Pamela Haag begins a post with the following tidbit:

Like other local and state governments, Topeka, Kansas is in the grips of a dismal budget crisis. So this week, Topeka’s City Council did something desperate. They debated decriminalizing domestic violence--because the cost of prosecuting these cases, and other misdemeanors, is just too high. The county has already turned back 30 domestic violence cases since they stopped prosecuting them on September 8.

One of the problems with these stories is that it’s hard to believe that we’re actually hearing what we’re hearing. Sometimes I think the 20th century was all a dream, and we’ve awakened back in the 19th. Could civilization unravel so much that we rip up paved roads to save money—or revive wife-beating to save a buck? It sounds like a satirical Onion headline.

Source: Big Think Proxy

My first inclination post this with the title "Oh for heaven's sakes, part 3,776" or something like that. But the rest of Haag's post is too important to miss. It's an essay on the extremely narrow definitions of marriage extreme right-wing "traditionalists" like, naturally, Kansas governor Sam Brownback emphasize is their "marriage encouragement" policies.

It’s not heterosexual marriage generically that’s promoted in Kansas and elsewhere. It’s marriage of a particular (patriarchal) brand and a particular (gender-typed) sort.

...

Ironically, in the classes and states today that have the very lowest divorces rates—the educated, affluent middle class, that is, and uber-liberal Massachusetts—it’s precisely this sort of gender role flexibility that you’re likely to see. The community welcomes stay-at-home dads as well as stay-at-home moms. Dads and moms are likely to perform a variety of roles in marriage, from breadwinning to breadbaking and childrearing and nurturing. These precisely aren’t marriages of interdependence, but of overlapping, multi-tasking competencies. Still, the defense of marriage tends to trash career moms for ruining the family, and privilege distinct husband and wife roles

...

If a view doesn’t punch our own life in the face, then we think it can’t hurt us.

But marriage politics today aren’t just about opposition to same-sex marriage and homosexuality. No, they’re interested in your big, fat, straight wedding, too. Campaigns for traditional marriage support particular versions of heterosexual marriage. To paraphrase from Animal Farm, some marriages are more equal than others.

Yes, the initial snippet about effectively legalized wife (and husband) battering is shocking but Haag reminds us that it's just one tiny foray in a very long, quiet, and persistent campaign to and to re-enact Biblical, capital-P Patriarchy.

Having rather enjoyed I can't imagine why anyone would want to effectively repeal the second half of the 20th Century as well as the first tenth of the 21st, let alone why they'd want to force everyone else to go back. But they do.

While looking for other information pertaining to the "sexual revolution" in the Victorian era (actually I was just looking for information about what people were wearing during that period) I stumbled across the following in a paragraph about sex work of all things in Wikipedia (emphasis mine.)

When the United Kingdom Census 1851 publicly revealed a 4% demographic imbalance in favour of women (i.e., 4% more women than men), the problem of prostitution began to shift from a moral/religious cause to a socio-economic one. The 1851 census showed that the population of Great Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply because there were not enough men. These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or "redundant women", and many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with them. "Why are Women Redundant" William Rathbone Greg, N. Trubner & Co. 1869]

Source: Wikipedia: Victorian Era

Wading as far as I could through Greg and Trubner's Victorian prose is difficult (here's a link to the Google Books version) it looks like they don't believe it's a problem that some women through virtue, commitment or genius preferred not to marry at all, nor is it the incredibly large number who worked as domestic servants. Instead it's because

We will be plain, because we wish both to be brief and to be true. So many women are single because so many men are profligate. Probably, among all the sources of the social anomaly in question, this, if fully analyzed, would be found to be the most fertile, and to lie the deepest. The case lies in a nut-shell. Few men -- incalculably few -- are truly celibate by nature or by choice. There are few who would not purchase love, or the indulgences which are its coarse equivalents, by the surrender or the curtailment of nearly all other luxuries and fancies, if they could obtain them on no cheaper terms. In a word, few -- comparatively very few -- would not marry as soon as they could maintain a wife in anything like decency or comfort, if only through marriage they could satisfy their craving and gratify their passions.

