Catherine Deveny unleashes a torrent of anti-marriage arguments on Fairfax Digital today.
I AM against gay marriage. I’m against straight marriage. I’m against marriage full stop. Why are we hanging on to this relic of an anachronistic system (which still reeks of misogyny and bigotry),
Ms Deveny seems to be arguing that women who choose to marry are somehow being duped into a life of servitude and an early death.
Weddings and marriage are spin-doctoring propaganda to maintain social order. Which is code for ”making sure the blokes are running the joint while women are oppressed and conned into doing the majority of the unpaid domestic and emotional heavy lifting” (and a hefty whack of the income earning as well). Married men live longer than single ones. Unmarried women live longer than wives. Girls, read the fine print and ask yourself: ”What’s in it for me?”
And just in case you thought that there may be some arguments to be made for marriage, Deveny dismisses them thus.
I don’t judge you if you have an ownership ceremony. I do laugh at you behind your back when you defend it with hilarious and irrational rhetoric.
Seeing as Ms Deveny declared that she isn’t, never was, never will be married, I’m not quite sure why she feels so outraged by the choices of others. Her arguments against marriage are selective in their treatment of statistics and put up some very lame straw men for her to knock down.
Although marriage is an old institution there’s no reason to accept that a modern marriage must be defined by all of the traditions that have come before, however there’s also no reason to accept that people can’t be happy in one that is.
Disclosure: I recently celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary, and so did my wife.
80 Comments
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And yet many of these “sad sacks” remain in longterm relationships with their partners. As usual Iain you simply spout nonsense in the absence of any evidence. Is that a conscious effort on your part or something that just comes naturally?
Rob: I left you a comment in todays open thread.
RobJ
Why pray tell did you get married if you are so ambivalent about the institution?
Confessions
I know enough people who have failed to make or sustain anything like a long time pair bond and they all have the characteristics that I cite in common. Anecdotal and not terribly scientific I admit but true none the less.
What evidence do you need?
Deveny is a prime example single and bitter but wrapping her failures up in faux political terms in a vain attempt to validate her poor life choices.
“Why pray tell did you get married if you are so ambivalent about the institution? ”
I married the year my dad died, give my mother something to focus on, she was widowed before 50, I went to church because it pleased my Mum etc etc! I already said I had a ‘good enough’ reason!
“Deveny is a prime example single and bitter but wrapping her failures up in faux political terms in a vain attempt to validate her poor life choices.”
“I’m all for love, intimacy, sex, companionship and growing into wiser, more beautiful and compassionate human beings through sharing parts of your journey with other”
Yeah – really bitter!
Thank you for qualifying your comment so that it reads as your experience rather than a wild generalisation about all unmarried folks.
RobJ
#55
She may say that she is “all for ” such things but that does not mean that she is actaully enjoying them now does it?
Frankly that reads much more like the sort of woolly headed aspirational things that you lefties are so fond of sprouting rather than an exposition of her actual experience.
shorter Iain: “Despite what Deveny says I know she doesn’t really mean it!”
LOL.
Confessions
Show us where she claims to have any of the things to which she aspires in that sentence.
Iain
What makes you think she isn’t enjoying “such things”, have you met Catherine? My understanding is she has a partner and two sons, so hardly “single and bitter” I think
Interesting is that even if you disagree with her at least she isn’t a hypocrite as those who trumpet Marriage but want to deny it to some are.
Iain: show us evidence of her unhappiness with her life as it stands – remember it was YOU who claimed she was bitter. And please don’t bother linking to the stock standard childish Bolt/Blair hysterics of OMG MENTAL ILLNESS!!1!
Well said.
Mr Surly
Why does it matter to you what I or anyone thinks about Gay marriage when you are arguing that Deveny is right to denounce all marriage?
Iain
Because you seem to be saying Catherine is wrong and that marriage is a good thing but only if you are “one of us”
And I haven’t argued as to wether or not Catherine is right, just that she has a right to voice her opinion, more importantly that criticising her simply because you think she is wrong, based largely on subjective evidence (I’ve been married for X years so it must be alright) is harldy interlectual debate, but at least it isn’t rank hypocracy.
And by the way if you read Catherine’s peice you will note she is in a relationship, and happy with it.
Deveny’s personal status is irrelevant, we’re not here to debate her motivations, but the quality of her arguments. Let’s keep it on topic.
Thank you Dave. back to the topic
Mr Surly
When judging the viability of marriage as an institution each person ultimately has to make a subjective judgement from their own experience. Any “scientific” consideration of the subject can do little more than that on a larger scale quite simply because there is no empirically accurate way to quantify “happiness” other than asking if the individuals are happy and their answers must by definition be subjective. You are deluded if you think otherwise.
