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The Bitch in the House:
Twenty-six Women Tell The Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and
Marriage A few of the essays by older women –
most notably Daphne Merkin and Vivian Gornick – are honest and sad. But alas,
most of those by young women are indistinguishable from each other, afflicted
with what I've come to think of as the dreaded MSMagazine writing
style. The young woman who writes these pieces is smart, sassy, and
relentlessly plucky, she has a sweet man who's transgressed gender boundaries
and believes in her fully, or she's bouncing merrily from boy to girl to both
at once, and let no one dare try to force her into the patriarchal
institution of marriage*. Any problem, in fact, can be blamed on the
patriarchy. Pregnant by a married man? She'll hula hoop for a couple of hours
and conclude that she can move back in with her parents. Isn't she spunky?
She's a Stepford feminist, and she can do no wrong. She lives in the world of
Dykes to Watch Out For, which purports to be radical but really has
more rules than mainstream life: the tenets of feminism are scripture,
multicultural references are de rigueur, roommates are lifelong pals
and there is nothing wrong with you that a bon mot and a jab at George Bush
can't cure.** Call it the Feminist Mystique. Part of the social contract for
women is that everyone has to play nice and follow the rules. Hence the
trashing if someone steps outside the bounds, and hence this sort of writing,
where there is no room for depression, real anger or serious existential
crises, even in a book that claims to be about just those things. Then there are the yuppie mom pieces,
typified by the woman complaining about feeling obligated to spend time with
her children keeps her from focusing on her job as an “executive editor of an
enormously popular women's magazine” which requires her to do television
interviews on the weighty subject of “what your wallet says about you.” There
are two things going on here. One is that no matter what they or their male
partners do for a living, a disproportionate burden of domestic work falls to
women, and that gap widens if there are children to care for. This is an
infuriating situation for many women, to which their husbands are largely
oblivious, which only exacerbates the problem. Until we can sit down and have
a house meeting to hash this out, the more said about it the better, and this
book will help. The other problem is that anyone would think that talking
about magazine fluff pieces on television is more important than caring for
her own children. As much as I share her frustration at a having to clean the
house herself or see it not get done, this woman is not me. *And can someone please clue me in to
what recognition for unmarried couples is all about? I've read the Alternatives
to Marriage Project website and most of the press they've gotten, and I just
don't get it. How is a Domestic Partnership between
two people of the opposite sex different from a marriage? If it isn't, then why call it something
different? Thinking you can be partnered to someone of the opposite sex
and be free of sexism, heterosexism, materialism, boredom, sexual frustration
and domestic struggles just because you don't call it marriage makes as much
sense as a white person denying that she's white. Marriage and
whiteness both have unfortunate baggage, but there's nothing inherently wrong
with either. Why not improve the institution, rather than try to
disguise it as something else? Refusing to get married because of negative
things associated with marriage is like refusing to acknowledge that you have
parents because some parents have been known to be abusive to their
children. Sometimes I hear
people say they don’t want the religious association that the word “marriage”
has – apparently they don’t understand the difference between a religious
ceremony and a state-issued license, or that there are several different
varieties of religion. No one
complains, for example, that being married by a priest has connotations of a
Jewish marriage. A marriage – or
any relationship – can have whatever spiritual or religious connotations its
participants want it to, but as a legal contract, in the eyes of the state –
like a Domestic Partnership, like a Civil Union – it is entirely secular. On the other hand, if a Domestic
Partnership is different from a marriage, then how is it different? Is
it temporary? How temporary? Are both parties in perfect
agreement about the date that it will end? Or do they each want to be
free to dissolve it at any time? If so, then how can they expect
society to treat them as a unit? Why should you expect to be treated
like a married couple (your partner treated like part of your family,
hospital visitations, insurance benefits) when you refuse to make the
commitment to be a married couple (and in fact cultivate a snide
condescension towards those benighted souls who don't know any better than to
refuse a marriage license)? Either you are committed, in which case you can
get married if you want your commitment to be public and respected, or you
aren't, in which case you aren't entitled to benefits of marriage conferred
by anyone but your partner. Granted, our country's shameful lack of
universal health care complicates matters by tempting people to make a
binding legal commitment to each other in order to obtain decent health
care. That means we need to change the health care system, not expand
domestic partner benefits. What about uninsured single people, after all? Domestic partnerships are meant for gay
couples who are denied the rights of marriage. To claim them as an unmarried
heterosexual couple sets up two different levels of partnership, and
automatically puts all gay couples in the second, less serious level, which
is an insult to them. Gay couples can't get married yet. Straight couples
can. **I’m feeling like I've been a little
too hard on Dykes to Watch Out For. Alison Bechdel uses Mo in
particular as a sensible mouthpiece, and her relationship with Sydney raises
some subtle points. Maybe it doesn't disrupt its own status quo, but it is,
after all, a comic strip.
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