If their sole choice lay between entire chastity -- a celibacy as strict and absolute as that of women* -- or obedience to the natural dictates of the senses and the heart in only legitimate mode the decision of nine out of ten of those who now remain bachelors during the whole or a great portion of their lives would, there can be no doubt, be in favour of marriage.

Source: Why Women are Redundant, pg. 27

In other words, if there hadn't so many sex workers in the Victorian era there wouldn't have been a "surplus" of women. Because, you know, men who wanted to "quench their passions" would have to resort to... gasp... wives!

This from an era that allegedly revered women's purity above all else.

What.

Ever.

* Note the implication both of women as the "no-sex" class and men as the obligatory "sex class?"

The thousands of years old principle defined most concretely by the English Common Law concept of coverture, which the legendary jurist William Blackstone defined thusly:

"By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage. I speak not at present of the rights of property, but of such as are merely personal. For this reason, a man cannot grant any thing to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence; and to covenant with her, would be only to covenant with himself: and therefore it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage."

Source: Wikipedia and myriad others.

Yikes! The rest of this post is a rumination of the consequences of that.

Fun story: Almost 25 years ago now one friend in a long-term committed relationship broke up with her absolutely marvelous-in-almost-all-ways partner.

Why says we, he's almost perfect? True says she, but I just have a feeling this isn't it. But he's devilishly handsome says we. True, says she. He has that sailboat and that vintage Triumph motorcycle says we. True again, says she, but he's still not it. But he's smart, funny, extraordinarily considerate! He's finishing his engineering degree and firms are falling all over themselves to hire him. You've been together for years and still seem incredibly compatible. And he's still crazy about you! I know, I know, and I love him too but none the less, said she, I just don't feel like this is "it."

And so on she moved. And the only reason he wasn't immediately in one, or two, or a dozen new relationships with any of the 31,000 presentable but unpartnered women in Seattle is that he was completely devastated and preferred to quietly mourn rather than move on.

Though move on of course he eventually did. And met a marvelous woman for whom he was "it," and the two have been fast, faithful friends, lovers, partners, and parents together ever since.

Meanwhile our friend who left him actively rattled around the date-o-sphere, plunged into her advanced degree program, ran through a succession of not all that fulfilling relationships (including one rising star who turned out to be a closet domestic abuser) and maybe five years later met a marvelous man who was "it" for her and the two have been fast, faithful friends, lovers, partners, and parents together ever since.

From the outside, anyway, I really couldn't tell you why one wasn't "it" but the other was. Why she would have felt she was "settling" for one but not the other.

I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, because of my friend's seemingly daft feeling that her partner wasn't "it" because she thought there should be "something more." Second, because of my other friend's equally daft feeling that having lost true love he could never love, or be loved, again.

---

Two of the most dangerous stereotypes in relationships are

• true love waits and I shall never love again. They both really distract from and otherwise interfere with our actual relationships.

"Is this it?" Where "it" is something like that one truest, most fulfilling, most completing love thing. Asking yourself "is this it" also disrupts actual relationships.

"I shall never love again" is extraordinarily common for both men and women -- so common, in fact, that both the radio stations and book stores would seem like empty stadiums if all the songs and stories about true love lost were to disappear.

Then again, while both men and women experience "this isn't it" moments there's been a traditional gender imbalance to it that still needs to be uncovered and explored. So I'm going to explore it here.

Back when a) women were expected to be utterly financially and socially dependent on men and b) the only way out of a marriage was "till death do you part" women were basically in a position where accepting an offer of marriage was by far the biggest gamble anyone, male or female, commonly made in their life. Because if your husband developed consumption, or turned out not to be able to make a living, or drank, or beat you, the die was cast and that became your lot in life.

Under English Common Law, which formed the foundation of both English and American... um... common law, from a legal perspective a woman literally disappeared! The legal doctrine was called Coverture, and under coverture women could literally not own property, she obviously couldn't vote, she couldn't enter into contracts, she couldn't seek education (without her husband's permission), any and all money she earned, won, or inherited became legally and irrevocably her husbands, any children she gave birth to became his sole legal property, and so on.

