Problems with Marriage

    I'm not sure where to start with this post, so I guess I'll begin with the things that I didn't like about the excerpt from Sex at Dawn (Not to say I didn't like it, there were just a few things that were problematic). I was really bothered by the statement that heterosexual interaction boils down to an exchange of women's sexual services for men's resources. I think that that statement completely undermines women's ability to achieve self-sufficiency, and reinforces female dependency on men.      
    Other than that, I just had a general feeling that there were some unfair generalizations made about both men and women. For example, I thought that the study in which 75% of men opted to accept anonymous sex cannot be used to denounce the libido of women. Perhaps the women said no due to social stigmas surrounding rape and predators, while the men said yes due to opposite social cues that present women as harmless. I don't think it boiled down to libido, but rather social cues of what is and is not dangerous.
   
    But enough about what I didn't like… I thought that the chapter actually made a lot of sense in terms of why males and females are invested in different kinds of fidelity. I am certainly not opposed to boiling down human behaviors to methods of survival/passing down genes, and the reasons presented made a lot of sense to me.
    I actually felt like the explanation of how females selectively choose mates in nature highlighted the power that they seem to have over males. Females were quite literally in control of which males were able to pass on their genes, so although the act of sex seemed to revolve around males passing on their genetics, it was still controlled by females allowing them to do so.
   
    I'm glad I read these pieces, because I had never really thought to question the institution of monogamy and marriage. While I still personally want monogamous relationships and do myself aspire to one day be married, I feel as if my eyes have been slightly opened to the possibility of the existence of alternative methods of partnership. The idea of gay couples attempting to mirror straight relationships resonated with me to some extent, much in the way that I have historically thought about race in America - We expected racism to disappear by forcing blacks to "become more white" - to participate in "white" activities, wear "white" clothes, and talk in "white" ways. These are of course very generalized, but the fact of the matter was still that blacks were expected to abandon their own rich culture to assimilate into white society and gain "equal" rights, insofar as the rights pertain to white people. In short, I think that societies like the Mosuo are right to question traditional methods of partnership, and deserve to have their methods respected and accepted by the monogamous world around them. 

    Lastly, on an unrelated note, I just wanted to highlight something that has bothered me for a long time that I noticed in Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation. Why is it that lesbian can be used as a noun, while gay is consistently used as an adjective? See, "She has written and lectured extensively on the civil and constitutional rights of lesbians and gay men" (305). Through this I believe that lesbian women experience even more societal dehumanization than gay men. While gay men indeed have much of their identity defined by the modifier "gay", lesbian women seem to have their identity completely confined to "lesbian". I don't think it's fair, and is an ingrained facet of our language that needs to change.