulfilment. (Getty)


October 5, 2023   6 mins

Because there is nothing Americans will not politicise, marriage is now at the heart of a culture war.

On the traditionalist side, a loose assortment of classical conservatives, terminally online reactionary trad types, and the odd dissident feminist have coalesced around the idea that the sexual revolution has led to widespread malaise in society generally and among women particularly, for which marriage is the — or at least, a — cure. The more reasonable pundits point to the benefits of wedlock when it comes to our health, happiness, and ability to provide a stable family structure in which to raise children. The kookier tradfolk suggest that modern women have been hoodwinked by feminism into a barren existence, squandering their potential — that is, their biological imperative to become wives and mothers — in the frivolous pursuits of career, pop culture, and cat ownership. As conservative commentator Matt Walsh recently complained, the women who imagine themselves to be single and content are just “too stupid to realise how depressing this is”.

On the progressive side, meanwhile, marriage has become synonymous with misery: an institution that demands women sacrifice their professional ambitions and passions alike, putting themselves second — and picking up some unappreciative schlub’s dirty socks — for the rest of their lives. This perspective was recently articulated in The Cut by Rebecca Traister, who lamented that “hard-right commentators and politicians” were championing marriage not for the betterment of society, but to worsen the prospects of women who finally had equality within reach: “reversing the progress — from legal abortion to affirmative action to no-fault divorce — that has enabled women to have economic and social stability independent of marriage”.

In a worldview where men are portrayed as burdensome creatures who ask too much, offer too little, and inevitably fail to deserve the female companionship they crave, to eschew marriage becomes a form of feminist empowerment, the only path to a fully actualised life. At its extremes, this perspective is accompanied by the sense that men in general are a waste of one’s time and hot girl potential, and that any woman who thinks otherwise just hasn’t found the right television series and/or brand of vibrator.

The result is a zero-sum rhetorical hellscape in which marriage is one of two things. For its supporters, it is the last, best hope of a society on the brink of decline and disaster. For its detractors, it is an insidious ploy by reactionary dinosaurs to catapult us back to a less enlightened paradigm, just as we were nearing the utopian promise of a brave new world.

It’s hard not to notice a certain amount of horseshoe effect in play here, not just in each side’s notion of marriage as first and foremost a proxy for power, but also in their equally rigid ideas of what happiness actually looks like. The picture of female fulfilment is a caricature in either case. The anti-marriage camp celebrate the high-achieving, stiletto-heeled girlboss. Their opponents are in thrall to the barefoot, pregnant homesteader. And in either case, the proffered vision of womanhood has a pre-packaged-for-social-media feel to it: it is a lifestyle, rather than a life.

Perhaps this was inevitable at a moment when the basic tenets of human existence are not just politicised, but public and performative — and hence subject to endless hacking, tweaking, and optimisation. To participate in the attention economy requires treating your own life as not just a search for personal satisfaction but a source of content to be consumed by other people; you are writing, directing, and starring in a story about yourself, the main character of the universe. And when marriage becomes part of the plot, then of course we begin to think of potential spouses not as partners but supporting actors, bit players in the journey to becoming one’s most majestic, fully actualised self.

Obviously, this has certain implications for heterosexual women, for whom living with a man and living one’s best life are so often presented as mutually exclusive. But men aren’t immune from it, either: not long ago, I witnessed a friend in his 30s unhappily contemplating the ways his life had changed after moving in with a girlfriend, his complaints an unwitting and uncanny echo of so many feminist takes on the burdens of having a man around. The girlfriend’s presence in his life meant compromise, interruptions, distractions; another person’s needs and desires suddenly had to be factored in. It felt like a loss, he said — of time, energy, productivity.

But was it? Is it? Is it actually the ne plus ultra of human happiness to live unattached, the better to do exactly what you want exactly when you want to? It seems so juvenile, a child’s idea of fulfillment: to do whatever you want, and none of the things you don’t want, forever and ever, until death. Part of growing up is the realisation that a unilateral life is also a lonely one, that there is value in attachment. To be needed by another living thing — a spouse, a child, a pet, a plant — is a curb on absolute freedom, but there’s joy in it, too.

Progressives tend to cite women’s liberation and the rise of non-heterosexual couplings as positive factors fuelling the decline in marriage rates; less discussed but perhaps equally salient is the contemporary sense that marriage is square and stodgy and hence incompatible with the carefree state of perpetual adolescence in which it is now possible to live long after reaching the age of majority. Millennials aren’t even having midlife crises at the same rate as previous generations, at least in part because they aren’t settling into marriage, parenthood, home ownership — in short, into the kind of commitments that trigger existential dread about the road not taken.

Of course, every entry into this debate — including this one, at least up until this moment — tends to ignore the practical issues that prevent people from getting married. Some of this, like the unaffordability of housing, is an economic problem. But some of it, I think, is fear. The fear of growing up, and getting old. The fear of doing something so serious it can’t be easily undone or written off as a childish error. The fear of building a whole entire world with another person, and all the terrible vulnerability that entails — a vulnerability which has always been scary, but perhaps particularly so for a generation that equates emotional discomfort with being unsafe.

It’s telling that even the most pro-marriage arguments tend to be data-driven, hanging on the pragmatic rather than the romantic. Much has been made of a study by economist Sam Peltzman, which charts American happiness levels against declining marriage rates. The benefits of wedlock are presented as a matter of simple mathematics; the marriage sceptics, meanwhile, say that its proponents have simply mistaken cause for effect. “For those who have money, marriage is likely to help them to have even more of it; for those who find a good match, there are many emotional and societal rewards of partnership,” Rebecca Traister writes. “But you need stability first; you need the money, jobs, housing, and health care first.”

Notably, there’s not much room in this paradigm for love, nor for the couple who has nothing figured out, and no idea what kind of life they want to live, except that they’d like to live it together. The progressive idea seems to be that even in the best-case scenario, marriage should still be understood as the decorative flourish on top of a life, rather than the foundation on which to build one. But to understand marriage in terms of this cost-benefit analysis — What’s in this for me? — is to misunderstand it. Even the more conservative arguments in its favour — that married couples can expect better health, greater happiness, and a more stable environment in which to raise children — skate across the surface of the institution instead of plumbing its deeper meaning.

The pro-marriage camp has become associated with its loudest and most deranged voices, demanding an end to no-fault divorce, or a return to the dark ages of domestic misery — so that even more moderate commentary, such as Melissa Kearney’s recent book The Two-Parent Privilege, is prone to interpretation by critics as a call for forced cohabitation and legal entanglement for parents who do not want this. But one needn’t endorse those proposals to imagine a world in which that entanglement is something more people do want, and in which its deeper meaning is something we acknowledge in earnest. Enough pretending that we’re all too cool and ambitious and self-actualised to care about falling in love and building a life with someone; enough with the app-driven illusion that human connection is cheap and easy to find. A better conversation about marriage would be one that recognises how much of its value lies in things that can’t be measured or legislated, in the realm of the intangible. Intimacy. Companionship. The presence and rhythm of another heart beating beside you in the dark.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

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Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

More top class analysis from Kat Rosenfield. I can’t think of a single pertinent aspect of the current state of the partnership/marriage debate she’s not included, without rambling on or falling into a cleft by overtly taking sides, although her leanings can be glimpsed.

What she does do is broaden and enrich with perspectives which both sides of the debate seem unable to do, not least when she writes about those who quote “happiness stats” as a good reason to get married. Cause and effect, indeed.

In concluding, a lovely flourish too. The beating heart in the dark. Yes!

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

No. She’s a good writer, I give you that. But she can’t have it every way. Like many other Unherd authors, she wants to have her sexual revolution and eat it too.
What she refuses to acknowledge is that *left to our devices* we humans very frequently make choices that make us happy in the short term and unhappy in the long term. The implications of this on (say) diet are well known to all of us… I eat that snack of salty foods when instead I should eat a meal of greens. But the implications are much more serious and far-reaching when it comes to our genitals. Turns out – whether you thank Darwin or the divine – that the parts of us which create new life have a profound and holistic effect on the other parts of us.
The upshot of this realization is that societies need guardrails to help shape personal expectations. Should we force people to marry ‘for their own good’? Of course not. But we should encourage it – in law, policy, film, etc.
And the reason we don’t is precisely because we think ‘romance’ (to use Ms. Rosenfield’s word) is what should underlie marriage. But no, it goes the other way… over the long term, the ‘feeling’ of love will not support mutual sacrifice. Feelings come and go! They do not well up out of some inner spring of essential authenticity that demands our fealty! On the contrary, it is sacrifice that supports the ‘feeling’ of love.
We’ve put the cart before the horse, and until we turn it around, we’ll continue living lonelier, being fuller of anxiety and angst, than ever before.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kirk Susong
Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

I think she makes it clear that sacrifice, not selfishness, is what marriage is all about, and that lives that avoid self sacrifice are shallow and ultimately unhappy.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Everything has a price.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

That’s true but if a woman is ugly or a man lacks personal charm then they can be willing to sacrifice everything for a relationship but there won’t be any relationship. That kind of almost paints Single People as hedonist,short sighted,selfish people unwilling to forego comfort and pleasure and give freely and unconditionally of themselves with no thought of return. I know that wasnt the intention in this case but saying people who are not in relationships is because they refuse to sacrifice,it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth really.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

“we” who are the we? Are you not free to choose whether to marry or not? Are the we, they who do what they’re supposed to do, not what they really want to do? That’s sad,for sure, and that’s where unhappiness lies, not living an authentic life whatever it may be.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I want one of those but God says No!
See,he is Merciful. To the rest of humanity.