Point about Deveny’s personal circumstance noted Dave {Juvenile emoticon removed — Scott}
And yet you question Deveny’s satisfaction with her life! What a hypocrite.
At the end of the day Iain, you either agree with the arguments in her article or not. All other *commentary* about peripherals such as her own personal life, has nothing to do with her column or this post.
Iain
Piffle, firstly there is hard evidence based on such simple measures as the divorce rates, or do you think all divorces are “happy” ones. And you miss Catherine’s point (IMO) which is that most people would be just as happy living together, and more importantly that we use a persons marital state to make all sorts of judgments about that person. She even points out that we are asked about our marital status when filling forms where that status is irrelevent. Her principal thesis seems to me to be that many people marry with out really thinking about what they are doing, the reasons often given for marrying are often quite facile. In truth the need to marry (from a legal point of veiw) is no longer as great as it once was.
That said I say again if we accept it is good for hetrosexual couples to marry why not gay couples?
I don’t understand the hate for Deveny, she’s alright I reckon, funny too (I’m pretty sure her columns are supposed to be tongue in cheek)
Simon the Stats are really trending against your argument as this report suggests:
As to the second part of your comment about just living together rather than getting married you ignore the value of formalising such arrangements for any children of the union and the way that we all like to have ritual and a party to pupliclly affirm our intentions.
Finally we will have to agree to disagree about Gay marriage because it really a side issue at best for this topic.
Iain
You as ever miss my point entirly, wether the divorce rate is falling is irelevant, the divorce rate is an impirical mesure of “unhappiness” in marriage.
Why do you need to “formalise such arrangements for any children”, in todays legal system this is just not true, the children of the unwed have the same legal rights as those of the wed.
As to you point about a party or ritual, you just played right into Catherine’s hands, why not just have a party, why have a wedding before hand? Why not just stand in front of your family and freinds and say “We have decided we will keep on doing this for a bit and want you to celebrate that with us”?
Gay marriage isn’t a side issue, if you want to argue in favour of marriage as a way for people to show their love and comitment how can you argue that it shouldn’t be avalible to all, regardless of race, religion or sexuality.
‘I’m pretty sure her columns are supposed to be tongue in cheek’
Something you could never say about Iain Hall’s comments.
Bloody hell! You people are beyond stupid! Of course Deveny’s pieces are tongue in cheek. You’ve become what you hate- Iain’s bilious wankery is worthy of Bolt! Get a grip people! Next you’ll be ripping into Fred Bassett!
Seeing as so many seem to want to drag Deveny’s personal circumstances into it, I would just like to state that as far as I can tell she’s extremely non-bitter, and graciously does not discriminate against the poor married folk she meets in day to day life (she’s also wrong about marriage, I think, but to each their own, I guess).
Does that actually change the opinions of anyone here? Some of these comments are around the standard of the bigfooty.com forums the day after a Caroline Wilson column.
Very minor correction @surlysimon: three sons, actually.
This is a stupid, trivial, provocative, overstated rant from a stand-up comedian who is occasionally funny but should never be taken seriously as a commentator. Let her have her fun but don’t argue about her. Not worth the trouble.
Bpobjie@74
I stand corrected
Iain:
“As to the second part of your comment about just living together rather than getting married you ignore the value of formalising such arrangements for any children of the union and the way that we all like to have ritual and a party to pupliclly affirm our intentions.”
Baseless assertion presented as fact. What is it with the right and their love affair with baseless assertions?
“Deveny is a prime example single and bitter but wrapping her failures up in faux political terms in a vain attempt to validate her poor life choices.”
And, inevitabley, the rightie plays the “she’s unattractive and undesirable card”. Why is it that I saw that one coming? What is it with the right and their obsession with superficial attractiveness?
“Baseless assertion presented as fact. What is it with the right and their love affair with baseless assertions?”
LOL – You see John Roskam last night, just spewed baseless assertions, ignored requests for examples and just repeated the rhetoric. Now this might work on idiot wingnuts but most of us don’t take baseless assertions as gospel.
“Finally we will have to agree to disagree about Gay marriage because it really a side issue at best for this topic.”
And because it just shows you for the bigot you are!
The only reason Iain wants to set gay marriage aside is because he doesn’t think it’s relevent to the issue of marriage!
For anyone not thoroughly exhausted by marriage and divorce discussion, there’s more to discuss today.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2009/09/18/divorced-people-are-stupid-and-backwards/
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