I’m 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), established so men could own women to ensure their estates and titles were passed on to their kids – sorry, their sons? Maybe I’ve just never married because I haven’t found the right owner. Or the right dress.
Why do we hang on to this old cultural carcass when we happily disregard others? Almost all women and men think it’s the man’s job to propose. What? Because ‘women are hard-wired to like shiny things in velvet boxes because something something caveman days’.
Feel those uptight white honkies squirm! Hear their sphincters tighten! I love the smell of Balwyn seething in the morning!
Marriage is bullshit. It is such a croc not even Steve Irwin would dangle a baby in front of it. It doesn’t work. For more evidence see the divorce rate climbing closer to 50% at every click of the RSVP.com website. The waving of the magic wedding wand is no guarantee of a successful marriage or a happy family. No amount of confetti, profiteroles and $10,000 photo shoots will counteract the dismantling of religious oppression, social taboo and financial constraint making far more options acceptable despite the beige majority’s fixation on fairytale endings that don’t exist and never have.
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. Read the fine print girls and ask yourself “What’s in it for me?”
I’m all for love, intimacy, sex, companionship and growing into wiser, more beautiful compassionate human beings through sharing parts of your journey with others. And I quite like going to weddings. I just prefer funerals. The chat’s more earthy, you hear more secrets, you don’t have to buy a present and there’s no group on the balcony muttering, “I give it three months tops.” Funerals celebrate something that actually happened.
Celebrating 20 years of being together and not killing each other makes far more sense than weddings celebrating something that hasn’t even started. Love needs no public statement, no witnesses. The stage-managed perfection of a wedding is the antithesis of the hard yakka of surviving a long-term relationship. Weddings are an advertisement for something that only exists in the imagination of seven-year-old girls.
Me? No. Never have, never will, never wanted to. Better dead than wed. Wouldn’t I like to be princess for a day? No thanks. I’m a princess every day.
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. Decisions made emotionally but backed up rationally. So I’ll never know what the reason is and neither will you.
“I’m just doing it for the party.” Why don’t you just have a party then? “Our parents want us to.” Hang on, aren’t you adults? Do you do everything they want you to? No? Well why is this an exception? “It’s just so our families could meet.” Why don’t you just have a barbeque? “We all want to have the same name.” What? Why? Okay, whatever your non-sencical excuse is (and by the way, let me guess, she’s changing her name to yours and the kids will have your surname too? How totally enabling patriarchy by issuing the “it’s just easier” defense when clearly it’s not) ever heard of deedpoll?’
Just once I’d like someone to say, “I’m getting married because I’m needy, insecure, deeply conservative and have abandonment issues.”
The “we got married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas”, “our celebrant was a transvestite and our best man was a donkey” and “we wore gimp masks and wrote our own vows” brigade make me laugh. Flaunting their superficial subversion in a tragic attempt to delude themselves they’re not participating in something incredibly conservative don’t fool me.
My boyfriend asked me to marry him. I said ‘I won’t marry you but I will get a permanant Brazillian. Les painful, lasts longer and cheaper.’ He then offerend to buy me a ring. I said ‘Can I just have the money?’
Why are forms always asking me if I’m married, divorced, de facto, single, separated, never married? Seriously. It’s irrelevant and none of their business. Don’t try and baffle me with bullshit about gathering statistics for better service. They don’t need to know. A contact person or two. That’s all they need.
Referring to de facto relationships as common law marriage is offensive and discriminatory. It’s not marriage. It’s a relationship. If de factos wanted to get married they would. They don’t. Why don’t they call marriage state/religion sanctioned co-habitation?
I loved the way married people say “Married, defacto, it’s the same thing.” No it’s not. If it is, why are they married? If it’s the same thing. People ask me what the difference is in practical terms. People who choose not marry tend to be more flexible, innovative and non traditional in their relationship decisions and life choices. A couple’s decision to not marry sets them off on a path of questioning every traditional heterosexual realtionship and procreation expectation that comes their way. You will find people in de facto relationships don’t just stick to the traditional joint back account, female change’s change name, child has paternal surnames, majority of the childcare domestic burden rests on the female. People who marry are far more likely just to apply the marriage template without questioning or challenging why.
It’s just a piece of paper? It’s so much more than that. It’s the reinforcement of unrealistic expectations, outdated gender stereotypes and proof we’re still being sucked in to happily ever after endings. And a scathing indictment on our lack of cultural maturity, spiritual imagination and proof we’re emotionally medieval.
Marriage is not a word it’s a sentence.
We had a Love Party. A wedding with no God and no government. Check it out here…