Stephen Kristan
Stephen Kristan
1 year ago

“A better conversation about marriage would be one that recognises how much of its value lies in things that can’t be measured or legislated, in the realm of the intangible. Intimacy. Companionship. The presence and rhythm of another heart beating beside you in the dark.”
Beautifully stated. But let me tack on the perhaps improbable addendum that even some of the sufferings and failures encountered in a marriage that survives them can supply an unexpected revelation of richness, a new incarnation of love. Purgatory too has its beauties and treasures.
We may have become too suffering averse a culture. There’s wisdom to be found there.

Last edited 1 year ago by Stephen Kristan
Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago

Oh, we’re all going to be suffering as childless, unmarried, university-educated women move up the corporate ladder. We’ll pine for the good old days of Covid and Russians.

Narcissa Smith-Harris
Narcissa Smith-Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

And it is just this attitude that fuels the writing of Rebecca Traister. I mean dude, why would childless, unmarried, educated women be any more of a danger than that same individual who is male? (And more women have been married than men, more women have children than men) This idea that women are only bearable if they are under some man’s thumb (and kept stupid) is so ridiculous.
We can look at the two groups and statistics see that unattached males are far more dangerous to society, both more violent and less active in overall social obligations and the community but sure dude, let’s fear single women.

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago

Narcissa, why do some women very much prefer the company of men? As a woman it must be quite unsettling to be around people who could easily cause you harm. What is it about female society that causes some women to flee from it?

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

‘Fear’ is appropriate (for both single men and single women) because how we live affects those around us. But more than fear, how about sadness? There are very few humans who are best, in the long run, alone. But you can only avoid being alone in the long run, by giving up something.
Oh, that demmed human condition!

Last edited 1 year ago by Kirk Susong
H H
H H
1 year ago

Being married should not be equated with being under a man’s thumb.

J Dunne
J Dunne
1 year ago
Reply to  H H

The problem is that is how all feminists seem to view marriage (and men full stop). They think everything is about power and control.

I am in a very happy long-term marriage, that is based on mutual love, companionship and the fact we enjoy making each other happy.

I don’t think either of us have ever given a moment’s thought to controlling the other one.

Abi Hardy
Abi Hardy
1 year ago
Reply to  J Dunne

Hear hear. How about a messy attempt to get through life together, because it suddenly made sense one day to do it that way? Because some innate drive makes us desire the companionship – how about, we are made this way? We are a whirlwind romance some 18 years ago and goodness have we weathered storms since, including coming to terms with what the long term care of a special needs child includes, having five kids total to boot, and breadline poverty (because we choose to be a one wage family and hubby works in a manual/retail role, albeit managerial) leading to constant housing issues and money worries. I nod to the comment about being “suffering averse” – you know what? I’m a lot happier than I would have been had I continued my career and singleness, smoking, drinking, earning increasingly decent wages and corporate responsibilities perhaps. Doing something I fell into, disenjoyed and that had little meaning…… having less “suffering” and “real life”….. the richness of life now is beyond measure and the way our marriage has emerged over the years, battered and bruised yet somehow sound, has made us love each other all the more and it is worth much more than all the treasure in the world. A bit of wholesome suffering, I’m not talking self flagellation or ascetism here, but the stuff that happens when you do life together, can work wonders for making you see where the gold seams run……..

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Abi Hardy

Why is it that any article that’s written on the pros and cons of marriage brings out come the “oh me and hubby” or “me and the missus, have such a lovely life and are so much happier, despite everything than you poor, selfish sods who are alone”.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Sorry, that’s not what this is about. When marriage is traduced, those who value it want to say so. There is no concomitent criticism of the unmarried, and it would be unfortunate to read that into a positive post.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  J Dunne

That is just like my two sisters marriages. One sister is now a widow. The other I think (but would not say) may be in the next few years. Wonderful relationships of love,respect and equality and not because of rules and laws but because of who they,all four of them,are/were.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago

Narcissa no one is suggesting that women are only bearable if “under some man’s thumb”. When couples take their marriage vows seriously neither is under the other’s thumb.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

What?!!

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
1 year ago

There is also a wisdom that comes through keeping calm and carrying on. Rows come and go. Patience is a virtue that must be learned along with compromise and sharing one’s toys. Too many people bail at the first sign that married life and childrearing are bloody hard work. But a life that avoids hard work and putting yourself second or third is a childish one. Man (and woman) must suffer to be wise. Only kids expect it to be all sweets and pass the parcel.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

There’s plenty of suffering in life, being married shouldn’t be one where it’s the norm!

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago

There’s a whiff of The Guardian in all this by which I mean women journalists writing about what other women journalists have written about and so and so forth in ever decreasing circles. Meanwhile the girls in the real world get married or not, as the case may be, for mundane, haphazard and unphilosophical reasons.
The real scandal of weddings is how much money people squander on them.

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

I think that what makes this piece different is that it focuses on some very current attitudes amongst 20-somethings in particular just now. They are more trashy in their attitudes to each other than ever before. TV programmes like Married At First Sight for example (for which I have only seen the trailers, but it’s sounds pretty self-explanatory) trivialise relationships & make them all about who’s watching & not about whether sharing your life with another person can make you both greater than the sum of your parts (so to speak). The social media age has enabled & globalised a horrible self-obsession.
Totally agree on wedding spend, but I’d suggest that’s no one’s business but theirs.
As for “a whiff of the Guardian” – how very dare you sir? I shall have to go & take a hot shower…

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Jane Awdry

I had to explain to one of my colleagues that she was going to burn in hell for watching Love Island

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

Personally I think that would be preferable to being sent to love island. Though the lowest circle of hell is definitely Milf Manor!

Chipoko
Chipoko
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

You’re wrong! UK’s Channel 4 TV’s “Naked Attraction” is the ultimate symbol of total moral collapse in western civilisation.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I hate to ask but what is Milf Manor?

Chipoko
Chipoko
1 year ago

Don’t ask!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Reply to  Jane Awdry

You should watch any programme before using it as an example of your argument.
Married At First Sight could be seen as a new form of arranged marriage

Chipoko
Chipoko
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

The real scandal of weddings is how much money people squander on them.”
Bullseye!

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

No, it isn’t. The real scandal is how decadent we have become, drifting into marriage if at all on a whim, then getting out when their are kids and other lives that will be wrecked by our lack of foresight and commitment. Society is all the poorer and more violent as a consequence.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago

Well said.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

Exactly, it’s the price of a down payment on a house. I think women want one more than men. Apparently, it’s what we dream of when we’re little girls. Not.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

I did. I assumed when I “started work” and my Mum and Dad told me I was now an adult and I had to sort my life out myself that the whole point of working and earning money was so you could buy a house to live in when you were old and couldn’t work. But society told me I was wrong,and mercenary and stupid to boot,and that girls (I was paying tax) did not buy houses,only boys did that. I’m talking 1970. But as a song of that era puts it,”,she’d settle for suburbia and a little plot of land,so I gave her up for music and a free electric band”. Us girlies, we’re so bourgeois. Actually I really wanted the garden but so far as I knew they usually came attached to a house and as I was earning good money….but NO just NO.

Daniel P
Daniel P
1 year ago

Fabulous article. Well thought out.

I think we can say that the old way of doing things, as when my grandparents were young seemed to work but at a heavy price for both men and women but I think we can reasonably say that the rules of life were distinctly unfair, often dehumanizing and demeaning to women. I mean really? A woman could not have a credit card of her own?

BUT…I think we can also say that the changes since the 1970’s through today have not made anyone any happier. Most people are lonelier and more isolated. Careers are not particularly fulfilling for most people. Casual sex is not particularly satisfying. Marriages are probably too easy to get out of and the bar for acceptably bailing on one has gotten to be ridiculously low. I think that when combined with the increasing levels of narcissism in our culture is a recipe for a lot of unnecessary divorces and too many marriages that were only entered into because of the ease of getting out. Though, I will say, the ease of getting out is a perception, not a reality. Oh, you can get a divorce, but living with the aftermath is not so easy as a lot of people think.