In the late 19th Century the pressure became such that a lot of women (many of them early or proto-feminists) declined to risk marriage at all!

Because back then, if for any reason "this" turned out not to be "it" for women that was it!

That anxiety over such an uncertain but irrevocable decision, I think, is the source of the "hypergamy" meme that so haunts MRAs and Evolutionary Psychologists. And so baffles and occasionally outrages the rest of us.

I'm also going to propose that this might be the origin of the idea of women as judges, gatekeepers, and the whole male anxiety about "worthiness." Because if your odds of marriage depend entirely on someone else's assessment not so much of gold-diggery success but simply not having enough income or stability to safely support a wife and children, that's going to stress the shit out of you as well. And really generate huge loads of resentment as well as anxiety. Even as you possibly benefit from having to compete with only half the potential workforce for any given job.

Anyway, you can see how the whole "this is it" and "true love waits" business, plus "I shall never be loved," plus all those songs about murdering one's true love ("Banks of the Ohio") and suicide ("Irene Good Night") aren't just dangerous bullshit but dangerously gendered bullshit.

But also, if I'm right (I think I am) and if we can just wrap our heads around it, about it's somewhere between 99% and 100% obsolete bullshit. Because these days we don't have to make those kinds of perilous decisions, or risk just perilous judgments. Because half the population no longer needs to rely 100% on the other half for social and financial well-being.

And so questions of lifelong worthiness, like (I'm guessing) similar questions about lifelong beauty no longer have to distract and interfere with a) the formation of, b) the end of, and most important, c) current appreciation of our relationships.

Anyway, my intuition says that you pretty much can't understand "hypergamy" without first understanding coverture. And this is why I think it's foolish to claim to understand biological "truths" about relationships without first understanding sociology, history, and law.

Hmm... I've still gotta think more about this.

Since I'm still feeling really horrible I'm more likely to just repost other people's work.  Case in point: Matthew Yglesias catches another right-winger using anti-feminism to... what else... bash men.  I've just nicked the whole thing.

Kay Hymowitz in the Wall Street Journal:

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.

Since I’m still in my twenties for a few more months, I thought I’d actually look up themedian age at first marriage for American males. The most recent year the data is reported for is 2007, when it was 27.7 which is indeed a few years older than it was “not so long ago” in 1960 when it was 22.8 years. But in 1920, it was 24.6 years. In 1890, it was 26.1, presumably because everyone was too busy watching Judd Apatow movies. Or maybe this number just bounces around over time and it’s always been the case that some people are sometimes frustrated with some members of the opposite sex.

Source: Center for American Progress

I'm not about to go get any references but I'm almost positive that were I to do so I'd quickly be able to document that from roughly the Elizabethan era through most of the Industrial Revolution age of first marriage for what we'd think of as "middle class" men was from their late 20s to as late as mid 30s!  First marriages for women was often well into their 20s.

Another very peculiar artifact of the conservative fantasy that there was anything "traditional" at all about post WWII marriage, when age of (first) marriage dropped as low as the high teens.

The alternative for Hymowitz and her ilk would be to acknowledge that age of (first) marriage was so low in the 1950s and 1960s were due to a combination of red-hot productivity gains resulting from capital expenditures from the New Deal, WWII, and collateral commerce from the Marshall Plan, the G.I. Bill home loan programs and FDIC and savings-and-loan-equivalent mortgage-facilitating programs, strong unions, incredible demand for jobs requiring high skills but low education, high taxes balanced by low deficits, consumption-promoting programs such as Social Security, Rural Electrification (without which America's largely-rural population couldn't use new mass-produced refrigerators or washing machines), U.S. Highway and Interstate construction (which similarly made auto consumption more feasable,) G.I. Bill education grants that financed waves of new productivity and innovation, etc.  Before that (going back, again, to the Elizabethan era) both men and women typically had to work into the 20s to build their "nest eggs" to settle down with.

Far easier for Hymowitz to bash men and blame feminism for it than to acknowledge just how successful government intervention was in introducing the very transitory anomaly of 50's-style "traditional families."