More on marriage

Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte, in the course of a long and illuminating post, says:

I would suggest that the institution of marriage doesn’t just have a nasty side effect of eating away at women’s identities and energies but that in fact that’s the whole purpose of the institution.

I'll stipulate that that's one of the purposes--but the whole purpose? Nah.

Having said that, I agree that to many--especially to folks whose religion is the only politics they've got--inequality is built into marriage the way righthandedness is built into polo. And surely to these people one of the objections to same-sex marriage (yeah, you knew I'd find a way to work that in) is that having two gals or guys involved rather than one of each eliminates one ground where inequality in the relationship can take root.

By the way, to those who think x is the whole purpose of marriage, where x = inequality, or childbearing, or obtaining advantageous in-laws, I recommend Stephanie Coontz's Marriage, a History : How Love Conquered Marriage, which illustrates how many different purposes marriage has served over the course of human history.