I do not pretend to have the answer to this.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  Daniel P

“woman could not have a credit card of her own?”
Because a woman was also not responsible for her debts. If she took out a card, blew it on gambling or buying expensive clothes and failed to pay up, it’s her husband.
And hasn’t changed much, even though women do have credit cards now and control the bulk of household spend, but the number of women who contribute equally financially in a marriage is still in a minority.

The rules of life meant that when it came to dying in war by the millions of working in horrible, dangerous occupations, it would be primarily men who would be conscripted or forced into it.
Nothing’s more demeaning than saying that your life has no value and you are expendable, and it isn’t women who were told that by society.
And still hasn’t changed, if you go by how easily women can mock or disparages male suicide victims with no pushback or criticism.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Because a woman was also not responsible for her debts.

I think that is a point that is often forgotten. There are competing versions of fairness, and it can be argued that a man should not be accountable for debts he cannot control. And if he tries to limit spending which is excessive he runs the risk of being accused of financial abuse, or at the least of being controlling.

I wouldn’t want to go back to the “bad old days”, but it is an issue with two sides.

Narcissa Smith-Harris
Narcissa Smith-Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Well first of all, it is more complicated than you portray it. What the situation was that husband and wife were one legal entity and the husband was the exclusive legal agent for them both—no matter what either brought into the marriage. The marriage was accountable for whatever debts were accrued. Only one of them had control of the finances, and far from your assertion he would be accused of financial abuse or control–that was considered his right. He had the right to gamble away her money or even use it on other women. And if he died from his excesses, she as the widow was liable–even though she had no right to make those decisions– or had children to feed. And definitely in life her assets went to his use, whatever she felt about it. So far from your implication that women were protected from financial accountability of their actions, they were also financially. accountable for their husband’s actions. They just didn’t get a say in those actions.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

Only one of them had control of the finances, and far from your assertion he would be accused of financial abuse or control–that was considered his right. 

My apologies – I hopped rather seamlessly from the past to the present day. And the point was only to point out that there was some logic (or fairness) in needing the husbands approval. Without that context it is just another shock horror sexist past story.

H H
H H
1 year ago

Indeed, it is very complicated, far more complicated than your reply to David would suggest. This is not to say that there is no truth to your claims, simply that there is some truth, but that your argument is weakened by your tendency to generalise. Furthermore, your reply comes off as ideologically driven and this makes it rather difficult to take seriously. How about arguing in good faith? Go on, Narcissa. Put your big girl britches on and stop messing about.

Terry Raby
Terry Raby
1 year ago

quite wrong. In my parents and grandparents on both sides, the women had exclusive control of the purse. Yes – only one had control of the finances – the wife. … Middle class ignorance of how others live I guess.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry Raby

That is not the norm. My father didn’t allow my mother access to the bank account.

H H
H H
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

“the number of women who contribute equally financially in a marriage is still in a minority.”
Would you not concede that given women’s greater role in reproduction – i.e. gestation, breastfeeding and overall care for infants – it is therefore incumbent upon men not to merely “sow and go” but to “stay and pay”? Just because our contribution is not financial does not mean it is insignificant. Motherhood resists commodification but it does not follow that it is therefore without value. Also, you rightly mention the number of men who die in wars, and I agree that the failure to acknowledge the suffering and deaths of men in war is outrageous. It is also outrageous though to ignore the dangers which women knowingly and bravely faced in the past when they found themselves pregnant. Are you aware of female mortality rates before the advent of modern obstetrics? Have you read any of the letters which women used to write to their unborn children in which they attempted to offer guidance in the not unlikely event that they might not survive the delivery of their child? Surely men and women need to reject the current frame which pits us against each other. Our interests may not always fully align, our mating strategies may differ, but sex dimorphism is a human reality, so either we figure out how to get along or we go extinct.

Narcissa Smith-Harris
Narcissa Smith-Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  H H

Who fails to acknowledge the suffering and deaths in war? We have both veterans day AND memorial day. We have statues in every town and keep adding more. We have many national monuments. Scores of books have been written about it. And there are always far more women in peace movements than pro-war. Lysastra is not modern, woke reading. But it must be said that war is not simply viewed as you are so worthless you are cannon fodder. It is also viewed as a path towards dignity, career and land. Soldiers in Rome, if they survived got tidy holdings. All the British, French etc. aristocracy is built on men who made war. There is a reason Mohammed’s wives kept nagging him to write a revelation to permit women to make war which they were forbidden to. It gave you status.
And feminists today have been pushing to put women in the military, and to have their efforts recognized when they were there for practical reasons. It is men who keep objecting. As they object to women in the “dangerous professions” people here love to speak of.
I also want to ask who “Mocks male suicides”. Not women. Not medical professionals. In case English is not your first language, Toxic is an adjective that modifies the noun masculine, i.e. the need to perform traits to the point it is bad for the individual or society. Surely we can all agree that suicide counts as toxic?

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

There’s a lot here, but just to pick out one:

As they object to women in the “dangerous professions” people here love to speak of.

Do you have evidence that it is the objections of men that keep women out of dangerous jobs? Are women applying to these jobs in large numbers?

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago

“Mohammed’s wives kept nagging him to write a revelation to permit women to make war which they were forbidden to.”
Is this true?

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

I’m curious about this one. Also, if I’m not mistaken, earlier in the Roman republic some who went to war lost their lands as a result.

H H
H H
1 year ago

Your little grammar lesson was very cute but unfortunately you classified the word “masculine” as a noun. It is actually an adjective, dear. The noun is “masculinity.” Please don’t stop though. You’re great fun!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  H H

When a man says “dear” you know it’s a patronizing put-down.

H H
H H
1 year ago

Are you referring to Lysistrata by Aristophanes? Is this a return ad fontes, Narcissa? Do we have a Renaissance lady in our midst? But then, a true Renaissance lady would pay more attention to her spelling. Oh well, do keep trying.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago

It’s true, Narcissa, that soldiers are never told that they’re cannon fodder. Why would anyone sign up on that basis? No, society resorts at the very least to both bribery and intimidation.

Young men are bribed with promises of material reward or social status (as you say without using that word), or at least of getting their old jobs back when they return–if they return. And if they don’t return, their families will presumably bask in their glory and pay visits to military cemeteries or heroic statues. Never mind that many people these days are busy tearing down those statues, including those that honor the nation and the ideals that soldiers died for (and no, these statues are by no means only Confederate ones).

In any case, young men are also intimidated by force of law. There are consequences for not registering for military service (including lack of access to scholarships and loans or time in jail). And there are much worse consequences for overtly refusing military service–let alone for desertion. In many countries, the penalty is death.

Long before being prodded by bribery and intimidation, though, boys are explicitly or implicitly taught the psychological skills that they will need in combat–and shamed for not developing them adequately. The military symbolism of organized sports is not exactly subtle.

But the cultural conditioning goes deeper than any of that. It’s true that many young men accept military conscription, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm. They have no choice (unless they can come up with some medical excuse or are rich enough to afford expensive lawyers). But they don’t do so because “biology is destiny” (the level of testosterone goes way up and way down throughout the day, let alone over the months or years of a modern war). This is where cultural identity takes over.

In traditionally Christian countries, the ideal of manhood has relied historically on the notion of imitatio dei. Young men sacrifice themselves in combat for the nation, according to this “narrative,” just as Christ did on the cross for everyone. In this way, even conscripts are transformed into sacrificial martyrs, who “lay down their lives on the nation’s altar,” not as sacrificial victims of the state (in the name of society, including their own parents). This is very powerful imagery, and it’s deeply embedded in wartime movies, posters, ads and other expressions of popular culture. As one example, I suggest Since You Went Away (1944), about a very reluctant soldier who nonetheless does the “right thing” in the end.

As for women, it’s true that some feminists advocate military conscription for both sexes (if at all) in the name of equality. The National Organization for Women did so many years ago. I respect that, even though equality for feminists sometimes refers to military careers more than military risks. On the other hand, some feminists refuse to include women. See, for one example of many, Valerie Hudson, “I’m a Feminist. A Mandatory Military Draft Would Be Terrible for Our Women, Deseret News, 4 August 2021; https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/8/3/22594821/im-a-feminist-a-mandatory-military-draft-would-be-terrible-for-our-women

Last edited 1 year ago by Paul Nathanson
J Dunne
J Dunne
1 year ago

Yea we acknowledge the war dead, but they are referred to as ‘those brave men and women’, despite the fact about 99% of them were men. Conversely, when we talk about domestic violence murder victims or grooming gang victims we talk exclusively about women and girls. The male victims are wiped from conscious existence.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago
Reply to  H H

Well said, HH. You warn for good reason the need to avoid any way of thinking that “pits us against each other.”

