In email, an occasional “Alas” reader wrote:
Being called a misogynist, or a racist, or a homophobe, or — to take an example from the right — an America-hater, a man-hater or an anti-Christian bigot, is not really “criticism” or debate but an attempt to place the opponent beyond the pale of debate.
No doubt, she’s right some of the time; we’ve all seen these concepts brought up in an attempt to shut people down. (For example, legitimate criticism of Israeli policy being met with accusations of anti-Semitism). But some policies really are rooted in bigotry, and we shouldn’t accept rules of discourse that forbid us from saying so.
So, for example, if someone wants to call an essay I write “man-hating,” I think that’s a potentially fair critique. Maybe my essay was genuinely unfair to men; maybe I was stating views that are only coherent if unstated misandrist premises are accepted. Assuming the person was critiquing my analysis, rather than just calling me a bigot, it’s more logical for me to respond by showing that my piece wasn’t actually anti-male, rather than complaining that my critic is trying to shut me up.
Let’s look at the example of same-sex marriage.
There are some overtly homophobic arguments against same-sex marriage. The argument that gays are diseased perverts, for example, is often brought up by the less-classy opponents of SSM.
However, there are some arguments that are not overtly homophobic. For instance, one of the more sophisticated, liberal arguments against SSM can be summed up like this:
- If SSM is allowed, society will be less able to affirm the importance of being raised by two bio-parents.
- This will likely result in more heterosexual parents either never marrying, or marrying and then divorcing.
- This will cause harm to children.
- Therefore, we should not allow SSM.
Another common argument against SSM is that it would create a slippery slope, leading to such alleged problems as multiple-marriage and cousin-marriage.
Niether of these arguments are overtly homophobic, and I don’t think you have to be a homophobe to find these arguments credible. However, I think that there’s a hidden, unquestioned homophobic premise behind both these arguments, without which the arguments would not be coherent. Especially when these arguments are made by people who agree that anti-queer bigotry is wrong, pointing out implicit homophobia should not be forbidden from reasonable discourse.
Let’s restate the above argument:
- If wives are allowed to own property independently, wives will be freer to leave their husbands, undermining the institution of marriage.
- This will likely result in more heterosexual parents divorcing, or not getting married in the first place.
- This will cause harm to children.
- Therefore, we should not allow wives to own property independently.
No one today thinks it was a mistake to change marriage to allow married women to own property in their own name, to keep their own last names if they wanted to, or to make wife-rape a crime. These are all changes in “marriage” that arguably weakened the institution, much more clearly than allowing SSM would. The difference is we all agree that forcing women to remain unequal is unacceptable, not even to help protect marriage on the margins. Marriage would just have to be protected on other grounds.
No one would support laws that kept blacks, or Jews, or women, in legal inequality in order to protect marriage. No one would argue that they should have never have allowed interracial marriage, because the lives of interracial couples should be sacrificed to protect the rest of us from the horror of multiple-marriage or cousins marrying. We’ve reached a social consensus that blacks, Jews, women, interracial couples, etc. all have enough value as human beings that to reduce their lives to tools used to protect the rest of us from a dubious harm to marriage, or from a slippery slope, is unjust.
In contrast, SSM opponents implicitly assume that it is acceptable to force queers to remain unequal, in order to “protect marriage as an institution” in an unproven and marginal fashion. In doing so, they endorse a devaluation of same-sex couples that they would never endorse were they talking about blacks, or Jews, or women. That assumption – unstated and not even consciously thought about – is homophobic. And anyone who opposes SSM but also considers themselves opposed to bigotry against queers, should seriously consider this contradiction in their views.
Just as dispensing with women’s rights to protect marriage on the margins would be a misogynistic policy; and just as dispensing with racial equality to protect marriage on the margins would be racist; dispensing with equality for same-sex couples in order to protect marriage on the margins is a homophobic policy.
It’s true that sometimes “homophobia” – like many other words – is misused as a way of “placing opponents beyond the pale of debate,” as my correspondent said. But – unfortunate as that is – it should not be used as a reason to put genuine and reasonable concerns about homophobia beyond the pale of debate, either.
[Edited a bit to tighten up the prose.]
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I would have to agree that the word “homophobe” is grossly overused. A couple of definitions of the word “phobia” is defined to mean an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation and A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not…. Thus, one would seem to define “homophobia” as an irrational, inexplicable, illogical, etc. fear of homosexuals.
However, I have seen the word “homophobia” applied to any statement or position that opposes granting certain rights (including, but not limited to, same-sex marriage or civil unions), even when fear does not seem to be involved at all and where the people holding these positions provide reasoned arguments for them. The word certainly seems applicable to the murders who strung that young man up on the barbed wire fence (his name escapes me, which is a shame), but to apply it as it generally seems to be appears to me to be exactly what the occasional poster refers to. It’s a rhetorical trick to impute fear and irrationality to someone who is neither afraid of homosexuals nor is being irrational about it.
When I hear someone use it I usually find that they are more interested in making a personal attack than conducting reasoned debate.
RonF, the literal-reading argument got old a long time ago. A “phobia” refers to both a hatred and a fear of the thing. People who are terrified of cats are ailurophobes. People who are not at all afraid of cats, but hate them, are also ailurophobes.
“Even when people provide reasoned arguments for them” is also silly. The issue is whether the person is expressing anti-homosexual sentiments, not how much rhetorical tinsel they drape over those sentiments.
I think the point the emailer was making is that if you want people to confront their prejudices, you have to deal with them in a diplomatic way. Terms like man-hater, misogynist, and homophobe tend to make people defensive rather than causing them to think about their prejudices.
For example, wouldn’t you be more likely to consider a critique that says that your article was “unfair to men” than one that said it was “man-hating?”
The “liberal” argument that societal interests are best served by favoring bio-parenting over adoptive parenting is one that adopted children and adoptive parents are going to find highly insulting. At least judged by my reaction as an adopted child of heterosexual, 1950s-role-normed parents.
I find the “homophobia” word to be unhelpful in discussions with people who aren’t lgbt-supportive. Better to address these people by saying that they favor legal inequality, second-class citizenship, unequal taxation, etc. Equality is a mom-apple pie-flag value rhetorically (even if people really don’t believe it, people are reluctant nowadays to be seen opposing equality, so they go for “equality of opportunity”, etc as dodges).
Homophobia is a useful shorthand for discussions between lgbt-supportive people, however.
