bandit wrote:

You sound like...a snickers bar! I knew it! *begins slow process of devouring Jendaiya* Soon I will have ingested her greatness!

What a strange situation. So new. So different. I'm usually the devourer, not the devouree.

:P

  Originally posted by Binky: 
One of the reasons I think same sex relationships freak people out is that they're a direct challenge to the way gender divides most of our families, as in, who wears the pants? If there's two guys, you know, who has be the woman and do the laundry and other crap jobs? Why would a man consent to such a role? What if my wife realises that I'm physically capable of cleaning up after myself Or the other way round, insert stereotype here.

Speaking of being contentious...

Miiru wrote:

Variety is the spice of life, they say...

If only you had said that before. I could have included chili powder and made it a mexican chocolate snickers bar. Que sera sera.

Binky wrote:

One of the reasons I think same sex relationships freak people out is that they're a direct challenge to the way gender divides most of our families, as in, who wears the pants? If there's two guys, you know, who has be the woman and do the laundry and other crap jobs? Why would a man consent to such a role? What if my wife realises that I'm physically capable of cleaning up after myself Or the other way round, insert stereotype here.

On a tangent, is anyone else horrified when little boys cant like do basic house operations like run a dishwasher or cook something simple? I've heard so many moms complain along the lines of "Timmy is *so* particular, I absolutely have to fold his clothes a certain way." and they say this with an eye-rolling fondness, and I smile...but part of me is like, why the fuck can't little Timmy fold his own clothes, isn't he like 16 or something? Is this the man you're raising to dump in some other woman's lap down the road? The kind of man who will perpetually be looking for the one woman who can fold his clothes a certain way? Ew! Ew ew ew!

And then people wonder why I'd rather talk about snickers.

Binky wrote:

In the original Napoleonic Code men could divorce for adultery but not women.  Just as women were obliged to provide sex, men were obliged to provide financial support, and abandonment was grounds for divorce on the part of women.  There are still hangovers of those expectations today in our family law.

Binky wrote:

And it doesn't take into account the old double standard whereby a man could stray but a woman couldn't.

I think this is where Strangeshe's comment about marriage and property comes into play.  Before the advent of paternity-testing, the only way a man could be sure that his wife's offspring were also his was by preventing her from having sex with another man.  So men, who were, of course,  writing and enforcing laws, and inventing and enforcing the religions, cause the idea of a woman's infidelity not only illegal, but taboo.  What does that have to do with property, you ask?  What man wants his property to pass onto progeny not his own, I ask.

It has been this way for many many centuries, taught from birth to many many generations of both boy and girl children, so it's not surprising that the double-standard persists.

My last comment was agreeing with cyan, but I also agree with Bandit.  Except about the chilli.

I don't so much think of people raised with a strict gendered division of labour as being a liability to someone else, mostly because that someone else can show them where to get off if they don't sort themselves out. 

They're a liability to themselves, though.  If anyone, male or female, leaves home without having been taught how to cook, clean up after themselves, earn a living and do a few handy things like change a lightbulb, a fuse or a washer, then life will be very difficult and expensive for them.

Of course, I'm writing from the position that I'm sure I could, if I ever had to, how difficult can it be, I've got a book and everything :-) 

I've previously had a landlord to handle such things, rather than a chap, although me and my old flatmate disassembled the undersink drain quite well after someone tried putting a pineapple down the gutless waste disposal.

Same - hee!

Fortunately our bookcases are just the right colour.  Though I'm sure we could both manage it if we wanted to.  See, it's on page 56...

Ok.. late to the party...

I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely.

cyan wrote:

I think this is where Strangeshe's comment about marriage and property comes into play.

It is, and you've got it. I'll have to find time this evening to post some of the facts & such, because it's really quite fascinating -- or to me, anyway. Marriage was never originally in the realm of the church. Laws about it came first, having to do with property management and inheritance (and thus the illegitimacy problem came first -- it had to do with law and property, not making whoopie out of wedlock and sin). And all of it started when cultures shifted from matriarchies to patriarchies and most of the BS has continued right up into present day -- as Binky posted earlier about court rulings as recent as the 70s (iirc without scrolling back through this to look).

Very good stuff from a wonderful compendium by Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Her entry on "Marriage" is about 12 pages long, though, so obviously I won't be able to quote it all. Heh. In any case, I strongly recommend the book.

An excerpt from near the end of the entry:

Though patriarchal marriage typically existed for the service of man, there was usually a pretense of male autonomy and leadership; and the discovery of its mythical quality caused the wife's "basic trauma," according to Jessie Bernard:

There are few traumas greater ... than that wife's discovery of her husband's dependencies; than the discovery of her own gut-superiority in a thousand hidden crannies of the relationship; than the realization that in many situations his judgment is no better than hers; that he does not really know more than she; that he is not the calm, rational, nonemotional dealer in facts and relevant arguments; that he is, in brief, not at all the kind of person the male stereotype pictures him to be. Equally, if not more, serious is her recognition that she is not really the weaker vessel, that she is often called upon to be the strong one in the relationship.

(Gornick, Vivian, and Moran, Barbara K. (eds.). Woman in Sexist Society. New Yor: New American Library, 1972.

Um. I think I strayed a bit. Heh. Other more OT stuff later.

Schrödinger's Katze wrote:

I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely.

Good to see you around, even though I really must disagree - as I am taking the stand that marriage really *is* the business of law and societies, and does not actually belong in the realm of the church. It's contractual by its very nature -- whether from the bad old days when it was all about property and virtual slavery to how it has evolved today into something more of an equal agreement between parties. Certain things must still be negotiated, imo, like laundry, plumbing, dishes, who gets up for 3am feedings, lawn mowing, bug killing -- like that.

And in a society that blends all kinds of cultures and religions and practices, allowing the Christian church to make the rules for all (via the 'moral majority') is rather silly at best. (Especially when the fools wanted nothing to do with it in the first damned place. Fnyeh. There I've said it. Lying liars.)

Hmm. I seem to need a nap.

I was basically thinking the same. The government keeping out of marriages would mean leaving it entirely to the religions, and I don't think leaving anything to them alone is a good idea, no matter what's concerned.

To get back to the original question: totally in favour too.

And now I'd better go away and leave this thread alone, it's late and my head is filled with snot instead of brains, and anyway, I haven't really had time to follow this discussion, what with the rather limited computer time at school.
*leaves*