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  H H

Well said.

H H
H H
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Sorry, accidently posted twice.

Last edited 1 year ago by H H
J Dunne
J Dunne
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Well said sir. These points are not made nearly often enough.

Feminists are good at focusing very specifically on the aspects of life that have negatively impacted women, while completely ignoring any factors that are favourable to women or that disadvantage men.

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Women weren’t sent to war because they weren’t regarded as strong enough, not because anyone thought men worthless. The opposite, in fact.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago

It’s more complicated than that, Graham. Among early humans, there were no fixed gender systems; men and women did whatever they had to do, or could do, in the immediate interest of communal survival. (Some evidence indicates that women and even children participated in hunting game animals, for instance, not by throwing spears but by preparing traps or making a lot of noise.)
The much more recent advent of settled communities and raiding, then of long-term warfare under Neolithic states or empires, changed this de facto equality by introducing specialization, hierarchy and elaborate gender systems. Leading these ancient and medieval military expeditions were chiefs at first and then kings along with, by extension, the men in their entourages. These men did have high status, and they did expect to be rewarded substantially in property, status and privileges for risking their lives in battle for the king–that is, for the state. But most men by far were serfs, not kings or nobles. They had no military vocation. On the contrary, their vocation was to work in the fields with their beasts of burden. That vocation changed only when the king required cannon fodder and resorted to conscription. Nonetheless, forced military (or labor) service was usually limited in duration so as not to undermine food production.
Some societies, notably those of medieval Europe, offered even noblemen a choice of vocation: the chalice or the sword. Indian societies assigned the military vocation, or dharma, not to all men but to all men of only one class: the kshatriya (a twice-born and therefore elite class one rung below the brahmins).
It was only in modern times, since the eighteenth century and especially after the French Revolution, that all men were assigned a military vocation, which thus became a defining feature of masculinity. Under the new social contract, the price of full citizenship was military service and possibly death for the state; those who did not fight for the state, women and children, were not full citizens. But although all men fought in theory for ideals such as “equality, fraternity, liberty,” the social contract did not confer equal value on the lives of all men. Some men led (and were suitably rewarded), and others followed (usually without being suitably rewarded). This discrepancy in the value of male life, despite the political and theological rhetoric, became obvious during World War I. Most of the men who fought and died in the trenches were indeed cannon fodder; their lives were indeed implicitly (though never explicitly) expendable.
After1918, the surviving men got their monuments and memorials–along with small pensions and the vote (which was an innovation for most men). But almost all countries have continued to rely on male conscripts even during peacetime, so the inherent conflict between male lives as either valuable or expendable remains just below the surface and has been challenged frequently.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

What?!

G K
G K
1 year ago

Absolutely outstanding. The best I’ve ever read by her

RM Parker
RM Parker
1 year ago
Reply to  G K

Agreed – and that’s a high bar.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

The government has made marriage a terrible risk for men.
Based on a whim an unhappy wife can alienate him from his children, take his house, claim part of his earnings and half his savings.
Marriage is no longer a sensible option for any man.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Narcissa Smith-Harris
Narcissa Smith-Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

My first reaction was harsh because your description lacked such self-reflection, as well sexism. I’ll try to be the better person.
What the government did is permit unhappy marriages to end.Most people in unhappy marriages are glad for this. It regarded that a joint effort deserves joint reward. It makes no judgment about how a couple sorted out that joint effort. If one the couple made one partner the child-keeper and the other the salary keeper while another divided those jobs in half. It makes no determination of which decision was best.The same largely occurs regarding how they sorted childcare duties. If they left it with one and not the other parent, they tend to keep it, being more likely to divide it if that was already divided.
What you want, what you think would get men to marry, is for men to marry and if it fails, we just press reset as if the marriage never happened and she never existed.
Why would any woman want to marry you with that attitude? That’s not commitment, that certainly isn’t love. That’s a lease agreement on a car–not even because you have to take care of a leased car.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

The thing is, that even if we concede much of what you say, it still looks like a pretty bad gamble for any young man contemplating marriage. I believe the current failure rate is about 50% with the majority of marriages being ended by the woman. A proportion of those women will also make access to children difficult.

Looking at those numbers you’d have to be incurably romantic, reckless, tied to tradition or very sure of your prospective partner, to enter into such a relationship.

Of course this is one that history will settle for us. We’ll have to wait and see if men start to just walk away from marriage

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

“I believe the current failure rate is about 50% with the majority of marriages being ended by the woman. A proportion of those women will also make access to children difficult.”
You believe? Oh well, that’s convincing!

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

50% of marriages are ended by women? Because women have the emotional maturity/fortitude to walk away from a non-fulfilling marriage. Men, on the other hand, will do anything (including lying and cheating…) to preserve the status quo behind a façade of “everything is hunky dory”!

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago

In theory, yes, the purpose of no-fault divorce was merely to “permit unhappy marriages to end.” It was supposedly about compassion for the few. What could go wrong?
What went wrong, very quickly (but for several reasons) was the redefinition of marriage for the many as a venue of the personal search for happiness at best and as a status symbol or “piece of paper” at worst.
But the many (adults) didn’t pay the highest price for this experiment. Children did. And still do. Some social scientists still try to explain this problem away, often for blatantly ideological reasons, but the fact remains that the children of divorce (and of single parents and especially of single mothers) are at much greater risk than other children of every social, educational and emotional pathology.
My point is to blame not these parents, most of whom do everything that they can for their own children, but a society that sees children in general as bystanders to the relentless search for adult rights.
Solving social problems requires more than compassion. It requires caution and wisdom, too.

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Do you live in la la land???

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Ever he(a)rd of prenup contracts?

Matt M
Matt M
1 year ago

I have never thought of myself as either loud or (particularly) deranged but I think no-fault divorce is a terrible idea that should be scrapped.
Divorce has a terrible and life-long effect on children. If you are married with children you should have to stay married until your kids are adults, at which point you can split up if you so choose. If you are granted a divorce while your kids are young it should be for a limited number of specific reasons – violence, sex abuse, desertion, adultery – and blame should absolutely be apportioned by the court and by society. The man that runs off with a mistress and deserts his wife and kids should be shunned by society.

Douglas Redmayne
Douglas Redmayne
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt M

There is no need to abolish no fault divorce to deter and remediate the impacts of a man abandoning his wife and children . That can be done equally effectively by determining approximately calibrated rules of compensation in the civil courts fir such behaviour. Its more efficient too as divorces that require evidence are costly and enrich pointless solicitors. Furthermore nobody believes in “ shame” any more and, thankfully, its a ridiculous spectre to invoke

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

I’ve been thinking along the same lines. Leaving aside cases of genuine abuse etc, the person who initiates the divorce could receive a smaller proportion of the assets. So if you’re bored, or fancy someone else, you can go – but it’s going to cost you.

philip kern
philip kern
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I’ve seen too many cases where the courts didn’t grasp the reality of the situation. In some, one spouse managed to outflank the other so that the rejected became the ‘instigator’ and suffered accordingly.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 year ago

Nobody believes in shame? Are you kidding? Anyone who slightly transgresses against the progressive worldview in public is mercilessly shamed and shunned. That’s what cancel culture is.

Douglas Redmayne
Douglas Redmayne
1 year ago
Reply to  Arthur G

You are right so I will correct myself. I should have referred to the “ old fashioned moralistic notion of shame “

