Disclaimer: While this post is mostly a response to a specific article (and subsequent Facebook conversation), it does contain some criticism of feminist theory. Given the subject matter, this is basically impossible to avoid. If you are one who gets upset at hearing third wave feminism criticized, please embrace the choice of either stopping here or becoming upset.
I recently read an article from New York Magazine entitled “What Open Marriage Taught One Man About Feminism” which, as I put it on Facebook, finally succeeded in breaking me. Things tend to slide off my back pretty easily, so its rare that I find myself angrily unable to think about anything else at random points in the day. But what I read there did the trick.
In the article, the author recounts his long journey to accepting his wife’s proposal to have an open marriage. He believes that this journey has brought them closer, allowed him to find a font of strength within himself amidst uncertainty, and enabled him to truly understand what it means to be a feminist.
Normally, I’d try to put someone’s argument in the best light before tearing it apart, but I can’t bring myself to do it this time. Read the original article if you want a fair representation of his side. Either way, let’s get into it.
And That’s the BEST Spin You Could Put On It?!
Amidst the flowery language and self-congratulatory tone of the article, here is what it boils down to:
The author is a stay-at-home dad who is a bit defensive about his masculinity and thus embraces an ideology that purports to champion non-traditional gender roles. Good for him; I try not to judge people on their religious choices.
One day, his wife of 6 years or so admits to cheating on him.
It wasn’t until my wife mentioned one evening that she’d kissed another man and liked it and wanted to do more than kiss next time that I realized how my status as a Man depended on a single fact: that my wife fucked only me.
This is an incredibly important detail that is easy to skip over. His wife cheated on him. While the rest of the article is about them coming to an agreement about having an open marriage, this event is an aberration; there was no discussion, no concord, no nothing.
Anyway, the author’s wife cheats on him, tells him that he that she liked cheating on him, and spends the next six months getting him drunk and talking him into blessing all future incidents of cheating. He eventually concedes (this lady could make a killing in sales). Hey – at least she wouldn’t be going around his back from now on, right?
So they come up with a system wherein they take turns engaging in (ostensibly) meaningless hook-ups and watching the kids; kids who will definitely, definitely not be screwed up once they’re old enough to catch on.
All goes well for a while, if you ignore the author’s crippling, recurring, and self-admitted feelings of worthlessness, jealousy, resentment, abandonment, insecurity, and emasculation. But those are his problem, not hers (that’s how marriage works, if I recall correctly). His wife has more anonymous sex than he does – shocking, I know. (And here I was thinking that men only cared about one thing, even to the extent that 33% us were one sneeze away from being sexual assailants). At night, when the one who went out swinging comes home, they describe to the other the hot sex that they had. Yay empowerment, free love, and open communication.
The author recounts one event where his wife failed to come home or to check in. He gets upset:
I’m not sure there’s actually a word for the unique blend of acute terror and unforgivable shame I felt that morning imagining that I’d lost my wife to Ryan, the maybe graphic designer.
In other words: the author’s wife once again breaks an explicit marital bargain that the two have struck. Not only does he fear for her safety but he’s angry that, this time, her infidelity (in the true sense of the word) will lead her to dissolving his ability to bargain with her at all. After all, he’s been bending over backward to accommodate her needs, desires, wants, and whims for the past year, starting with forgiving her for straight-up cheating on him (and no apology). But, through deep introspection (and no denial whatsoever), the author realizes that his anger is what is shameful and unforgivable in this scenario. Wait… did I get that right?
Like any true Stockholm-ite, the author ends on a positive note.
Today we’ve never been happier, more in tune, closer, tighter, stronger. Whatever power I surrendered, I don’t miss… I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but I tell everyone it works for us.
Good for you, dude. I sincerely hope that your marriage doesn’t fall apart; from what I understand, it’s not a fun experience to go through.
Sky Cake
Now, normally, I’d leave the article behind as the clickbait that it is; NYMag clearly gave a crazy person a megaphone to generate buzz and re-shares of disgust (in which I participated).
But then actual, real, human, non-media people began defending it. The defense that catalyzed this post is of the “different strokes for different folks” variety.