The argument “If SSM is allowed, society will be less able to affirm the importance of being raised by two bio-parents” is a slap in the face to every adopted child, every adoptive parent, every stepfamily, and anyone abused or molested by their their biological parents. The idea of *biological* parents being important, to the exclusion of non-biological parents and without regard to the quality of parenting done by those biological parents, is bullshit.
Liberal arguments are supposed to NOT marginalize various groups of the population; rather, they are supposed to be fair to everyone. Then again, the fact that it’s an argument in favor of marginalizing a segment of the population disqualifies it right off the bat from being a liberal argument. It is conservative, ie conserving of the status quo or the past.
For the record, I’m for allowing SSM, but it’s not totally unreasonable to think that it could potentially open the door to things like (consensual) polygamy and/or (again, consensual) incest. The arguments for allowing SSM could very easily apply to these other things. Not to mention that I’ve encountered would-be polygamists that have exactly that agenda (i.e. they support SSM and hope it eventually allows multi-marriage also).
Most arguments against polygamy or incest (at least among the ones I have heard) have a lot to do with the “ick”/taboo factor as opposed to any well-reasoned societal cost/benefit analysis.
When I say this, I’m not trying to prove a point one way or the other. I don’t support legal polygamy or incest. I think that my reasons are (mostly) logical. But I know that along with these “logical” reasons, I also have an “ick” response, so it’s hard to be sure of my own motivations.
Good post, but one thing really, really bugged me [emphasis mine]:
You aren’t the first to just assume that “multiple-marriage” is confined to the polygamous situations where it’s a man controlling multiple wives. Dan Savage did just that in his current column, again talking about the issue of gay marriage and the “slippery slope” argument.
I’m sorry, but “multiple-marriage” is not inherently a horror or even a bad thing. In the context of a polyamorous (see Wikipedia if you want more info, but I’m having trouble linking it here) relationship, it can be an expression of love for all involved. In many ways, they can be even more open and communicative than current monogamous relationships, because it isn’t nearly as easy to “default” to engaging in traditional hierarchies as it is with monogamous relationships (especially heterosexual ones).
All I’m saying is that multiple-marriage, if done because all parties involved love each other, is no more helpful or harmful than any kind of two-partner marriage (different sex or same sex).
I’m sorry, Tekanji; I intended “horror” to be ironic, but obviously it didn’t come across that way. I should have written “alleged horror,” instead. (I did write refer “alleged problems as multiple-marriage and cousin-marriage” earlier in the post).
Just last weekend I attended a polyamourous wedding ceremony for three friends of mine. I haven’t given any real thought to the legal issues involved – I consider same-sex-marriage and polyamourous marriage to be separate issues – but I certainly don’t have anything morally against polyamourous relationships.
Also, and I started a new post so I could link without trouble, since you seem to have gone to rather great lengths to avoid comment spam, might I recommend the WordPress plugin AuthImage?
When Hugo linked me on his blog I started getting a ton of spam (3 to 4 per hour, when previously it had been 3 to 4 per month) and I decided that enough was enough. It took me like an hour to install*, but I haven’t gotten one piece of spam since. WordPress hasn’t worked this well for me since… well, ever.
I really think that with a blog as popular as yours, it’ll make your life (and your commenters lives) much easier.
* The directions were off for the newest version of WP, but if you check comment number 409 or search for tekanji then it should be much easier for you.
Duly acknowleged. :-)
My point is that EVEN IF blocking ssm is one way of blocking incest, even so it should not be considered acceptable to sacrifice same-sex couples and their childrens’ rights in order to protect the rest of society. Just as it wouldn’t be acceptable to take away Jewish rights to protect the rest of society from incest, EVEN IF that were somehow an effective way of stopping incest.
I don’t believe that allowing SSM will make legally recognized polygamous or incest marriages any more likely. But even if it’s reasonable to think that SSM will do that, as you suggest, it doesn’t logically follow that it’s reasonable or fair to block SSM for that reason.
Amp, thanks for the prompt reply.
I actually read your “alleged problems” to refer more to the lack of connection between multiple-marriage/cousin-marriage and same-sex marriage. I think it’s just a hard thing for me because so many people conflate harmful polygamous practices with loving multiple-partner relationships. It may seem dumb to put a disclaimer every time one talks about mutliple-partner relationships but, until poly is better known, I think it is worth it.
And congrats to your poly friends! I hope they live a long, happy life together.
I hate the term “slippery slope.” It suggests that if we allow same-sex marriage, we’ll be unable to stop granting rights until people have rights to do things they shouldn’t (in anybody’s not-so-humble opinion) be able to do. Like if we open the floodgates wide enough to let same-sex marriage rights through, the dam will burst and polygamy rights and incest rights will come pouring out with all the unstoppable velocity of a car skidding down an icy hill.
Fuck that. Gay-marriage rights, polygamy rights, and incest rights are three very different things. Nobody’s going to look at legislation or a court order allowing same-sex marriage and argue that polygamy is included in gay-marriage rights, as though the limit of one person per gender in a heterosexual marriage were the only thing forbidding three people from marrying. Nobody’s going to insist that two brothers can now marry in Massachusettes, when a brother and sister WEREN’T allowed to marry beforehand. And legislation allowing polygamy or incest is not going to pass, sign, and implement itself, the way gravity continues after the will of a person to continue descending might falter.
Same-sex marriage is consistently separate from power imbalances, abuse, harm to children, harm to the people getting married, and inconvenience to the state. It therefore deserves to be made legal. If polygamy can be made consistently separate from those things, or a good firewall between them and polygamy can be created/upheld in polygamous unions, with that firewall being a condition of approval for them, then polygamy will also deserve to be made legal. Ditto incest, technically, although that has a significantly more pervasive taboo to work around.
Actually, I think the above idea ought to be a consideration in ALL unions; heterosexual, homosexual, polygamous, whatever, should all, on an individual basis, have to be non-abusive in order to be recognized and tolerated. No more of this “heterosexual couple marriages are mostly healthy, so they’re all allowed, and polygamous marriages are mostly gender-biased and exploitive or abusive, so they’re all forbidden” which does nothing about abusive heterosexual couple marriages, and does nothing for healthy and egalitarian polygamous relationships. That way there would be a drop in abusive and exploitive marriages and an increase in freedom and choice. (How much you wanna bet the far-right would be unhappy about both?)
The arguments for allowing SSM could very easily apply to these other things.
From a legal perspective, this is total nonsense and one more anti-SSM red herring.
And re: cousins marrying, there is a pithy little short story by Theodore Sturgeon that i recommend to absolutely EVERYONE. It’s called “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”
It’s all about incest and the “ick” factor, as Barbara Preuninger phrased it above, and it’s got some TERRIBLY convincing argument in it.
