Traditional Family Structures and Other Problematic Things

Blood is thicker than water, friends come and go but family always endures, there is no greater love than a mother’s love, yada yada. People may disagree on smooth versus crunchy peanut butter, diet coke or pepsi max, Republicans or Democrats, but the one immortal truth that appears to bind all society together is the value of family. In classic contentious Feminist Fatale style, I’m here to say that family is extremely overrated, and kind of problematic.

The general concept of a family is pretty harmless, just a bunch of related people loving and supporting each other. But I’m specifically referring to the traditional structure of a typical nuclear family with a married couple and a handful of biological children. For forever and a day, this construction of a family has been a social tool to keep strict hierarchies of power, and somewhat unsurprisingly the main benefactors are the men and the heterosexuals, whilst the sufferers are… everyone else.

The first thing to look at is marriage. Two people signing a government contract and placing metal rings on each others fingers is not exactly the pinnacle of “nature”. Marriage is very much a social idiosyncrasy that has become so steeped in tradition that the idea of not getting married is strange and apparently “unnatural”. And potentially the reason marriage has become so successful and important in our societies is because it does an excellent job of reinforcing gender roles which keeps power within the male institute. Although this sounds very doom and gloom and over-reactionary, if you step through the history of marriage, it’s surprisingly terrifying. In Classical Rome, daughters were the explicit property of their fathers until marriage, at which point they became property of their husbands. A wannabe husband would have to offer a suitable dowry to the father in order to receive the daughter’s hand, and of course she never had a say throughout the entirety of the process. In fact, not much changed for several hundred years in Western culture, because by the Victorian era marriages were conducted roughly the same. Basically, women were objects to be bartered and sold by their fathers; for the right price, some bloke was allowed to have sex with her, and virginity upon marriage was of utmost importance. Interestingly, both Stalinist and Nazi social policy included a return to strict "traditional family values" such as encouraging women to have multiple children for the State and to ensure women keep the "good" Soviet or German home under control while men conscript to fight for the fatherland.

Until varying stages in the 1900’s depending in which country, marital rape was legal, women were expected to agree with their husbands vote, women’s wealth (if they had any in their own name) became property of their husband, and women were forbidden from receiving custody over a child in case of divorce or insufficient finance. Essentially, marriage seriously sucked for women. Like, seriously. Although the suffrage movement addressed some of these issues, a celebration of the institute of marriage validates this objectifying and often violent history and its attitudes towards women.

And in fact, I’m going to go ahead and say that marriage still sucks for women. The role of “wife” carries expectations of performing disproportionate amounts of domestic and emotional labour in comparison to the role of “husband”, being primary caregiver to children regardless of career or other personal ambitions, and sacrificing her social life for the isolating company of her family - as if two, three, or four other people can satisfy all your interpersonal relationship needs.

And of course there is still the ongoing issue of the queer community being completely excluded from the norm of marriage, further ostracising them from mainstream society by denying them what is supposedly the best way to officiate your relationships with other humans. Once again - celebrating marriage and it’s role in the “perfect” family structure completely invalidates the experiences of gay, trans and aromantic people and their partners.

Children also suffer from this strict and unforgiving environment. Little girls grow up observing their mothers and are subtly conditioned into understanding that this limited existence is their inescapable birthright. For boys and children of other genders too, the family structure enforces very strong gender roles, encouraging the damages of both femininity and toxic masculinity, or the notion that gender is a set and binary thing. On another note, if a family is dysfunctional or abusive, children’s experiences of neglect are invalidated by the strong social narrative that family is the best, most important and most perfect thing in the world; for them it simply is not.

What I find most amusing about many anti-same-sex marriage campaigns is that they worry what legitimising gay couples could mean for the future of the traditional family structure. In my opinion, it is exactly this model of human relationships that causes much of the sexism and homophobia in society, and anything that attempts to challenge it is very much needed.

What's Wrong with a White Wedding?

Sorry Billy Idol, but it’s definitely not a nice day for a white wedding. It is, however, a nice day to start again.

…quota of 80’s rock lyrics has now been filled…

To put it blandly, the institution of marriage is fraught with oppressive traditions, and leaves most feminists uncomfortable with the wide acceptance and celebration of marriage. There is much to discuss in regards to feminist attitudes towards marriage, but I’ll just focus for now on the traditional “white wedding”; the manifestation of Christian concepts of marriage that has become standard across the Western world. Here are three white-wedding-customs, and the reason we should reconsider endorsing them.

1. The White Dress

It is in fact the gorgeous, pearly, floor-length gown that resides at the centre of our white wedding mental images. However the lesser known facts of the white dress’ symbolism have straight up brutal connotations. White has forever been the colour of purity, and represents virginity in the context of marriage. The incorporation of white on the bride hails from a strong history of expecting women to be a virgin upon marriage – AKA suppressing female sexuality. Firstly, this expectation is never imposed on men, but more toxic is the idea that a woman’s virginity is the groom’s property, to be claimed on the wedding night. In fact many other aspects of typical bridal attire such as a corsage or garter were originally symbolic of a woman losing her virginity on her “big night”. The man would (forcibly, painfully, without consent) have sex with his new bride and take her virginity, thereby “deflowering” her. White… flowers… wearing it on your wedding day… not wearing it the day after… it actually has a historically social significance, and it’s not pretty.

2. “Giving Away” the Bride

If this isn’t the most explicit display of women being treated as men’s property, then I don’t know what is. As the bride walks down the aisle on the arm of her father to be given her waiting almost-husband, guests witness the very essence of female subjugation. The tradition stems from a time when daughters were explicitly the property of their fathers and under their total control until marriage, when ownership was passed to the husband (think Jane Austen/Wuthering Heights society). “Control”, “ownership”, “property”; these words have slowly been erased from our social vocabulary surrounding women, but their connotations still strongly linger. Women are still implicitly expected to be subordinate to their husbands, for example in the way a wife is supposed to travel or leave her career to support her husband, but rarely the other way around. Even issues like domestic violence largely originate in the socialisation that women are men’s property, and can be treated however the “highest bidder” deems fit. Basically the giving-away tradition is subtly validating a patriarchal view of women that should have died with Victorian England.

3. Wedding Night Sex

I’ve already touched on the oppressive expectation of virginity for women on their wedding night, but this custom has even further harms (not exactly “the best part” anymore). Sex on the first night of being husband and wife can be easily analogised to a dog peeing on a post. Yep you read that right. Society has forever held the idea that once a woman has been penetrated, she is “tainted” – evident in single mothers both historically and currently being “un-marriable” as well as modern day slut shaming. So the husband taking his wife’s virginity on the wedding night is literally him marking his territory, much like a dog pees on a post. This sounds very forcible and rough, and it certainly was in some cases back in the good ol’ days, but even genuine consensual wedding night sex nowadays is quietly encouraging the idea that a marriage must be consummated to be legitimate. This not only comes with a tone of female submission, but erases same-sex marriage, trans people and asexual people, amongst others.

A wedding is supposed to be the best day of a person’s life, and if a traditional Christian ceremony with big white dresses and white flowers is the fulfilment of a childhood dream, then of course each to their own. But by creating more awareness of the origins of people’s favourite wedding traditions, we can empower women to have full control over the public display of their marriages with completely transparent connotations that suit their beliefs.

P.S. Dear Future Husband,

These are my terms and conditions.

Love, Hannah.