"Trust me. You're really not as happy as you think..."
Today in class, when I attempted to refute a feminist interpretation of marriage, I couldn't believe the response. First of all, the work we were discussing claimed that marriage is an inherently repressive institution, especially as women were concerned. The book was actually quite interesting and enlightening as it pertained to the history of marriage and public policy in the past 200 years. The obvious (at least to me) problem was the one-sidedness and agenda-driven nature of the piece. Anyway, at the end of class, SN asked us if we thought the feminist paradigm was adequate for dealing with the topic. I said, "No." So, everyone looked at me and I continued. "Empirically, the argument just doesn't hold. Like we discovered last week, 89% of women born in the 1980s will eventually marry. This is in a time period where marriage is not compulsory and women have plenty of other options, more than they've ever had before. Couple that with the fact that when asked, the majority of women report very high levels of satisfaction in their marriages. If the feminist interpretation is true, and marriage is such an awful, oppressive institution for women, then why are so many of them still doing it??" A colleague of mine, whom I like very much, but who happens to be a male AND a feminist said, "Well, I think any feminist would refute that by saying that women don't realize that they're unhappy." This is a classic Marxist argument called false consciousness and is completely and utterly ridiculous. It is unfalsifiable and can result in a series of "no, you're the one with false consciousness" circles. Hence, it has no place in real academic discourse. I couldn't believe that someone actually had the nerve to throw the false consciousness curve, though I did suspect that it might happen.
Anyway, class was particularly frustrating for me today. Sometimes I feel very alienated among my peers, seeing that I am a young, married Christian. I was talking to Joshua about this tonight at dinner and he reminded me of the invitation we have received to join a reviving group on grounds for Christian grad students. It's called Contra Mundum, which apparently means "against the world." Hopefully it will happen and hopefully it will be a place of solace and camaraderie if it does.
7 comments:
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Mair - you are making good job! What? Can't these computers even spell? Glad that you are beating feminist males faces in. You should have said "yeah, but you don't realize that you are actually a women." Follow that up with a Boo-Yah! and I think everyone will think twice before being stupid again. So stupid. Keep fighting stupidity/liberalism and blogger spam!
If "Contra Mundum" is like the Nintendo game "Contra" then don't expect solace to accompany your camaraderie- expect Mayhem!
well, looks like the spammers got you too...I guess we'll all have to turn on word verification now. ::sigh::
Way to stick it to 'em. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on sociology and marriage. I threw a post up on my blog about it, but if you wanted to write something on yours I'd love to read it. I know that's a big topic - I guess my question is, what do you think about the statement, "Monogamy is something we take for granted as a cultural norm now, but will be gone from America in the near future." I bet you spend all day doing this kind of thing though, so if you're not interested in responding, that's fine too.
Wow, three posts on three sweet blogs about the same thing! hans, have you been spending an extra three hours in prayer each day?
Good work, Mair. False consciousness is absurd, as you've pointed out--"they don't realize they're unhappy" is just like any of our more conservative friends playing the God card and taking themselves out of the conversation. Check out anything by Karl Popper for extensive information on falsifiability and science.
Way to smack them with that 89% statistic. That was sweet.
Keep fighting the good fight! I know you know this, but there are arguments we can't win--the only thing we can fall back in is ourselves sometimes. Your marriage is the thing that refutes them, but as our favorite blob-like post-modernist is fond of saying, there's no way to "show" people the reality of their incorrect-ness.
I'm looking forward to your comments on this--as redhurt said, please check out his post as well. Your articles are super. =)
Hey! I thought "gods" were wild this hand! My only comment about the prayer thing is "I have been eating more."
Mair - do rock some face with sweet marriage orthodoxy. Bonus five points for each time you mention Jesus (only one for each mention of God, but ten for the Holy Spirit, where has that guy been?)
Mair,
I hope and pray that you receive blessing and solace from the fact that your are right and you are storing treasures in heaven. Your reward is coming from Jesus as you do all things unto him. (Col. 3:23)
Keep up the good work.
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