–A
(Whoops, didn’t paste in the rest of what i meant to say.)
Personally, i think ALL sexual taboos are pretty much silly. But then, i also think the government should get out of the marriage business altogether.
–A
Like if we open the floodgates wide enough to let same-sex marriage rights through, the dam will burst and polygamy rights and incest rights will come pouring out with all the unstoppable velocity of a car skidding down an icy hill…Fuck that. Gay-marriage rights, polygamy rights, and incest rights are three very different things. Nobody’s going to look at legislation or a court order allowing same-sex marriage and argue that polygamy is included in gay-marriage rights…
Perhaps not.
But the state’s right to regulate marriage and sexuality must be predicated on something. And advocates of SSM and other currently-legally-disadvantaged forms of coupling and tripling and n-tupling often pick one or another pillar of that right and say “this particular pillar is invalid. It’s none of the state’s business that I shtup [a man] [a woman] [four Belgian brothers] [a turnip] [what have you].”
And they may be right.
But nonetheless, every time you remove a pillar, that reduces the scope of the state’s ability to conduct this regulation. Which you may regard as a good thing or not.
You’re right that nobody is going to find polygamy rights in a SSM case – but if the SSM case relies on weakening the state’s authority over family structure, then it may well end up leading to polygamy, the intentions of the legislator or the litigants notwithstanding.
but if the SSM case relies on weakening the state’s authority over family structure
It doesn’t. No worries, then.
Ron, how exactly does one provide a “reasoned argument” as to why it’s OK to discriminate against an entire group of people? In this case the words you choose would seem to indicate homophobia in and of themselves.
Amp, one small quibble concerning this section of your post.
“No one today thinks it was a mistake to change marriage to allow married women to own property in their own name, to keep their own last names if they wanted to, or to make wife-rape a crime. These are all changes in “marriage” that arguably weakened the institution, much more clearly than allowing SSM would. The difference is we all agree that forcing women to remain unequal is unacceptable, not even to help protect marriage on the margins. Marriage would just have to be protected on other grounds.”
Depressing to contemplate as this is, it seems to me that there are indeed people who think that allowing women to own property and outlawing wife-rape were mistakes. There are also many people who not only think that forcing women to remain unequal was acceptable, but would very much like to reinstate all the inequalities which have been removed. Sorry to add a bum note to the conversation, but there it is.
Glaivester Writes:
For example, wouldn’t you be more likely to consider a critique that says that your article was “unfair to men” than one that said it was “man-hating?”
Actually, I’m enough of a snob that I would probably scoff at someone who uses “man-hating” instead of misandrist. I would also suspect that they were simply regurgitating some else’s arguments for the same reason. ;)
Re: your actual point:
Yes – there are times to take the diplomatic route. You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Then there are times when a spade needs to be called a spade. Someone won by an honest argument is a better ally than one who needs to be treated with kid gloves, or worse, bribed with honey.
Adrienne Travis Writes: But then, i also think the government should get out of the marriage business altogether.
People do keep saying this. Then again, many of them later change their minds and decide they want the legal rights and benefits of marriage. Personally, I see no reason why civil marriage should be abolished, and no one ever offers one: they just make thoughtless comments like this.
The arguments regarding polygamy are just silly because, right now, the state upholds and enforces something that many conservatives would call, rather accurately, serial polygamy — also known more temperately as divorce and remarriage ad infinitum. Assume a man marries divorces, remarries and repeats any number of times but all of his ex-wives elect to continue living as part of the same household. Each of the exes has a cluster of rights under current law, most of which have been created and refined over the last 50 years to accommodate those who want multiple partners, even if, 99% of the time, they only want one legal partner at the same time.
I am not a fan of polygamy, I don’t think it’s conducive to women’s rights, that’s my own view, however, if large chunks of society really wanted polygamy, society would deal with it much as it has dealt with the 50% or so of heterosexuals who want divorce and remarriage.
Ahem. I agree with Kyra and NancyP with the flaws in the liberal anti-SSM argument. Let me try to reverse the 4-point argument:
1. If SSM is not allowed, society will be more able to affirm the so-called importance of being raised by two bio-parents (as opposed to one parent, adoptive parents etc.)
2. This will likely result in more heterosexual parents never divorcing, thus remaining in a miserable marriage out of societal pressure.
3. This will cause harm to children, because the parents are being unhappy for the children, thus making the children feel guilty.
4. Therefore, we should allow SSM.
I don’t think it’s a dilemma between “protecting the marriage” and being fair to homosexuals. I know anti-SSM folks keep saying it is (and choose marriage), but I’m not buying it for one second. Thus, the worthy sacrifice -theory (that is, maybe SSM will weaken marriage, but it is the right thing to do), while I’d probably agree with it, I don’t believe it is a realistic concern.
Maybe I am in the middle ground on this subject, because I believe in same sex marriage for the same reason many reasonable modern people do: I believe that marriage should be a voluntary union of equals, out of love’. Two people. I have to say that I draw the line at polyamorous unions, and I’ll take my lumps for it if I must. It goes without saying that incest and polygamy a la Colorado City outrages me, and I really dislike divorce too.
I don’t believe the slippery slope argument is useful, because it seems to say that we can never adjust our beliefs or limits. I think that SSM can easily be included in a rather conservative view of marriage as stable and loving, good for communities, etc. I don’t think that the view that all unions, maybe even incestual ones ( I’m getting hints of this, maybe I’m wrong) should be evaluated on a case by case basis is helpful to SSM proponents. It seems to be suggest that a person like me can’t really be open and tolerant unless I do away with any framework at all for families, and like all unions equally.
“i also think the government should get out of the marriage business altogether.”
People do keep saying this. Then again, many of them later change their minds and decide they want the legal rights and benefits of marriage. Personally, I see no reason why civil marriage should be abolished, and no one ever offers one: they just make thoughtless comments like this.
As you say, marriage gives a variety of legal rights and benefits to the married – regarding pensions, inheritance tax and so on. These come at the expense of the unmarried, who don’t get them. It would be entirely possible to do away with these benefits, though it isn’t even remotely politically feasible, particularly if you use the “abolish marriage” slogan.
From this perspective, SSM is just expanding the class of people who can get these benefits, and increasing the burden upon those who pay for them. If you do think the marriage confers injust advantages, then you’re going to be deeply ambivalent about extending the number of people who claim them. The current situation isn’t fair on gay people (they can’t access rights that straight people can), but the proposed situation will just increase the unfairness on unmarried people.
