The marriage institution is built basically on the exploitation of women, it is a sham, and a smokescreen to exploit women of their economic values. And it is sold as a “must have” for all women.
When the Russian revolution failed, we would see that Stalin relegated women from the factories back to homes and mandated every woman to start getting married and building homes. And the more children a woman had, the more would she be decorated by some stupid medals and that mental manipulation still happens to this day. Before that Revolution, any woman who didn’t get married on time (by the age of 17) would be fined, and the Orthodox Church made divorce impossible.
Marriage has been made a “success” for the woman. Having a male partner to dominate her and have HIS children with is “success.” Giving free labour at home is “success.” And women willingly walk into this arrangement that does not pay them at all because they’ve wrapped all these shits, named it MARRIAGE and then told women if they don’t accept it, they’ll be socially fined!
The marriage institution sees women as breeders, and as modern slaves to give FREE labour at home. Women give birth to children who automatically belong to the men according to Patriarchy. Without this mandated social reproduction for women, Capitalism wouldn’t survive the non-existence or low supply of workers and market for its goods and services to make profits, all the while lying to women what they’re doing is not important so they won’t start seeing the economic values even in giving births!
I quote from FEMINISM FOR THE 99%:
“Not only does this activity (of people making/reproduction) create and sustain life in the biological sense, it also creates and sustains our capacity to work – or what Marx called our “labour power.”
Are you getting the grasp of how important it is for women to give birth? And it’s a dangerous biological activity that every woman bold enough to perform must be paid! If it’s not so important, the system would not make it MANDATORY “roles” for women. It should be remunerated! I can say categorically that it is on this note that abortion has been criminalized and homosexuality banned in many countries. It is on this note that the society has refused to make scientific inventions like reversible once-in-a-lifetime contraceptive drugs and injections and make them easily accessible for every gender in favour of sexual freedom. It is obvious they don’t care about you through how you’re treated once you’re no more a foetus. They just need you to exist, just “go forth and multiply”.
Marriage makes domestic labour at home gender roles for women so women won’t ever dream of being paid for all the labour they give at home. They sweep, clean, cook (d’you see the mad money professional cooks make just from cooking? And how male cooks are especially revered?), and raise the future workers of capitalist society in homes without ever getting paid for all these. Yes, you’re supposed to be paid even for raising children and that’s why some parts of the western world have decided to be a bit fair and give out crumbs to women, calling it “child support.” Whether crumbs of bread or a loaf of bread, is there anything like this in Nigeria? It’s funny that countries that have laws for child support are called Matriarchal countries by some Nigerians who think it’s an oppression of men for women to get some crumbs to take care of the children men have with women.
You’re giving out economic values by raising children in a society. By raising workers for Capitalism, you’re giving output. It is not your “natural” duty (while amusingly not the man’s ‘natural’ duty), you’re supposed to be paid for it. A nanny would have been paid to take care of the kids. I’m currently in France and I get paid by the hour to look after other people’s kids, and all I do is take them to their places of activities like basketball practice and piano lessons. I get paid for THAT which is the barest minimum compared to what parents do and that’s telling you what you are doing actually has economic values. EVERYTHING you do under Capitalism has values of their own, there’s no value you’re supposed to “naturally” give out.
I would remember a story I read in FEMINISM FOR THE 99% of a Taiwanese woman who sued her son in 2017 for not being successful later in life to give her the returns of the investments she put in raising her son. She expected that raising the two sons she had and putting them through dental school would give her some returns and when the sons failed to meet her expectations, she sued them. She won! The supreme court ordered one of the sons to pay her $967,000! Of course she wasn’t supposed to sue her son, she was supposed to sue the government controlling OUR resources for not giving her her dues as a caregiver to the young workers of Capitalism. But even at that, we can see that even the court recognized the economic values in raising children.