At this point, there’s an important distinction to be made (1:49-3:25):
People our age have grown up in a post-Oprah world, where “you have your truth and I have my truth and that’s OK.” And sometimes it is OK. But so many people are now afraid unwilling to admit that sometimes that’s not OK. Some things are subjective, others are not.
My issue with the article is that the author makes both subjective and objective truth claims. The people who defend the article with “live and let live” are conflating the two.
Here are the author’s subjective assertions. These are things that I can neither confirm nor deny, and thus with which I cannot argue:
1) He and his wife are happier.
Maybe they are, though, from his descriptions of his near-constant inner turmoil, I feel justified in doubting it. Either way, I am far from arbiter of anyone’s happiness.
2) Their marriage can take it and, in fact, is stronger now.
Statistically it can’t, but statistics aren’t determinative at the micro level. I’ve had friends whose marriages were ruined by attempting an open relationship, but the author’s relationship may be the exception (though again, given the fact that his wife has broken their agreements twice in this article alone, I feel justified in doubting it). If the experiment fails, he’ll likely change his tune. If not, likely not. Thus are beliefs forged and so it goes.
He can believe these things or not, they can be true or false – it means next to nothing to me. I have opinions on whether or not they’re true but, ultimately, I have to take his word on it.
What I do care about are objective assertions the author makes. These, by definition, necessarily apply to me.
Solipsism is Only Slightly More Intellectually Lazy than Relativism
Here are the author’s objective assertions with which I take issue:
1) The choice between honoring vows and fulfilling desires is a false dichotomy.
This is just so absurd that it’s hard to believe that a functioning adult wrote it. Every choice eliminates other choices; this is inescapable. When I make an agreement, I limit the choice to act on any potential future desires of breaking that agreement.
Now, I wasn’t present at the author’s wedding, so I can’t speak to how much monogamy-rigmarole was in their vows. Maybe their only vow was “I promise to abide by whatever we agree to at any given time, regardless of how reluctantly one or both of us may agree to it.” In that case, this premise can hold. Of course, it makes the word “vow” (and, by extension, “marriage”) pretty meaningless.
2) 2 = 1 = 2 > 1 > 1.
I meet a lot of people who say they’ll never get married because they don’t want to get divorced, and hearing it always makes me sad, because they are cutting themselves off from the possibility of the magic that happens when two people share their lives.
Two people sharing one life is magical… but they should never forget that they’re two people and not one… but a person’s desires should be respected and accepted… but its OK for the first person to try to convince the second to change their desires to match the first person’s… and every time the second person’s desires try to manifest themselves that second person should be ashamed… and two people sharing two lives is the same as two people sharing one life…
Honestly, doesn’t this just mean “having a really good friend with whom you can share everything is magical?” In all seriousness, does the author see any difference between being really good, life-long friends-with-benefits and marriage? If he does, I would love to watch a video of him trying to explain it.
3) It is his responsibility to accommodate to his wife’s needs, desires, and wishes (and not necessarily the other way around).
The whole article reeks of this. Literally the entire thing is about the author’s wife’s wishes, needs, desires, wants, life choices, etc. I was going to clip quotes to illustrate this, but realized that I’d end up re-posting half of the original article. I’ll just use this one as an example:
Celibacy is as valid an expression of sexuality as profligacy. The point is that it should be women who choose, not men — even the men they’re married to.
This man’s understanding of feminism is that he, as a person, is subsumed by his wife’s needs – that she comes first. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton would be rolling in her grave… and Andrea Dworkin and Robin Morgan are probably fist pumping.) We won’t get into whether feminism actually is currently a movement for equality or not but, clearly, this man has internalized that it isn’t.
4) Being a homemaker is inherently lesser than being in the workforce.
I am an economically dependent househusband coping with the withering drudgery of child-rearing. Now that I understand the reality of that situation, I don’t blame women for demanding more for themselves than the life of the housewife. [emphasis added]
Doing what one doesn’t want to do is less engaging than doing what one does want to do, and vice versa.
Asserting that one life path is innately lesser than another is (1) ironically closed-minded for one whose entire purpose for writing this article is an appeal for understanding and (2) even more ironically sexist, given that the ‘lesser’ role is traditionally and, to some extent, biologically that of women.