Does this pass the test of a none homophobic argument against SSM?
>>Personally, I see no reason why civil marriage should be abolished, and no one ever offers one: they just make thoughtless comments like this. >>
Well, here’s one argument: the entire tax code is so predicated upon a view of marriage in which one partner is the breadwinner and the other is a stay-at-home parent that it improperly encourages the partner who makes less money to quit their job and stay home with children (and, for many reasons, the partner that makes less money most of the time is a woman). If you view this as problematic, and think that it is more politically viable to just remove government from regulating marriage rather than trying to overhaul the tax code, you might believe that (the legal, state-sanctioned process of) marriage should be abolished, and left to the churches to do what they will in the private sphere.
Here’s another: while raping your wife is illegal in every states, in many states it is a lesser crime with a lesser penalty than raping someone not your wife. Some women may view this as evidence that something born as a patriarchal institution will always retain some oppressive elements. Thus, they might believe that scrapping it entirely and coming up with a totally new way to assign inheritance rights, medical proxies, and so forth is preferrable to trying to make over what is to them a distasteful institution.
Others may argue that all state benefits–Social Security and so forth–should be entirely determined by your status as a citizen, rather than as a wife to a citizen.
I’m not saying all these arguments are right, or that the arguments for keeping marriage aren’t ultimately more convincing. But it’s not like people who believe that removing government from marriage entirely is a good idea are just being contrary.
A note on the origin of the word “Homophobe”:
In foreign policy parlance, traditionally those who advocated alliance with a particular nation have been referred to by attaching -phile to that country’s name, so for example a Briton who advocated closer alliance with Russia was a Russophile. The converse, one who believed that Briton ought to isolate Russia and ally with Russia’s enemies, generally took the position that Russia was the greatest threat. Therefore, the terminology used for “opponents of –” became literally “those who fear –.” Russophobes advocated policies of containing and opposing Russia, while Francophobes advocated policies of containing and opposing France.
Many American conservatives broadly oppose what they term the “homosexual agenda,” and advocate policies to contain and oppose advocates of further legal protections and greater social acceptance for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. If the terminology of foreign policy can be imported into domestic policy (and I don’t see why not), then this policy-oriented use of -phobe and -phile is both descriptively useful and nicely pedigreed. That makes me a Homophile and my opponents Homophobes.
If this terminology has the added virtue of making some conservatives uncomfortable at the suggestion that they have some deep-seated personal discomfort with homosexuality, that’s a personal issue which they may wish to address with a mental health professional.
If you plan to complain about the use of the work “homophobe” in the future, save this comment somewhere. The next time this issue comes up, there will be a quiz.
SSM contradicts, and thefore undermines, the understanding that marriage is by its nature a heterosexual union, traditionally intended to be permanent, through which children are created. It is remarkable the degree to which our society has forgotten this simple understanding. Judeo-Christian culture always always has promoted the idea that the only “good” sex is sex within marriage.
The use of the word “homophobe” is obviously intended to silence opposition to the homosexual agenda by conveying the idea that it is morally wrong to think that homosexuality is morally wrong. Those who claim it is wrong for social conservatives to “impose” their morals on others have no qualms about agressively pushing their own on society at large.
In what way does “conveying the idea that it’s morally wrong to think homosexuality is morally wrong” silence you, Dan? I don’t understand this claim at all. Disagreeing with a viewpoint is not the same as attempting to silence that viewpoint.
Well, when social conservatives try to “impose” their views regarding homosexuality, they generally do so by trying to outlaw homosexuality or equal rights for queers – which is why so many social conservatives oppose SSM and opposed the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision.
In contrast, lefties and liberals are not making laws forbidding heterosexuals from having equal rights. In those rare cases where lefties are actually imposing on other folks (such as occasional benighted campus speech codes), I disagree with that. But in general, I don’t think that it’s hypocritical to oppose unequal laws while promoting equality.
Dan, see my comment (#26) re: the meaning of the term “homophobe.”
Thomas, I was responding in part to your comment. When someone calls me a “homophobe” because I oppose SSM, it does not in the least make me feel as though I have a need for medical care to resolve a “deep-seated personal discomfort” with homosexuality (I have no such discomfort). Rather, it makes me feel as though I’m being called a name out of frustration and anger — the frustration and anger of being incapable of responding with a reasoned counter- argument (if professional care is called for for either of us, it would be anger management for the name-caller). Proponents of SSM are hypocritical in leveling accusations of bigotry when they themselves respond to reasoned argument not with reasoned counter-argument but rather with angry and disrepectful personal attacks on their opponents. Such attacks, as they are directed at the person’s character and not the person’s argument, are designed to silence the person and the argument.
Dan says:
Judeo-Christian culture always always has promoted the idea that the only “good” sex is sex within marriage.
And how would you explain the fact that the Judeo-Christian holy book claims that, in addition to his 700 wives, Solomon also had 300 concubines?
Should we now start the push for polygamy based on Judeo-Christian culture?
That was “Judeo” — not “Judeo-Christian” — culture. Solomon lived before Christ. It is indisputable that what we know as “Judeo-Christian” morality provides that sex is permissible only within marriage. There is, for example, long-standing and highly developed Catholic teaching on this subject.
The Mosaic law in any event did not permit multiple wives or concubines and although Solomon was known for his wisdom as a ruler he was not held up in the Bible as a paradigm of sexual morality. On the contrary:
“The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son.” (1 Kings 11:9-12).
It might also be noted that a more recent ruler, Bill Clinton, had a similar number of sexual partners but that does not mean that Judeo-Christian morality endorses such behavior.
AB: If you view this as problematic, and think that it is more politically viable to just remove government from regulating marriage rather than trying to overhaul the tax code, you might believe that (the legal, state-sanctioned process of) marriage should be abolished, and left to the churches to do what they will in the private sphere.
*blinks* Okay. I guess I just don’t understand the mentality of someone who would rather throw out the baby with the bathwater. I never did understand the kind of people who, faced with the prospect of doing a long, intricate, and worthwhile reconstruction job, would rather smash the thing to pieces and declare it not worth repairing. Still, I have met people like this (they generally show up on as members of a revolutionary party determined to oppose constructive change in legislation because the World Revolution Is At Hand), so, yes, I know they exist. I usually hope they grow out of it, though.
Dan: Rather, it makes me feel as though I’m being called a name out of frustration and anger … the frustration and anger of being incapable of responding with a reasoned counter- argument
Generally speaking, the point at which I identify someone as a homophobe is the point at which I recognize that I’ve run through all the reasoned counter-arguments and they have been ignored. That is both frustrating and annoying, yes.