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago

Good article.
The other question is that posed by great thinkers of our time, e.g. Howard Jones on TOTP in 1984, but he had a point:
“What is love, anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?”
I distrust feelings, considering them to be largely bollocks. As something to chart one’s existence by, utterly unreliable.  
I prefer the outmoded concept of duty / commitment.
As any bloke who tries maturity and marriage (when one has exhausted all other options), I viewed, and still view, marriage as being centred on commitment.  
It provides the sandpit wherein both partners can, occasionally, be annoying, but we still circle back at close of day, and pick up the pieces.  
Marriage – whether secular or religious – exists primarily because of the transience of infatuation. One can, even in middle and advanced years, become temporarily deranged about someone, for a while.  
When you’re in the hormone-rush stage, marriage is superfluous, as your hormones are impelling you towards exclusivity with the person you’re obsessed with banging.
Any fool can be “committed” to someone they’re physically and emotionally obsessed with, during the infatuation phase. But that’s not commitment, and there is no point to marriage in that scenario.
Marriage doesn’t add anything, as you’re already obsessed, without having to try. But people like, e.g., that dreary singer, Adele, typifies people who see marriage as just a big day out, a public celebration of their current infatuation, some photos in Hello magazine etc, but certainly nothing more than that.
Adele’s vows, if she made any, are entirely hollow.
People like Adele are observers at their own life. Their “commitment” is always entirely conditional on what they may or may not feel, next week, or tomorrow. As soon as they feel a pang of lust for another person, that’s it, they’re off again. Only encroaching middle age and decreasing physical attractiveness slows them down, but then they always feel trapped and miserable. Essentially they want to stay 24 forever, and have endless short-term flings, with knee-trembler orgasms on tap.
Which is arrested-development idiocy, but hey knock yourself out if you want to live like you’re immortal, when in reality all our lives are fleeting.
But this whole edifice of navel-gazing nonsense is incompatible with assuming responsibility for the growth and development of new human beings, which is a major part of any marriage.
Don’t start that if you’re going to bail on it, like a weakling.
You make a choice – am I ruled by my genitals, or not? And people like Adele are, essentially, ruled by their genitals. Their life is a permanent quest for the perfect orgasm. If you ever read Cosmo magazine, you can glean the mindset – about 50% of Cosmopolitan’s magazine’ articles are about finding the perfect orgasm. This arrested-development twaddle (which most blokes have figured out in their teens) is presented as being “liberated”.
Marriage is a wise and pragmatic recognition of the biological fact that physical infatuations wane (or we’d get no work done) and settle down.
If you make the mistake of thinking that you should always follow your “feelings”, then, logically, you’d be looking to re-marry about once a year or so, for most of us.
Marriage is about prioritising other people, it’s about service, that’s the nature of love. Someone takes a chance on you, stick with them. Respect them. Care for them. Man up, woman up, and stop acting like a teenager.
Oh, and most kids who are brutalised / abused / murdered in their homes are the victims of a step mum or stepdad.
Every flipping time. Por child abused and murdered in appalling circumstances. Always, always, it’s a stepdad or step mum.
But hey, that’s all right because the parent who initiated the divorce is once again having amazing knee-tremblers.
Prorsum!

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

Well Frank, you old cynic, you had me at duty/commitment!

But then: “Essentially they want to stay 24 forever, and have endless short-term flings, with knee-trembler orgasms on tap.”

Phwoar! Yes please!
Except I was already knackered after 10 years of that, so now very happily ‘settled’ with a lovely chap for the last 30. Orgasm tap only dripping these days, but we soldier on…

Last edited 1 year ago by Jane Awdry
Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

Blimey, you really hate Adele.

J Dunne
J Dunne
1 year ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

And he didn’t even mention her bland, sauce-from-a-jar music or her awful mockney accent.

Terry Raby
Terry Raby
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

Excellent

RM Parker
RM Parker
1 year ago

Ms Rosenfield, your writing alone would justify my subscription. I agree with other commenters: the last sentence is beautifully conceived and stated, a perfect coda. The piece as a whole identifies perfectly the attitudes and poses which I find so depressing in everyday discourse.
I look forward to your next contribution: thank you.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago

It’s become a common approach to treat both sides of the political and cultural divide as mirror reflections of each other, and as if they were equally “worthy” viewpoints.

Which clearly isn’t the case.
For instance, when it comes to allowing obviously male perverts into young girls sports, bathrooms or women’s jail’s, both sides of the argument are not equal.
Similarly when it comes to marriage, the bedrock of every civilisation that ever existed and what is clearly crucial for kids (save the exceptions where one or both parents are abusive), casual conversations on whether to discard it, is not equally weighted on both sides.

But there are a couple of other, linked problems here.
Firstly, and hinting atlack of substance on that side, the anti marriage women camp doesn’t live by their principles.
If their fundamental view was that women were somehow oppressed by marriage and society, then they would have embraced the male role in droves.
However, while we see plenty of women doing non STEM courses and working in government/ admin job…..we see very few taking on the role of primary breadwinner or demanding a share in typically male “perks” such military conscription.
In contrast, plenty of otherwise feminist women change stance as soon as they have kids, and switch to part time roles.

Secondly, and what probably drives the above, is that only women’s problems or “victimhood” is considered a factor. If a woman staying at home with her kids is a “slave”, then a man working 60-70 hours to feed and house her and the kids is also a slave, isn’t he?

And that’s why we are moving towards societal disaster.
Because while we pretend marriage was somehow an onerous burden on women, we overlook that it has become one for men.

It is telling that those against no-fault divorce are “deranged voices” or have such an horror of ” the dark ages of domestic misery”
But no fault divorces have become almost inevitable, most divorced are initiated by women…..who then decide to opt for “domestic misery” and keep the children, house and assets, while the father (who is otherwise a horrible misogynist if he doesn’t spend time on kids or sees himself as the breadwinner) is basically a wallet, with limited access to his children.
The only winning option for men, is to not play.

Narcissa Smith-Harris
Narcissa Smith-Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

I really wish people who deride feminists would actually read them before doing so. You don’t even have to get too radical or the anti-capitalist ones (who are hardly want anyone working 70 hours for corporate profits). Feminists absolutely decry 60-70 hour work weeks. They specifically attack a corporate world designed so that there must be a stay at home or part at home parent. Feminists who are stay at home/part time parents decry it for that matter. They also decry the pay gap which ends up making such decisions the only practical decision from family unit situation. Feminists fight for government subsidized daycare so that women may work equally. I mean dude, instead of telling women what they ought to do, how about actually taking the time to read what they already are doing. But here is the thing, we aren’t in power. We are barely an important minority in the halls of power. We are not on the boards of corporations in any number that matters. We have less land on our own and very few of us are billionaires.
If you want this to happen, get off your butt and make it so. The same goes for conscription, or since conscription isn’t extant, the sign up for the draft.
Because feminists are busy fighting to get women in combat, and recognized in combat when they are there anyway, and in more and more forces, and have armor that fits us so we can contribute and also not to get raped and assaulted while we are there. I think men can pick up the draft bit. If it is important to men you could pass it easily, even if you thought every woman would oppose it, there aren’t enough of us in Congress to prevent even a filibuster. The president is a man and the supreme court is majority men. So do it!!!
But year after year, it doesn’t happen. I can only assume you don’t want to, because you’d rather use it as a way to oppress women. You would rather say see, I deserve my special privileges than actually make your life better and be equal to women. That’s on you dudes. Totally on you.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

I think there are two things here. In a sense you are at cross purposes.

I think I’m being kind to feminists, or psychologically naive, but let’s grant they set out with goodwill to all in creating a better, fairer society. This is what is in the books.

Now let’s look at what the actual outcomes of feminism have been, including any unintended consequences. The situation on the ground.

Without taking sides, there is a difference between these two, just as there is a difference between communism in the blueprint, and how things actually turned out. And the response is usually: not real communism/feminism; more in the same direction will fix it; it just shows how strong the bourgeoisie/patriarchy is.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Excellent, David.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago

There are many kinds of power, Narcissa: physical, economic, moral, political and so on. I disagree with your assumption that only men have or wield power in the democracies of our time. Tyranny of the majority was once a problem. Now, on the contrary, thanks to wokism, the problem is a tyranny of allied minorities. This morally bankrupt ideology now reigns supreme not only in government but also among academics, journalists, teachers and so on. But it didn’t appear out of nowhere. It absorbed and built on earlier ideologies, including feminist ideology (as distinct from egalitarian feminism).
The president is a man, sure, but that doesn’t mean that he has the slightest interest in the condition of men. He clearly doesn’t. And the same goes in other contexts for many, probably most, male and female politicians. They care about winning votes and, often, for promoting their own ideologies. Justices of the Supreme Court, however, are not supposed to be politicians at all. Their job is to assure the constitutional legality of legislation, not to promote legislation. And most of them (aside from one or two of the four women now serving) do just that despite threats to themselves and their families.
The basic premise of identity politics, which insists on supplying influential or powerful people who “look like me” (no matter what the moral or social cost to others) might or might not make sense at a superficial level, but it relies on a profound misunderstanding of human nature.

Last edited 1 year ago by Paul Nathanson
J Dunne
J Dunne
1 year ago

My disdain for femimsits has been nurtured entirely by listening to feminists. If anything, the general perception of feminism is far kinder than feminism deserves. The vast majority of what feminists say is hateful, deluded, hypocritical, myopic and fanatically self- pitying.

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  J Dunne

As far as self-pitying goes, read the comments made here by the oh so abused males. Then tell me who wallows in it.

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

If a man is working 60-70 hours a week, then blame that on other men, because they’re the ones who devised the system. STOP blaming all men’s “perceived” woes on women. And if most divorces are initiated by women, ask yourself the question: WHY? If you dare… The only option for men and women is to behave like decent, equal, human beings, which is what feminists promote. A lot of men understand this and do not hate/feel threatened by women.