All that these sentences show is that the author doesn’t find fulfillment in being a “househusband,” that his spouse does find fulfillment out of the home, and that he has subsumed his needs for hers (see #3). Take that, gender equality!
5) People’s reactions to him being a homemaker prove that men’s efforts are inherently more valued by society than those of women.
Whenever I tell someone I stay home with the kids, they invariably say, “Hardest work in the world.” They say this because the only way to account for a man at home with the kids is to say what he’s doing is hard work. But there’s a subtext in the compliment that makes it backhanded: We both know no one ever says it to a woman.
This is objectively untrue. The fact that he asserts this (in the second paragraph, no less) indicates that the author either (1) is not in touch with the real world, (2) willing to deny the real world in order to push an ideology, or (3) both. If I had a dollar for every time someone said to my wife, upon finding out that she stays at home with Liam, some iteration of “that’s a very difficult job,” we would be well on our way to a house down payment. Ask any full-time homemaker in any moderately left-leaning neighborhood (maybe not even that specific) and you’ll hear the same.
6) Patriarchal oppression exists in the West.
This is a thesis – a book, several books – unto itself, so I won’t be directly addressing it in any points below. To put it briefly, I unequivocally deny this premise.
7) Monogamous relationships are a symptom of that Patriarchal oppression.
Monogamy meant I controlled her sexual expression, and, not to get all women’s-studies major about it, patriarchal oppression essentially boils down to a man’s fear that a woman with sexual agency is a woman he can’t control.
So many things to say about this (aside from #6) that involve history, biology, evolutionary psychology, and more. These are all definitely outside the scope of this post.
But here’s a fun question: why have non-heterosexuals been fighting for the recently-won and well-deserved right to marry? It’s clearly not because a man is afraid that a woman will choose to have sex with someone other than him (that kind of goes against the whole idea of homosexuality). And it’s not likely so that a man can control the sexuality of a woman (unless you do some mental gymnastics of government=man, control=legal contract, woman=lesbians, gays=…ummm… fabulous).
So what is it? Do dem gayys just really want to show their public support of the Patriarchy? Is every other LGBT person just really revving to suppress someone’s sexuality, and marriage is the only legal way to currently do so? Maybe the litigators for Hodges should’ve consulted with the author first. “Justice Kennedy, we shouldn’t reverse the decision because marriage itself is simply one more manifestation of the patriarchy. The Court doesn’t want to strengthen the patriarchy, does it, your Honors?”
8) Policing of female sexuality is a symptom of that Patriarchal oppression.
We aren’t afraid of their intellect or their spirit or their ability to bear children. We are afraid that when it comes time for sex, they won’t choose us. This petty fear has led us as a culture to place judgments on the entire spectrum of female sexual expression: If a woman likes sex, she’s a whore and a slut; if she only likes sex with her husband or boyfriend, she’s boring and lame; if she doesn’t like sex at all, she’s frigid and unfeeling. Every option is a trap.
I feel like people who continue to trot out this tired trope are the kind who (1) just repeat things because they’ve heard them a thousand times without comparing them to the real world and/or (2) watch ‘Mad Men’ as if it were reality and set in the year 2015.
Also, #6.
9) What’s important is equality of opportunity, not of outcome.
It does work both ways and, yes, I too enjoy sexual carte blanche. I just don’t use mine as much as my wife uses hers. What’s important is equality of opportunity, not outcome.
I don’t, in fact, disagree with this premise. However, it undermines the author’s assertion that he’s a feminist (at best, it would make him a second-wave feminist, which was beat out by third-wave feminism in the late ’80s); otherwise he would have to agree that the earnings gap, women in STEM, women in executive leadership, and similar social inequalities-of-gender-outcome are non-issues. And I doubt he’d do that; I have a feeling that the author is just saying this to make himself feel like this lifestyle is as much for him as it is for his wife.
A Not-Surprising Semi-Conclusion
Well, those quick rebuttals in the bullets above didn’t quite satisfy me. Shooting fish in a barrel rarely does.
Long story short – this article was garbage, and only two points that the author makes that are defensible are too mundane to be worth printing. And I find it hard to believe that the feminist movement wants PR like this, given current sentiment.