SSM contradicts, and thefore undermines, the understanding that marriage is by its nature a heterosexual union, traditionally intended to be permanent, through which children are created.
For example, the argument as described above rests on a carefully unspecified point “by its nature”, thus dismissing as unnatural all of the examples which are to be found all over the world and in every era of marriages which are not heterosexual unions, not intended to be permanent, and of children born outside marriage and of marriages which are never intended to create children. Thus, the argument above is not a rational argument: it is a statement of faith. All reasoned counter-arguments will be disbelieved or ignored by a person who is determined to believe otherwise. The motivation for the determination to believe that same-sex marriages are unnatural is accurately described as homophobia. Yet so many homophobes resent having their motivation accurately described.
Dan, if you read what I wrote, you now know that the use of the term “homophobe” in a policy sense is well-grounded in history.
If you insist on continuing to view it as an epithet with implications for your personal character, as I said, that’s a personal problem.
Let’s accept this assertion for the moment. So what?
We have laws governing illegitimacy, divorce, insolvency, house fires, etc. Does that mean that our Judeo-Christian culture promotes illegitimacy, divorce, insolvency and house-fires? Or does it mean that our culture recognizes that the world does not always conform to our liking, but must be addressed nonetheless?
Abby and Betty form a couple, and Abby gives birth to Abigail. When Abby and Abigail are in a car crash, should Betty be able to see Abby in the hospital or not? Should she be able to see little Abigail? Should the hospital (or the state) be allowed to bill Betty for their medical bills as though she were a real spouse and mother, or should Betty be able to walk away from these costs with impunity? When Abby dies, should Abigail be returned to the custody of Betty, or should she be put into foster care? And if on the way home from the hospital Betty suddenly dies (without writing a will), should Abigail be able to inherit Betty’s property in a minor’s trust, or should Abigail become a penniless ward of the state?
Feel free to pull your hair, rent your garments, and scream at fate for permitting such abominable facts to exist. (I do it all the time.) But when you finish blowing off steam, come back and tell us what public policies should govern the fate of little Abigail and everyone around her. You don’t have to like this child, or anything having to do with her. But we need to deal with her nevertheless.
I won’t try to persuade you that homosexuality is wholesome. If it makes you feel better, think of SSM laws as akin to bankruptcy laws – perhaps nasty, but necessary. There is no sexuality in hospital visits, inheritance, liability and tax status. They’re just questions of orderly public policy. For the sake of Abigail and others, let’s deal with this like grown-ups.
Marriage as we understand it — Judeo-Christian marriage — is the union of a man and a woman. It is so by its nature in the sense that Judeo-Christian marriage was never understood to be merely a contract between any two people, regardless of sex, who profess to love each other. Adam and Eve had a marital union (even though there was no priest or rabbi there to pronounce them man & wife). Adam would not have been capable of such a union with another male even if he professed to love that other male and the two of them engaged in sexual acts with each other. That’s just not what marriage as we understand it is. Marriage is when a man and a woman become one flesh in the procreative act. That’s a specific thing. When two men engage in sodomy, it’s a different thing because it is not procreative.
By way example, when we use the word “cat” we mean a specific animal. We can redefine “cat” to include “dog” but by doing so we destroy the meaning of the word “cat.” Similarly, it destroys the meaning of “marriage” by not limiting it to the procreative union of a man and a woman.
I do not know what you are referring to, or what your suggested argument is, when you say there are “examples which are to be found all over the world and in every era of marriages which are not heterosexual unions, not intended to be permanent, and of children born outside marriage and of marriages which are never intended to create children.” Perhaps you are referring to the fact that some men and women have engaged in homosexual activity since time immemorial. I grant you that fact. But it is a fact that supports my argument. Western culture always has known homosexuality but has never found it to be a good thing or an appropriate model of behavior.
The argument for gay marriage rests on the idea that we must treat equally all forms of sexual behavior between consenting adults. In my view, this idea is very misguided and has been rejected by society for thousands of years for good reason. The “it’s o.k. if it’s between consenting adults” norm has taken root since the advent of the sexual revolution, and what have the results been? A disaster: skyrocketing rates of sexually transmitted disease, divorce, children growing up in homes without a father, and abortion. It is thus not necessary to rely on the Bible to conclude that it is right and rational to champion heterosexual marriage as the culture norm. However, there is nothing wrong with drawing on our faith tradition in this regard either.
There are also marriages between people not fertile, marriages between people who don’t intend to procreate, marriages between people who already have children by other people, marriages for any kind of convenience, unions that refuse to take on any legal or religious formality, and, arguably, a great many marriages in any culture that permits divorce–particularly one in which so many marriages end in divorce.
>>The argument for gay marriage rests on the idea that we must treat equally all forms of sexual behavior between consenting adults. >>
This is a strawman. As so many posters before me have commented, this is not what anyone here has said. At all.
Piny, you’re right, you need to add “procreative intent” to the definition of marriage since infertile couples can marry. But there can be no procreative intent in sodomy.
You wisely avoid refering to any actual arguments when you suggest that the other pro-gay marriage “posters” have argued things other than the argument I attribute to those advocating gay marriage. The argument that I have set forth is the best the gay rights advocates can do.
I meant “procreative in type” not “procreative intent.”
Incidentally, here are a couple of book recommendations on these subjects:
“The Clash of Orthodoxies,” by Robert George
and
“Beyond Gay,” by David Morrison
Both highly recommended.
Also, I’m glad that you concede the point that we need not treat equally all sexual behavior between consenting adults.
See mythago’s points about how there’s no reason to treat polygamy/polyamory as equal to sexual and romantic partnerships between two people of either apposite genders for one handy example.
How is a sexual act between two people that cannot result in progeny procreative in type?
I didn’t concede anything, btw. I pointed out that you’re bashing a strawman. Do you concede that?
The argument for gay marriage rests on the idea that we must treat equally all forms of sexual behavior between consenting adults.
No. The argument for gay marriage rests on the idea that we must treat equally all adults regardless of what forms of consensual sexual behavior they engage in. It’s that pesky old idea that it is not nice to discriminate against people just because you don’t like the way they act or look or talk or …you get the idea.
what if I write POKR or HOLDM or VY-AGGRA or FENTRMEEN?
–ahem (Nope, Not A Serious Political Blogger.)
I used to feel that way about “homophobia.” After all, I was raised to make that argument in my sleep, I was a good little theocon. “We’re not afraid, phobia is when you’re afraid, we just disapprove for ethical reasons!”