Matt Sylvestre
Matt Sylvestre
1 year ago

Simply beautiful and real…

Also, “it is a lifestyle, rather than a life.” should be printed on t-shirts, billboards, bumpper stickers…

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago

What is frequently overlooked by both sides is that marriage originally was about dispositions of property and money, and if a wife found she had little in common woth her husband, a well-bred man would look the other way between 11am and 4pm.
What was radical in the early Twentieth Century was the idea that marriage could be about love and human connection.

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I have to take issue here; that idea was most certainly not radical, and you forget that the overwhelming majority of people had neither money nor property to bargain with in a marriage contract. As the middle class expanded women began to have more control over their lives and could therefore exercise more choice over the identity of their spouse.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Yeah, no. That was like 0.1% of the population that were aristocrats and had property. The 99.9% of people who were peasants or artisans had very little property and pretty much married who they wanted, with some family mediation.

Francisco Menezes
Francisco Menezes
1 year ago
Reply to  Arthur G

In fact, those 99,99% did not marry at all. Towards the end of the sixteenth century there is a desire with the civil authorities to know who are man and wife, as you could beat up your wife but not a strange woman. The masses are forced to get married in churches according to their denominations. Napoleon introduced civil marriages and divorces as part of the registration of the entire population which served his conscription system. Marriage was primarily something for rich people who owned assets, later it become a regulatory mattter for the masses. Although I sympatise with Ms. Rosenfields way of thinking, it is very much 19th century Romanticism put in the pressure cooker by the Victorians. I wonder where I can get those knee trembling orgasms. Never had one in my life.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I’ve discussed your argument about the origin of marriage above (or wherever it lands).

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago

“The fear of building a whole entire world with another person, and all the terrible vulnerability that entails”

Given current rates of divorce is it really so surprising that men in particular would have this fear? 42% of marriages end in divorce, and most of those will end in the husband having his asset base shredded. It is a real danger.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

Why is it “his asset base”? If you’re married, it’s “our asset base”.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  Arthur G

Because a disproportionate amount of the asset base will have been (if we’re assuming women are a downtrodden, poorer group) brought to the marriage by the man. Due to the way finances are dealt with on divorce it is very possible that, so as to meet the wife’s ongoing needs, over half of the assets as well as ongoing spousal maintenance may be taken. Due to paternalistic attitudes in the courts this much more rarely goes the other way. Few men are granted regular monthly payments by their ex wives and they do not tend to get as much in terms of lump sum capital payments. I haven’t even raised the spectre of child maintenance here.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

For people under 40, women earn as much as men do. Women are like 60% of college graduates now.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

Nicely balanced piece.

The only thing I would add is that there may be a problem with no fault divorce in that it tips the dissolution of marriage into being too easy.

What we need, ideally, is a balance of motivators so that people are disinclined to leave marriages which are OK but not perfect (or worse to leave for trivial reasons) but able (even motivated) to leave abusive marriages.

Im not sure how we achieve that, but perhaps there is a danger that “no fault” tips it too far one way.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

To participate in the attention economy requires treating your own life as not just a search for personal satisfaction but a source of content to be consumed by other people

I think more could have been made of this. Social media shifts the question from “is this a good marriage?” to “do others see this as a good marriage?” It also shifts the criteria from the private and invisible (love, tenderness, trust) to the public and status oriented (house, holidays, car, shareable “moments”). Essentially people are outsourcing their values and judgements to others – rating their marriages (and lives) from the outside rather than the inside. And worse – competing in presenting fantasy versions of their lives with which real lives simply cannot compete.

Last edited 1 year ago by David Morley
Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Yes, the same is happening in teaching. You can be the best teacher in the world, but if your student ratings are down then it can have adverse effects for your career. The problem is that children are absolutely fickle in their judgement of teachers; moreover, high ratings don’t necessarily mean that you are a good teacher, just a popular one. In this environment, pupils know that they have some kind of power over the teacher and that if they complain to the right people they can control him or her. We see the same thing happening in companies where low-level employees force CEOs to adopt social justice causes even to the detriment of company profits.
What this teaches people is that complaining and emotional blackmail are valid paths to power.

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

When my son was at school I was appalled to hear how some of the kids talked about their teachers. They made personal, moral & professional judgments about them that they hadn’t the maturity, the experience or indeed the right to make.
I know it’s an old trope but when I was at school, unless a teacher had transgressed the rules in some serious manner (assuming they were discovered & further assuming it was even made public) we treated them with respect – apart from some teasing or mimicking, which was usually pretty harmless. Also, we were taught that at home the parents ruled but at school the teacher was in charge.
Unfortunately those waters have become a bit muddied as teachers have started bring their personal ideologies into the classroom.
But that’s another discussion..

Caty Gonzales
Caty Gonzales
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Yes, I completely agree. “Did others see this as a good vacation?” “Do other people value this book I am reading?” “Do other people view this family as perfect”. Social media is gasoline on the fire of keeping up with the Jones. And it is so easy to photograph, upload, filter, edit etc anything that even the most mundane things are shared with people in an attempt to show how attractive, successful, interesting and/or intelligent you are. Obviously, get off social media is part of an answer for this, but is that likely to happen for most people?

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
1 year ago

In a narcissistic culture marriage is bound to fall out of favour: why love and be loved by another when we can love and be loved by ourselves?

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Smith

Narcissists more than anyone need to be ‘loved’ (i.e. worshipped).

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic A

Yes, but one person is rarely enough, and not for long; the person providing the love is seen as a source, not a person in their own right; and criticism (real or imagined) isn’t tolerated; and they always want their own way. Not much use in a relationship, let alone a marriage.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
1 year ago
Reply to  Dominic A

I would argue that the narcissist regards those who ‘worship’ him as a mirror reflecting back to him what he wants to see of himself. When something less acceptable is reflected he soon moves on to another looking glass.

Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Smith
Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago

I can’t help thinking that this article skates around the issue in the same way that the writer bemoans at the end. The last paragraph would have made a better beginning to an article that actually explores the depths than a “weighed in the balance” exposition of both sides’ pros and cons.
She describes one group as terminally online and then proceeds to mention and reference only the online. She should read some of Roger Scrutton’s work on marriage/family as an antidote to the online radicals but perhaps it is a bit too gentle and unobjectionable for an article.
On the use of statistics by the pro-marriage side, why is this denounced? If the facts were on the other side we would hear endless depressing stats. I simply don’t think that the same argument would be levelled against the liberal/progressive/left side. It just seems that these are the arguments most likely to appeal to the other side (not their own). Similarly the denial that the conservative side emphasises love does not stand up when compared with the other side (where the only permissible type of love is non-traditional). Conservative thought has lots to say on love, patience, respect for the family and spouse in particular. I haven’t seen a huge amount of Matt Walsh but know that is definitely his take – it just isn’t click-bait orientated.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 year ago

Gay marriage has got us into trouble and ushered in gender Maoism. The Left realised they could win on culture again and has split the centre.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago

Yes, everyone (or almost everyone), this is an excellent article. Between the article itself and the many comments on it, you’d think that every point of view would be covered. But you’d be wrong. A whole dimension of marriage–that is, marriage as it existed until the day before yesterday in historical terms–has escaped notice entirely. More about that in a moment.
Most of the comments, but also the article itself, focus heavily on the psychology of marriage (although a few comments refrain from differentiating between marriage and common-law marriage). Among the current causes of marital breakdown are the self-centered effects of “social media” on young people and the hedonism of both them and their elders. Most of the other comments focus heavily on the legal and economic aspects of marriage. Generally speaking, the underlying question is usually this: Who benefits least from marriage–not even most but least–men or women? So the discussions revolve around comparative suffering–that is, competitive suffering. I’ll comment on some of those debates where they occur. For the time being, though, I’ll say that this strategy, whether intentional or not, is ultimately a polarizing one and therefore morally compromised.
Back now to the article. If I had written it (and I have written elsewhere about marriage), I would have focused attention more broadly on marriage as an institution–which is to say, an inherent feature of community.
It’s true that marriage affects the emotional lives of individuals. Historically and cross-culturally, though, marriage has not been solely or even primarily about the emotional lives of individuals. Only one comment is about the historical origin of marriage, and that comment is inadequate (to put it generously). Marriage did not originate as a way of distributing property (partly because it originated in some form long before there was any property to distribute, and partly because, as one comment pointed out, property was for thousands of years a factor only for the elite), much less as a sinister attempt of one half of the population to oppress the other half.
Long before the rise of material or financial considerations, marriage was necessary primarily as the ideal (though not perfectly realized) context for children. Otherwise, as one comment points out, why make the considerable effort to institutionalize family life at all? And even the context of children was necessary primarily in the larger context of collective survival (demographic continuity). Marriage was neither a luxury of the elite nor a personal experiment in psychological growth. It was a duty. And that duty relied on gratitude and loyalty to a community.
Moreover, this was generally true even within living memory–even now in some religious and ethnic communities. For traditional Jews, marriage is a divine commandment (explicitly for men and implicitly for women), not a “lifestyle choice.” Far from being a financial burden or an impediment to personal freedom, however, that commandment (like all divine commandments) is the source not only of personal happiness (as described, for example, in biblical stories) but also, and most importantly, of holiness in the midst of everyday life.
I do realize that this dimension of marriage is irrevocably lost for most people today, who are secular, but I doubt that we can discuss the inherent possibilities of marriage adequately without any reference to its long history as a feature of marriage. We live at a time of ever-increasing individualism–and I agree that some measure of individualism does have its benefits–but the likely results of taking individualism to its logical conclusion include communal fragmentation and dissolution.