I quote once again from the book:
“Luo’s case illustrates three fundamental features of life under Capitalism. First, it discloses a human universal (truth) that Capitalism would prefer to ignore and tries to hide: that enormous amounts of time and resources are necessary to birth, care for, and maintain human beings. Second, it underlines that much of the work of creating and/or maintaining human beings is still done by women in our society. Finally, it reveals that in the normal course of things, capitalist society accords no value to this work, even while depending upon it.”
Yet, after giving out all these values, the woman is told she’s just a mere housewife, bringing nothing to the table. Is the man paying for the preparation of the food that he’d basically pay for in restaurants? Is he paying for the sex he would have had to pay for outside the marriage? Is he paying for the births and raising of the children that automatically belong to him?
ALL these are the things Women provide for FREE in marriage.
The woman’s identity is lost while the man owns her, she bears his name and claims the state of origin of the man. Women practically get erased.
Marriage says the man has access to his wife’s body ALL THE TIME, so not only is the woman a sex worker who doesn’t get paid for it, she is even sometimes raped! The marriage institution allows this. The Nigerian law neither recognizes nor criminalizes marital rape. And of course religious books sanction it unless there’s selective amnesia in play here.
The woman gives free labour at home and is expected to still go to work where she is further exploited by her bosses because she is a woman, so she gets paid LESS than she would have been paid if she was a man.
Capitalism has conditioned us all to believe that the economic values we give out differ because of our gender (calling us the weaker sex) and use this as a basis to generally pay women less. Show me how this is logical or right! Let’s not forget that the married woman after quickly getting the job done at home, goes to work, subjected to further misogyny and exploitations because of her gender.
The woman gives out great surplus values on two fronts; the home and at the work place, values for which she never gets paid her dues while constantly being asked what she brings to the table.
All these free labour and we have men telling the “housewife” she should be grateful she’s being provided for and fed. This “housewife” gets shamed and treated like crap because she’s “lazy” and brings nothing to the table, and some men sometimes have the guts to tell everyone on X that their wives are not “members” to the family and don’t have the rights to their properties. After all the economic values of the free labour women give at home? Do you see the importance of education? And I’m not talking about the mainstream, practically useless form of education Capitalism uses to dumb us down in schools and make education so boring, that people generally and amazingly boldly go through articles like this one I’ve written and blurt out “it’s too long!”
I’m talking about education that makes you knowledgeable enough to know your rights and revolt.
The woman goes through all these because there’s an institution in place she’s been conditioned to believe it’s a must for her to get inside of.
If women start seeing the economic values they give for free in marriage, they’ll not want to marry anymore, and Capitalism starts crumbling.
The man does not have a free cook at home anymore, he would have to hire and pay or go to a restaurant and pay to eat.
The man does not have a free dry cleaner anymore, he would have to pay.
He doesn’t have a free home carer anymore, he would have to pay.
He doesn’t have someone he can have sex with anytime, even rape if she refuses to perform her “duty”, he’ll have to go out and pay for it.
He doesn’t have someone who breeds more workers, he has to pay millions of Naira for surrogacy.
The weight of not getting all these free labour starts pressing his neck. Do you know where he’ll go to pour his frustrations on? His place of work! His Capitalist bosses who hoard and exploit other people’s values and claim to be hardworking while at it, who keep exploiting him and are paying him peanuts compared to the great values he gives out.
To prevent this from happening, Capitalism sets up the marriage institution. Now Capitalism doesn’t have just one person to exploit anymore and at the risk of that one person revolting; it provides free labour the man doesn’t have to pay for anymore through the woman, giving him illusions that he could also exploit at home too so it’s absolutely normal for him to also get exploited in his place of work.
It gives more free labour to the man through the children the woman has produced while for the woman, ageism has been put in place to give her some illusions of control to wield over other people too (her children), other (single) women and every other person systemically placed below her. That way, she feels she’s also in some sort of powerful position and doesn’t realize how much she herself is being controlled, exploited and basically broken. In all these arrangements, children suffer the most.
Once upon a time, I would see a Facebook post written by (wait for it) a MAN. I could gather from his posts that he’s a feminist who, as the spokesperson of feminism even as a MAN, told the public what feminism is and what it’s not.