Then, in the course of deconstructing Passion of the Christ, I kept hitting a) all the massive homophobia rampant in Mel Gibson – and when a guy keeps saying “I’m not gay! I’m not gay! Look how manly I am, you don’t think I’m GAY do you?!?!? I have six, count’em , SIX kids!!! You would never mistake THIS manly man for a faggot, would you???” then there is really nothing you can call it except, yes, homophobia – and the curious mix of overt anti-gay bigotry, romanticized male companionship, fetishization of the male body, and BDSM in the corpus of his films…I had to stop and reconsider.
A lot of things. The general obsession of the Christian conservative side with homosexuality. The specific fixation on male homosexuality by the male dominated Church. The queasy combination of eroticized violence, nubile young men, and emphatic male chastity (from women at least) elevated in christian art from the Renaissance on – and the constant worry of the conservative men around me as to whether or not they were sufficiently “manly” and whether or not something they did might be construed as “gay.”
To make a long story short, I concluded that not only was “phobia” spot on, but it was time to start using the word as a challenge – why exactly *are* you guys so obsessed with what gay guys do in bed? Why are you so threatened by their very existence, let alone the idea that they should have equal civil rights? Why are you “tolerant” ones so emphatic that you don’t mind the so long as they stay in the closet – that is, so long as you don’t have to think about them, can pretend they don’t exist? Is it that it raises the possibility that there is not such a cut and dried difference between “gay” and “straight,” that you might be forced to face certain disturbing truths about yourselves?
–Or what? Huh? Huh? I want to *know*, dammit, you manipulated me into voting Republican and convinced me there was nothing else moral I could do, now I want some ANSWERS after having been coopted to supporting bigotry all those years, I’ve looked at those bible passages and the original texts and I’m not seeing the logic in this, unless taken as a whole complex of disordered male insecurities and phobias–
Needless to say, there’s been a deafening silence on the matter from that quarter.
Ideally, it would be even simpler than that. The argument for SSM rests on the idea that we should not legally classify what adults can do based on their sex. As Jack Balkin (Yale Law prof) explained this theory:
Dan, I think it’s morally reprehensible to argue that in order to protect your definition of the word marriage, it is o.k. to discriminate against actual living people (homosexuals). Is it more important that your word doesn’t get treated unfairly (in your opinion), than that people don’t get treaten unfairly (in reality)? Also, I’ve noticed that using the word “homophobe” has exactly the opposite effect than silencing, so the claim it is used to silence the opposition is a bit weak.
Dan: I do not know what you are referring to, or what your suggested argument is, when you say there are “examples which are to be found all over the world and in every era of marriages which are not heterosexual unions, not intended to be permanent, and of children born outside marriage and of marriages which are never intended to create children.”
Curiously enough, I meant exactly what I said. Over all the world, there are examples of marriages which are not heterosexual unions – two men or two women joining in what their own culture defines as a marriage: there are examples of marriages which are not intended to be permanent: there are examples of marriages which are never intended to create children.
Your argument that the “natural state” of marriage does not include any examples of marriage which don’t fit your definition means that you have to discard many marriages, worldwide, present and past, as “unnatural”.
Jesurgislac–
Actually, I’m not a revolutionary. Never was that cool. I’m a pretty boring, run-of-the-mill, pragmatic policy wonk. I think I was very influenced by having studied abroad in high school and in college in countries that either have de-institutionalized marriage (Sweden) or created the ‘civil union’ alternative for gays and ended up having a fair number of straights prefer that to marriage (France). I’m not inclined to see removing ending civil marriage (but leaving all religious marriage stuff to churches and synagogues and so forth) as a very revolutionary social policy at all. I am intrigued, however, by your statement that
>>I guess I just don’t understand the mentality of someone who would rather throw out the baby with the bathwater. I never did understand the kind of people who, faced with the prospect of doing a long, intricate, and worthwhile reconstruction job, would rather smash the thing to pieces and declare it not worth repairing.>>
If I may ask–what do you see as the “baby”? What is it in marriage that is worth reforming all parts that are still biased and unequal? (I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m genuinely interested.)
I’m not inclined to see removing ending civil marriage (but leaving all religious marriage stuff to churches and synagogues and so forth) as a very revolutionary social policy at all.
…I’m a little agog at this belief. Of course, to many Americans who never travel abroad, it might not be a problem that they no longer had access to an internationally-recognised legal relationship, but I would have thought that the sheer drudgery entailed in going through every single legal reference to marriage in every single piece of legislation in every single state (and all federal legislation) and replacing “marriage” with “civil union” would be enough to put any non-revolutionary off it completely.
What is it in marriage that is worth reforming all parts that are still biased and unequal?
Why assume marriage has to be biased and unequal? Why not, instead, reform civil marriage to make it less biased and unequal?
Ahh, but the entire point would be to *not* replace marriage with the word “civil union,” creating what would be simply marriage by another name. I think a great many laws would be improved by simply omitting references to marital status outright.
I understand that some people are very attached to the institution of marriage because of religious reasons. I’m appreciative of that, but I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to have the state institutionalize it. Others have a historical attachment and believe we should not overturn institutions with a long history easily. I’m much more sympathetic to this argument, but I think that marriage has a long enough history of legitimizing pretty awful things against women–legalized rape, discriminatory tax treatment, and so forth–that it *is* worth looking at ending its entanglement with U.S. law. Why not reform it to make it less unequal? Judging by the recent posting about the potential legislation in Indiana to make IVF illegal for unmarried women, I think the trend is pretty clearly not in that direction. (Or at least, it would be a terribly contested series of fights.)
The most convincing argument I’ve seen for why marriage is still necessary on the state level is Amp’s contention that it allows us to name our own next-of-kin. That is a necessary and valuable part of marriage; I guess I would just prefer to start afresh with something that isn’t so tangled up in contested religious and cultural beliefs about women’s place in the world.
I am actually open to being persuaded on this. It’s just that Amp’s is the first argument I’ve ever come across that didn’t fall back on religion or a sort of conservative, cultural “it’s just right because it is” argument.
I’d love to simply chuck the whole issue of what constitutes a legal “marriage.” But I don’t think we can.
Please see the Story of Abigail at post 37. Whether or not we choose to call something “marriage,” our society needs to establish the privileges and duties we have toward one another. If you move to another city, and I quit my job to move with you, am I entitled to unemployment compensation (because my duty to live with you takes priority over the job, rendering my termination “involuntary”) or not (because my duty to live with you is discretionary, rendering my choice to leave my job “voluntary”)? The answers to such questions turns on whether courts recognize my relationship to you as different than my relationship to a stranger. In this sense, government cannot avoid entangling itself with evaluating people’s relationships to one another.