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
1 year ago

A highly enjoyable read, though my cat is still chafing at the outrage that anyone would think cat ownership a “frivolous pursuit.”
The companionship and commitment of marriage — whether primarily transactional, or rooted in genuine love — come with unavoidable restrictions on freedom, and, in less sanguine pairings, may deform in such a way as to do considerable harm.
On the other hand, single life can, with all its freedom, be lonely. It seems some of us are temperamentally cut out for one or the other, though we may long for its opposite. Or not. Be careful, they say, what you wish for.
C’est la vie. We are who we are, single or coupled. It’s time for me to feed the cat. She will climb upon my chest early tomorrow morning when I am barely awake, as she always does, and apply a purr compress to the latest human discord. Shall I consider myself deprived, or fortunate?

Last edited 1 year ago by Colorado UnHerd
Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago

Another example of the excessive materialism and greed in our society. Marriage, once the foundation of society and culture, something existential and defining for generations upon generations of humanity, has been reduced to statistical arguments about health benefits on the one hand and complaints about financial obligations and career limitations on the other. This article is a brilliant analysis of how we’re all tragically missing the point when it comes to marriage. Marriage, like so much else in western civilization, seems utterly broken beyond repair.

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
1 year ago

There are so many amazing insights here! From the current obsession with self that makes everyone a star in their own up-for-consumption narrative through the ridiculous fragility that causes people to feel ‘unsafe’ when confronted with anything that doesn’t support their own notions of anything at all and the idea of marriage as a “decorative flourish on top of a life, rather than the foundation on which to build one”. Kat Rosenfield just absolutely nails it
The final sentences are such a lovely summation. Wonderful stuff!

John Galt Was Correct
John Galt Was Correct
1 year ago

I’m old enough to have done the being single, being married and having children. If I knew what I knew now, and was young now I wouldn’t do anything except stay single. Never has the world been a better place for men or women to be single and spend their times and energies on what they want to do. If the species goes extinct, then fine, it happens.

Dominic A
Dominic A
1 year ago

Good article, lousy byline. Marriage, throughout most of history, was not for love, but for more pragmatic issues, survival, thriving – the love grew later, if you were lucky and lived long enough. Arranged by elders, agreed for socio-economic reasons ….marrying for love is a fairly modern concept (taking off in the 18th Century?) that previously would have seemed a ridiculous (how can young people even know what love is). It is now, more than ever, seen as all about ‘love’ – in is our unfortunately fanciful and debased sense of what love is. No longer can a politician say, ‘think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’ – ‘love’ now is seen as something wonderful that you get for free, if your partner is good enough. Alain de Botton is rather good on this – How romanticism has destroyed love –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_JW2TeeVA4

Caty Gonzales
Caty Gonzales
1 year ago

I always love reading your essays, Kat. You knocked it out of the park again.
I would love to read a take on men, masculinity and feminism. There seems to be trend within certain quarters to see feminism as failing women. So, has feminism been successful for men?
They can now leave a sexless marriage and pursue multiple women or none. Remarry someone younger or just cohabit. They have someone sharing the financial burden if they stay married. They can take paternity leave and won’t be seen as odd if they are heavily involved in their child’s schooling. Men can cry in public and not be shamed for it. Be a stay at home dad, if you so choose. They can easily and without shame access pornography – often for free. If you get a woman pregnant, there is no shame in paying for her relatively safe abortion and then moving on to someone else. If you are dating someone, you split the bill for activities. If you earn enough money and live alone, you can hire a cleaner, so you don’t need to do all those tasks an at home wife may have done. You don’t need to cook – meal service, fast food, restaurant – unless you want to.
Was it good for them? Aren’t men having the time of their lives? If not why not?

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Caty Gonzales

It’s a good post, but very much half the story. Just one point: reproductive rights. If a couple have sex and it ends in pregnancy, the woman has the sole say in whether the pregnancy continues. The man may lose a child he wanted, or alternatively be paying money to the woman for 18 years.

Also, while some men will recognise the picture you paint, others will feel it does not reflect their experience. Hence the lament of sex starved incels.

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

A lament, is it? Why, because men think that having sex is their God-given right? Or because you identify with it? Why don’t many men just have the honesty to say they actually hate women but cannot do without the sex!

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago
Reply to  Caty Gonzales

No, men are not “having the time of their lives.” On the contrary, men are in bad shape. The statistics on men include a suicide rate almost four times that of women, for example, and a drop-out rate from school far higher than that of women. And then there are the legal obstacles that race and sex quotas have now revived in the name of “Social Justice.” I’m not going to write a full essay here on any of this for UnHerd, because I already have (more than once). Instead, I draw your attention to a problem that’s easier than the others to ignore, because it’s difficult to quantify with precision.
I’m thinking of the relentless hurricane of informal hostility toward men that began approximately fifty years ago and has recently increased in both quantity and severity. How could boys or men possibly maintain a healthy identity, whether personal or collective, under a barrage of sneers (even in the pages of UnHerd)? Why would men even want to invest in the future of a society that has no room for them as men?
Some people, including some men, try to justify the application of double standards to promote women but also to punish men (which is not a necessary corollary) as nothing more than payback for collective sin. That, in itself, is a morally repugnant idea. In fact, it’s not justice at all but revenge. As I understand it, justice is accompanied by reconciliation, not polarization.

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Nathanson

“Men who Hate Women” by Laura Bates. Read it and stop snivelling.

Paul Nathanson
Paul Nathanson
1 year ago

So much for the allegedly unique or innate ability of women to experience empathy, let alone compassion.
What I find shocking about your reply, Danielle, is not that you’re unable to see the world from any point of view except your own (a common human failing) but that you’re unwilling to do so–and say so without a trace of shame. You’re hardly alone. Read commentaries on the following and stop sneering: Suzanna Danuta Walters, “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” Washington Post, 8 June 2018; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html
My goal has not been to deny the specific needs and problems of women. Rather, it has been to point out that the same thing applies to men. It takes an effort to see “stereoscopically,” to be sure, but it’s worth the moral effort. Otherwise, we can never even hope for intersexual-dialogue. Otherwise, in fact, the polarizing effect of wokism in general will defeat all of us. If I can’t convince readers to take seriously the most fundamental moral principle (Do unto others …), then maybe I really am wasting my time at UnHerd. I’ll think about that.

Last edited 1 year ago by Paul Nathanson
Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Nathanson

The unique or innate ability of women to experience empathy, let alone compassion, is an invention of men, which has conveniently allowed men to dump their emotional bagage on women. Well times they are a-changing! The specific needs and problems of men need to be addressed by men, first and foremost. Talk to each other, that would be a good start.

Last edited 1 year ago by Danielle Treille
Haotian 0
Haotian 0
1 year ago

“Intimacy. Companionship. The presence and rhythm of another heart beating beside you in the dark.” These are all things that can be deeply experienced outside of marriage, and on the face of it it’s unclear what the legal status of marriage adds in these regards. indeed, marriage might plausibly undermine some forms of romantic experience, in that its provision of legal and public certainty undercuts the ambiguity, uncertainty and potential jeopardy that are standard parts of passionate romantic love.
The nub of the marriage question is surely this: that marriage seems to add rather little of benefit, at least in this surely irreversible age of cohabiting and normalised sex-before-marriage. Yet divorce is typically a life-shattering disaster on multiple different levels.
Any modern justification of marriage surely must therefore tackle head-on the problem of what function(s) of marriage are so important as to justify making the break-up of that relationship gratuitously agonising. And it needs to tackle whether these functions should be the sole functions of marriage (thus envisaging a slimmed down ideal of marriage from the Romantic ideal) or do those other functions form some kind of necessary buttressing role that helps in the attainment of those functions.
Might it be that in order to ‘save marriage’ we must first change the function and ideal of marriage?