He would assert that Feminism does not entail standing against the marriage institution, that feminists are not against marriage and that it’s a misconception. He would cite Chimamanda as an example. He said with how radical Chimamanda was, she married! So yes, that means every “real” feminist wouldn’t be against marriage since Chimamanda is Feminism. (I’m being sarcastic with the last comment). He said Feminism was just meant to end violence against women within the marriage institution, and not to tackle the marriage institution itself.
Chimamanda was relevant in her own time, but not anymore. She has stopped keeping up with the realities of the low class working women for a long time (and that’s if she ever knew their realities at all to begin with) and it’s stale using her as a yardstick of Feminism in Nigeria. In fact, I feel it’s not fair doing that to her.
How can just an individual be a yardstick for a whole revolutionary movement? No individual should be put in that position. We’re all rough examples of our ideas.
I find it annoying that feminists are the ones always getting on the defensive; No, I’m not against marriage o. No, I’m not a misandrist. No, it’s not like I support sex work o. No, it’s not like I support indecent dressing o but…
When will misogynists start being on the defensive for being assholes to women? Why do we feminists have to be the ones always defending what we’re doing? Defending our rights to exist and be treated right?
Feminists are not the ones supposed to be on the defensive and I personally don’t give anyone who wants to put me on the defensive as a feminist any attention, come back only when you want to level the ground, I’m not going to be defending why I’m fighting for my rights. I’m going to be CLARIFYING you on why those rights (should) exist, not defending myself for standing up for me and my kind.
If feminists are always on the defensive (which is the plan), then what time will feminists have to push things in favour of women?
It’s funny how misogynists always become “urgent” feminists when it’s time to push narratives in favour of Patriarchy, in this case, marriage.
The man whose post I read identified with feminism to push the narratives in favour of marriage. Why wouldn’t he do that when he’s aware that without marriage, many men cannot survive Capitalism? Most of them can’t cook, and can’t afford to buy food at restaurants because of the poverty caused by Capitalism. They need modern slaves at home! Tell that man that women have the rights to not want to marry or give birth and watch him lose it!
I’ll say what’s the point of feminism if it’s not challenging the institution that exploits women this much? Challenging its use and relevance? Challenging if it’s beneficial for women at all? Is feminism about fighting individuals or the institutions that imbibe patriarchal ideas in individuals?
I admit there are feminists who don’t see any big deal about marriage and I daresay probably because marriage is the narrative being pushed left, right and centre and they’ve never come across any knowledge that explains why the marriage institution needs to be scrapped as it exploits women a lot. There are feminists who believe in marriage and it is valid.
What is wrong is trying to sell it as some form of an empowering institution for women. If anything, it’s the opposite. The marriage institution is inherently patriarchal. It was established and sustained on the oppression of women.
I genuinely don’t see the point of women having to get married at all as there’s nothing women can do in marriage that they can’t outside of it so why not go through all the risks and stress at all?
However, nobody, especially a man who’s obviously benefitting from the marriage institution, should put all feminists in a box and say all of us are not or should not be against marriage.
I am a feminist and I am AGAINST the marriage institution because it exploits women!
I am very much AGAINST marriage.
It’s easy to disparagingly cast feminists who are anti-marriage and anti-natalism aside and call us “bitter” because deep down, you know your arguments in favour of marriage for women would be floored in no time.
If you’re confident that marriage is a pill every woman must take and that it’s beneficial, you wouldn’t have to become so angry and try defending the marriage institution. All of us would be practically falling over one another trying to get ‘chosen’ by a man to give us a ticket into the heaven called marriage. But thanks to Capitalism, marriage is no longer the illusory heaven of romance that women used to be told it is. It’s now a slave ship exporting women into lifetime slavery.
Once again, I am a feminist and I am AGAINST the marriage institution.
In history, women who never got married were very happy and freer than their married counterparts and I intend to be those things too.
Written by Sisí Afrika.