The most we can hope for is government policy that does not discriminate on the basis of irrelevant criteria.
AB: Ahh, but the entire point would be to *not* replace marriage with the word “civil union,” creating what would be simply marriage by another name. I think a great many laws would be improved by simply omitting references to marital status outright.
AB, I think you’re missing the point. The scale of the drudgery would be the same, whether or not the legislation was changed by replacing “marriage” with “civil union” or was amended to abolish any reference to marital status.
I understand that some people are very attached to the institution of marriage because of religious reasons.
And even more people are very attached to the institution of marriage because it’s a simple and convenient way of acquiring a bundle of rights which we call “marriage”.
I guess I would just prefer to start afresh with something that isn’t so tangled up in contested religious and cultural beliefs about women’s place in the world.
In short, you are a radical revolutionary! The problem with being for radical revolution in order to create needed change is that radical revolutions very seldom happen, and the one you are advocating simply doesn’t have a chance. If you really want to accomplish real change in marriage, making it less biased and unequal, you are much more likely to succeed in your goal if you campaign for marriage reform, than if you campaign for abolishing marriage completely. If you just want to sound like one of the cool kids, and don’t actually want to see real change, keep right on advocating the abolishment of marriage.
Jesurgislac, for some reason I just get the feeling we’re talking past each other, and the best we can do is agree to disagree. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you somehow–your posts seem to contain a touch more vitriol than is entirely necessary–but I’m also having a shitty week and taking too much personally, so maybe I’m wrong.
AB: Jesurgislac, for some reason I just get the feeling we’re talking past each other, and the best we can do is agree to disagree
I agree that we disagree! No problem.
Dan said: “It is so by its nature in the sense that Judeo-Christian marriage was never understood to be merely a contract between any two people, regardless of sex, who profess to love each other. Adam and Eve had a marital union (even though there was no priest or rabbi there to pronounce them man & wife). Adam would not have been capable of such a union with another male even if he professed to love that other male and the two of them engaged in sexual acts with each other. That’s just not what marriage as we understand it is. Marriage is when a man and a woman become one flesh in the procreative act. That’s a specific thing. When two men engage in sodomy, it’s a different thing because it is not procreative.”
My husband and I have chosen not to have children at this point in our lives. We may never have children. Is our marriage invalid until we procreate, especially since right now we have sex that lacks a procreative intention? My friend is unable to have children and does not wish to adopt. Does that make her marriage invalid? Biblically, were Sarah and Abraham not really married until she bore Isaac in her nineties? Or did they just quit having sex when they figured out she was barren? Or does just having sex a few times, or even once, with procreative intent validate a marriage? What about marriages where one person is para- or quadrapalegic and unable to engage in the “making babies” kind of sex? Should such people not be able to marry at all, since they can’t even indulge in sex with a procreative intent? Am I the only person who finds this somewhat insulting?
Coontz’s The History of Marriage details how marriage in the Western world has changed over time from basically an arrangement where a man owned a woman and her main purpose was to provide him sons, to an economic arrangement, to the companionate marriage idea so many of us subscribe to today. I recommend it to everybody here, if you haven’t read it yet. Her point was, if I recall correctly, that, like it or not, it is unlikely (barring some dystopian fundamentalist takeover like that in The Handmaid’s Tale) that we will ever return to a “biblical” version of marriage. Too many Christians and Jews embrace the idea of marriage as a partnership over marriage as a baby-making endeavor. They may hold both ideas at the same time–but as Coontz demonstrates, the idea of companionate marriage in itself is what brought about things like women’s rights in the marital area and the push for gay marriage (She makes the argument far better than I could even sum up. Read the book!) And very few people are going to give up the idea of companionate marriage completely. Maybe in a hundred or so years we might see a change, but culturally, right now, we view marriage as a union between two people who are going to support each other (and any children they may choose to have) and form a social, legal, economic partnership. We also think love should have a lot to do with it. When viewed that way, it seems unsupportable to deny people the right to form such unions based on whether they can procreate with their partner or not.
Whew! Sorry I ran on so long.
Whoops, missed the comment about “procreative in type” as opposed to “procreative intent.” But now I’m confused. So marriage should be valid only in a penis enters a vagina? Seems like somebody is trying to cover all forms of hetero marriage (willingly or unwillingly infertile) without giving any ground to the homo marriage contingent. Is it really anybody’s business but mine and my husband’s who puts what where when we’re alone at night?
I’m sorry, the book is Marriage: A History.
I’ll quit posting now, I promise.
Mosaic law permitted multiple wives, in Europe until the 10th century and in the Middle East almost up into present day.
It also permitted and continues to permit divorce.
If you want to talk about Christianity, please leave the “Judeo” out of it, especially if you’re ignorant.
Thanks.
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What Tara wrote. Also, Dan, you’re clearly ignorant of the fact that a Jewish marriage is a contract.
I’ll identify myself as a gay man so that anyone reading this can at least know partially where I’m coming from. Among my many other identities, I’m a father via a heterosexual marriage since ended reasonably amicably, and in a relationship with a trans person.
There’s no question in my mind but that homophobia as is known in western society going back to Graeco-Roman and Jewish traditions has most of its roots in misogyny. Clearly much of the problem, which has almost exclusively focused on male-on-male sexuality, is that of men taking on the passive, penetrated, female role. Even Greece, with its tradition of pederasty, disapproved of adult males having sexual relations, unless the penetrated male was of a lower social position (such as a slave).
For two adult male citizens having equal social status to engage in sexual relations, one would have to volunteer to be the passive partner (all within the understanding of “conventional” sexual intercourse), thereby giving up his male role and privileges and adopting to behave “like a woman.”
It’s too funny to read conservative defenders of “traditional marriage” defend its role in enobling and empowering women when in truth women were considered property or chattel up until modern times. The dowry was supposed to pay the man for the cost of taking on the woman he married. Consider the Biblical commandment that warns “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” Nothing could be more clear about identifying a wife as some thing owned by a man. So please, let’s hear no more invocations about traditional marriage and how it’s good for women.