Caty Gonzales
Caty Gonzales
1 year ago
Reply to  Haotian 0

The only comparable thing to a married “heart beating beside you in the dark” is being pregnant. Marriage is supposed to be a lifelong, til death do us part, commitment. We don’t need to change marriage, so much as revert to a more traditional understanding of what it means to be married.
When we promise to stay together through sickness and health and weather storms together, we should keep that promise.
Marriage is the smallest group unit that western society is built on and it isn’t supposed to be ‘together until something better comes along’ or ‘until things get rough’ nor is it some romantic paradise. Marriage is the acceptance of responsibility, another person acts as a check on your behavior and you act as check on their’s. You have to work together to come to mutual agreements. If you have children you share the burden of rearing them, pass on your beliefs and hopefully reap the rewards that come with having children of your own and watching them grow.
In order to save marriage as an institution, our adolescent and commitment phobic society needs to grow up.

Haotian 0
Haotian 0
1 year ago
Reply to  Caty Gonzales

“Marriage is the smallest group unit that western society is built on” implicitly acknowledges the importance of ‘the individual’ in western society, and it invites the question of why the smallest unit would necessarily be of the most fundamental importance. (If a platoon is the smallest group unit of soldiers then it does not make platoons of fundamental importance in the army. Rather, they derive their significance from being part of a vastly larger group unit, the army, and the army could radically change the size and functions of the soldiers in those platoons without changing the fundamental identity of those soldiers.)

“Marriage is the acceptance of responsibility, another person acts as a check on your behavior and you act as check on their’s. You have to work together to come to mutual agreements.” You could say much the same about any long-term relationship, including friendships and colleague relationships. Without more, that does not seem to justify marriage.

“When we promise to stay together through sickness and health and weather storms together, we should keep that promise.” My point was that it needs great justification why we should make such a promise, given how much people change over time etc. etc. (I’m not saying this can’t be done, just that it needs closer examination).

Adam Huntley
Adam Huntley
1 year ago

I wonder if this over estimates the role that conscious and deliberate decision making plays in whether one is married or not. If being involved in a relationship doesn’t feature very much as part of one’s overall behaviour or values, wouldn’t you simply spend little or no time getting involved in the business of dating or joining appropriate agencies/ social events? If you were judged to be low status or attractiveness, wouldn’t this also result in less chance of being paired up? Or are proponents of marriage saying that individual differences and circumstances should not feature? Perhaps instead that we should all sort ourselves out and actively want marital commitment, in the way we all want good health and financial security, presumably for either our own good or that of Society.

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
1 year ago
Reply to  Adam Huntley

Actually the article is more nuanced than that. She does say “Notably, there’s not much room in this paradigm for love, nor for the couple who has nothing figured out, and no idea what kind of life they want to live, except that they’d like to live it together.”
We seem to have developed a dread of doing anything off the cuff, like jumping in with both feet – into the unknown. Everything has to be according to some pre-ordained plan or method outlined by other people. The very best of life is often messy, not packaged up neatly to fit the ideas of self-styled experts.
People do what they want to do at the time, sometimes they regret it, sometimes not. Those of us who have found a person that they still like, and yes love, 30 years later are mainly just lucky.

Chiara de Cabarrus
Chiara de Cabarrus
1 year ago
Reply to  Adam Huntley

Yes I agree. Marriage did used to be a practical thing you planned and arranged for in the way that today we plan our education and careers etc. Since the arrival of romanticism as an Idea, we were encouraged to leave it in the hands of fate and to use less rational criteria in mate choice. And that may be a big factor in alot of people not managing it that well. And I suppose that just as today no one expects to passionately enjoy every second of earning a living, this realistic attitude did used to apply to conjugal living . I wonder if the persistence of the romantic ideals in the secular modern human – when it’s obvious that it is mostly fantasy – is explained by the fact that it is made to serve as a form of psychological compensation for the loss of transcendent connection in other domains.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Adam Huntley

Low status and unnattractive,that’s me. I may have a zillion human rights to marry whoever or whatever I want but I gotta catch em first.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago

Hard to afford a house if you are single. And, hard to have kids too.

So, Good, marriage shouldn’t be about love.

Last edited 1 year ago by Bret Larson
Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

I don’t know about happiness or politics, but I do know that Job One for human societies is to get babies on the ground that survive to have babies in their turn. Otherwise oblivion.
In the Middle Ages you couldn’t get married unless there was money or land from both sides. Survival, dontcha know. As for serfs and slaves, I have no idea.
I dare say another reason for marriage is that we men tend to have a roving eye, and the Patriarchs in their Oppressive Wisdom decided that we men needed to cool our jets.
The best argument I know is the fate of the galaxy’s First Feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. She had two affairs without marriage with one kid, and was miserable. Then she met Good Guy William Godwin, married him, and died in childbirth birthing a daughter Mary Shelley, of Frankenstein fame.
They say that Mary Shelley wrote the horror novel as a result of her experience with poets Byron and Shelley. But who knows?

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago

Long story short, married women are happier and kids need moms and dads to grow up right.

Danielle Treille
Danielle Treille
1 year ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

“The healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children,”
“Middle-aged married women are at higher risk of physical and mental conditions than their single counterparts.
Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics

Judy Gruen
Judy Gruen
1 year ago

When people focus so intently on their own happiness (me, me, me!) they unwittingly forego the ultimate happiness, which is giving and growing with others. Marriage is hard. Raising families is hard. It does require consistent self-sacrifice, focusing on the “team” as opposed to our own “self-actualization,” and flexibility. Ironically, surveys show that the more people focus on their own needs, the less happy they become.
Marriage and family life, in the best of circumstances, produces the greatest potential life satisfaction because of all the giving and growing and intimacy involved.
Nearly every Western, affluent society has starkly declining rates of marrage and reproduction. But a society with more walkers tha strollers is a society in a death-rattle.

Jules Anjim
Jules Anjim
1 year ago

Manifesting a biological imperative certainly sounds less sentimental than building a life, but let’s not pretend too much that there’s anything more than that happening. It’s only natural to feel sentimental about romantic entanglement in the early bloom of a relationship; equally natural is the subsequent disenchantment when that rhythmic heartbeat is accompanied nightly by guttural snoring, and the chemical euphoria of romance wilts in the face of body odour and nose picking. Choosing to be unsentimental about the process isn’t necessarily a political act, nor is spurning the notion of confected companionship a marker of immaturity. You’re not the first person to fall in love, sunshine.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago

Ms. Rosenfield,
I’m plumb out’a superlatives! And I’m a skilled and inveterate flatterer. So all I can say is “We’ll have more like this, please!”

Chiara de Cabarrus
Chiara de Cabarrus
1 year ago

I don’t think most people who end up ‘not married’ got to that point because they are juvenile hedonists. The hedonist phase gets boring for most people before they are out of their twenties. Also we can be useful – the unmarrieds/childless have the freedom and space in their lives to form important and mutually supportive connections with people they may not happen to be related to. I realise that we are on the brink of demographic collapse etc and in some ways i regret not having made more of an effort in that area. But for those with a creative bent , being alone is so far from unpleasant that it’s too easy to just sort of bumble along like a grasshopper doing your thing and not thinking about the future and old age .

Last edited 1 year ago by Chiara de Cabarrus
Terry Raby
Terry Raby
1 year ago

Pity the kids aged 24 and perhaps especially the females; reaching 40 – no kids, no spouse – was the cat and the company car really the meaning of life?

Adam Huntley
Adam Huntley
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry Raby

That would be tragic were if inevitable. But the single life may also involve being a supportive friend, an aunt or uncle assisting in the raising of nephews or nieces, helpful work colleague &/or a much loved family friend

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Adam Huntley

But often not.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

Historically, of course, marriage was never about love.
So, just back to how it’s been for most of history.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Well,my qualifications to join in this debate are; I’ve never been married. I never will be married. Ive never even been in a relationship,except briefly when I was 17 but with adult wisdom that wasn’t a relationship,that was a psycho stalker type person taking me on as an object to be owned or maybe an amusing pet. So I’m not a Virgin but I’ve never had any semen from a man inside me either. Too Much Information. Yeah,but I find myself in this very strange situation. The one woman in Great Britain or maybe the world unshagged by Russell Brand. I think that once the “right to be married”became a THING,an acquisition to be fought for it lost all its real value. Like brainy bright woman who would by inclination be atheists demanding to be allowed to serve God and Humankind as Priests of the Omniscient because they weren’t allowed to. I expect a lot are bored of it by now. I mean if you have an inalienable,undeniable HUMAN RIGHT to be married but no one wants to marry you,how do you excercise your HUMAN RIGHT (loser),demand the right to marry your Sofa,your Dog,your phone,maybe the next battle will be the right to marry your AI lover. Well I’ve rambled a lot here because I’m human not Farty Cat. (French for chatgpt).

Don Lightband
Don Lightband
1 year ago

Another bumhole farting beside uou in the dark. Who could possibly wish for more?