Banking off what I blogged about this morning, I feel like I have to add a few words about Bristol Palin choosing herself over her supposed inborn obligations to sacrifice for the patriarchy. There’s a lesson in all this for the Republicans, though I doubt they’ll pay attention to it. The louder they wail and moan about how people aren’t sufficiently self-sacrificing to bullshit ideals that serve no purpose, the more extreme they get (like Ken Blackwell just condemning sex outright and suggesting on national television that people who use contraception are animals), the more people are going to be turned off, and the more hysterical the base will get as they get more isolated from the rest of the country. One thing that’s interesting me is that they’re not being able to keep a lid on the most politically damaging implications of the pro-patriarchy worldview—-it’s easy enough to get ordinarily sexist swing voters on board with your agenda if they think women are the only targets, but since women and men’s lives are so intertwined, it’s pretty hard to hide forever that the Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.
This Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston situation is unmanageable for just that reason. Right wingers have gotten a lot of mileage out of demonizing female (and gay male) sexuality and wailing about single mothers, but it’s only effective as long as men can be painted as the victims of evil liberated women. But when a genuine white daughter of Republican privilege turned up pregnant at 17, and they had to put their money where their mouths were, it all went to hell. Because it’s not as simple as the woman fucked, the woman must pay. There’s a man in the picture, and he’s not so easy to classify as the victim of women’s liberation. “She” who did the wrong is now “they” who did it, and it’s really exposing how ugly and anti-human the whole pro-patriarchy movement that’s keeping the Republicans afloat is.
Take, for example, this response by Lisa Schiffren (hat tip):
I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid. If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around.
People aren’t going to work up the energy to demonize Levi Johnston, because he didn’t do anything that young men like him aren’t supposed to do in the pro-patriarchal mindset. Getting drunk and getting laid is a young man’s right, is it not? It’s the women involved who are obliged to set limits, not wear that skirt (you knew what would happen!), and pay the price when the inevitable happens. Once you look at it from a man’s point of view, the punishing nature of the Anti-Sex League becomes really obvious indeed, and all the hand-waving about fetal life in the world can’t change that, because men can’t get abortions. Once you realize that marching pregnant young women to the altar to marry them off as punishment for fooling around means that a man gets punished with an unhappy marriage, then then injustice of it becomes that much easier to focus on.
Inevitably, the logic of sexism turns around and bites men, too. You can only conceal for so long that women’s liberation has more benefits for most men than drawbacks. Doing more dishes than maybe you had to in the past is a small price to pay for not being forced to get married to someone who hates you at 19 out of duty. Certainly, I was amused this morning at how Ace of Spades and his commenters were unable to get that their bitterness towards Jessica for writing about her upcoming wedding said more about their own self-imposed inabilities to ever really get how great love between equals can be—-they’re victims of their own propaganda. That the result of marriage-and-childbirth-as-punishment-for-sexual-sin regime doesn’t do men any favors isn’t going to stay a secret for long. That’s why Schiffren’s post was pretty much an admission of defeat—-people should get married just so they can subject their child to a divorce? Because they were naughty and did things with their lady parts and gentleman junk that Schiffren disapproves of? Yeah, not buying it. Making Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin hold hands and look stupid at the RNC did more to bolster the cause of comprehensive sex education than all the research in the world could have. People can be stupid, but they’re not so stupid as to think that people should deliberately enter bad relationships as self-flagellation for fucking. Maybe we could accept it if only women were involved (we still have sad polling data to indicate this is true), but it’s not just women, and you can’t hide that forever.
The comments at Hugo’s just made me grin, because of how out of touch conservative views are with those of the non-nutty. Most people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, think of marriage primarily as a romantic occasion justified by how happy your beloved makes you. That’s the mainstream position, even amongst pretty sexist people. We Americans, barring a few hard core right wingers (who currently control the Republican party), believe in Twue Wuv, and that’s that. And so wingnut beliefs about marriage like the ones expressed by this commenter at Hugo’s will not sit well:
While I think any man who gets a woman pregnant has the obligation to offer a marriage proposal, it seems as though Bristol didn’t want to get married in this case, and that’s her decision. I think that the link between marriage and procreation should be more emphasized _before the fact_: i.e., you shouldn’t sleep with anyone who you would not be willing to marry in the event of a pregnancy.
Again, if this was directed at women, I think maybe more people would admire his tough-nosed approach to the world. But this is aimed directly at men—-don’t sleep with any woman that you won’t marry if you “have” to—-and that, I think, is just depressing to most people. What man wants to marry a woman he doesn’t love out of duty? What woman wants the occasion of her marriage proposal to be performed by someone who’s acting like he’s eating worms? I pointed this out to the commenter:
Boy, Hector, you make proposing sound as fun as getting a cavity drilled. You do realize some men want to get married because they’re in love? Yeah, with actual women, despite our being members of the lower gender caste. Sheesh. “Willing” to marry? “Obligation” to propose? So depressing.
Social conservatives do have a sexist culture working for them, but they’re screwed on this issue. Despite the official-ish sexist belief that men don’t really want to get married, I think it’s well-understood at this point that men do want from female partners some romantic sizzle and passion, and so all this talk of marrying for duty and obligation is just not going to work. If anything, the reason that men (supposedly) don’t want to get married is the fear that making it official drains the romance out of relationships, where babies sweep in one door and sex out the other. Luckily for you guys, today’s tone deaf wingnut took the exact stance with the exact wording that every wingnut should take on the issue of why you should marry out of duty instead of love, both men and women.
It is evident that Miss Marcotte’s ideal world has little place for sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis. Instead, her worldview emphasizes ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ’self-expression’, and all the other buzzwords of our age.
I admire his willingness to be an honest asshole, because most of them aren’t. But if you want weddings to be a toast to male and female self-abnegation, sacrifice, and obedience, good luck! For one thing, the wedding industry will fight you on this—-you make a lot more money off people trying to show off their individuality and love than people trying to demonstrate humble obedience and self-hatred. It’s not even worth getting into a half-assed argument with a moron on why it’s better to be happy than depressed, better to like yourself than abnegate yourself. Why? Because liberals have definitely won this round. Even the evangelical churches realize you catch more flies with honey and more parishioners with promises of wealth and joy than dour sermons about how we’re all doomed and god can barely stand the sight of us. What we can hope for is more desperate demands that people embrace a depressing, god-forsaken lifestyle for no reason at all, because that’s not the sort of thing that endears people to movement conservatism, and can only be better for our side.
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Maybe they are trying to *protect* gay people from this terrible punishment - I mean sacred sacrament - from god.