The idea promoted in most of western culture was/is that the adult male was/is at the pinnacle of the social and natural order, that this was/is his divinely assigned place in the scheme of things, and anything that detracted from him playing this role was unnatural or perverse. Women cannot be given true equality (and they haven’t) because that subverts this ideal. Men who behave unmanly – not only gay, but even passive, emotional, sensitive, compassionate men – are also a threat. Why is it that a man in a dress is always funny, as has been said, but that a woman dressed as a man is either seen as a threat, a throwback to something primitive, or taken as an expression of the woman’s power and confidence? It’s almost OK for women to want to be men, but no man in his right mind would want to become a woman, or so this way of thinking goes. Transpeople have reported here and elsewhere on the change in privilege, even confidence to be out in public, they feel when they switch from one primary gender role to another, either gaining (as male) or losing privileges and a sense of safety (as female).
It’s clear that the patriarchal mainstream that has held power for the past several millenia doesn’t want to give that up. The new pope not only condones a witchhunt against gay priests and seminarians, as if homosexuality were synonymous with pedophilia, but he’s calling for a reduced role for women in the Catholic Church. The early Christian scriptures don’t call for celibacy, don’t call for isolating women, so why does Catholic dogma? When the Catholic Church found out that women contribute 50% of the genetic material to a baby and are not merely passive vessels wherein a man has planted his seed that by itself grows into a fetus, it had to come up with nature-busting ideas of the Virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception. All to deny women any real role in Christ’s birth. Lies and deception packed on top of more lies to preserve male privilege.
Conservative Evangelical and Protestant denominations also want to cast women back into their traditional roles as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. This is one of the goals of the Promise-Keepers, an all-male religious movement.
The Koran gave equality to women but later paddings to those teachings sought to deny that equality, leading to perversions like the Taliban’s take on Islam in Afghanistan. Clearly the theologians involved haven’t gotten over the idea that Eve seduced Adam into committing a sin (as if Adam had no free will or choice); an idea that also one of the supporting roots of our Western misogyny and homophobia.
Throughout history there have been rantings against homosexuality and its threat to the stability of the family. Its often put in context of the irresistible sin – that if men try it, they’ll abandon their wives and children, which obviously would not be good for the social order. It brings to mind the incredibly offensive “once you try black, you never go back” expression that has circulated about whites having sex with people of color. Perhaps this is also an implied acknowledgement that many men have a desire for sex with other men, at least at some level, that they feel they have to resist, even to the point of violence against “out” men. There’s documented evidence that shows that men who profess most stridently their hatred for gay men are also the most likely to respond to homoerotic imagery. They seek to destroy what they hate in themselves.
So we finally get around to hate. Hatred of what we don’t like in ourselves. What threatens us with a loss of privilege and a loss of control and power. There’s no real difference between this and racial and ethnic hatreds, religious hatreds, or any bigotry based on difference. The fight for traditional marriage isn’t really about the sanctity of marriage as if that were some holy good. If that were true, there would have been lots more fighting against divorce and domestic partnership laws (the ones that predate same-sex domestic partnerships). Look at the numbers. At the best estimate, 10% of the population is gay/lesbian. Of that number, about 60%, the same as heterosexual persons, live in long-term relationships or desire one. This means that roughly 94% of the population is heterosexual and can engage in traditional marriage as they understand it. How is that so few, seeking to take part in an institution with the idea of benefitting from and ultimate upholding that instituition, threatens it with destruction. Marriage has been on the rocks from some time now, and it isn’t because we gay people were getting married too.
No, what all of these struggles are about is relinquishing privilege and power. Because if same-sex couples can marry, and have families, and have children – esp. in the case of lesbian couples and IVF, what do they need men for? Or women. And if women are equal to men, then men lose their “divine” place at the top of the pyramid. And if men can act in way labeled feminine, as a woman, and that’s OK, then man’s place at the top of the pyramid is not natural, or inevitable, or necessary for society to continue. And what comes crumbling down the “slippery slope” is not a slide into bizarre marriages like someone marrying their pet, as has been suggested by religious conservatives, but rather the huge pyramid of male power and privilege, and in the West you can add white and heterosexual as qualifiers. Don’t kid yourself about how much is at stake. If you assume that there’s only so much power and privilege to go around, someone has to give some up in order for others to share it. And that’s what this fight is really all about. That’s what racism in America is about. That’s what the resistance to true equality is all about. That’s why the Catholic Church wants to subordinate women. And prevent their priests from marrying, to exclude that feminine influence (is anything more unnatural than celibacy in terms of human sexuality?). Gays are not the real problem – it’s what they represent in terms of what is means to be male – and now with the inclusion of lesbian and transgender issues – what it means to be female – that is the problem. Whenever you read or hear “traditional family values” think male privilege.
Ironically, even gay men are not immune from this. because as men they still enjoy male privilege. I’ve listened to hateful misogynistic statements from gay men, even to the point of cursing that they were born of a woman, to a degree that has truly astonished me. But they are, after all, like all of us, products of our culture, and in the most extreme example, a Chinese male whose culture clearly devalues women.
I am not claiming that all homophobia (and its counterpart, heterosexism) can be reduced to an extension of misogyny, but when so many of the historic and current invections about male-on-male sex state or imply that it is evil because of the loss of male privilege and status, the connection is undeniable.
“For example, wouldn’t you be more likely to consider a critique that says that your article was “unfair to men” than one that said it was “man-hating?””
Haven’t we gone over this before? “Unfair to men” is not the same thing as “man-hating.”
If someone thought that what I wrote was actually misandrist, I’d prefer that they actually say so rather than simply imply that I wasn’t taking everything into account, or even being sexist. Just as, if they simply thought my argument was sexist, but not hateful, I’d prefer that they be honest and refrain from implying otherwise.
It might be more tactful to say that I was simply being unfair rather than calling my argument sexist, but diplomacy is not always a case of being tactful or nice. Sometimes, when negotiating, you need to be up front and clear about what you mean, and sometimes, for example, it can work to your advantage to back the other person into a corner. As a very short, average looking woman, I’ve often found that men especialy don’t always listen when I’m being tactful or nice. It’s when I refuse to pull my punches and I’m not afriad to let my anger, disgust, or annoyance show, that they start to pay attention.
When they guys at work pull the “smile…it can’t be that bad” crap on me, politely explaining why they are being jerks, even though they don’t mean to be at all, does jack shit. Especially since the civility that politeness requires is hard to differentiate from pleasantness, it often gives the impression that I am simply joking around with them. However, refusing to smile and telling them, usually tactlessly, that they are being jerks, has cut down on the orders to “smile!” considerably.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they think that I’m a little odd, but considering the conversations we’ve had about Star Wars, Adult Swim, and romance novels, I doubt they think I hate men either. No more than I think that they hate women just because they’ve internilized some of the sexism that still prevails.
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