GENDER AND MARRIAGE: Sam Schulman replies to Lynn Gazis-Sax

My statement that marriage exists to protect women from rape is not invalidated by her perfectly correct point that, marriage notwithstanding, women are raped. Rape is all too common, but it would be virtually universal were it not for marriage. And my perhaps "tragic" view of marriage comprehends that to some degree, in order to protect women from concubinage, marriage exposes some, alas, to inhuman relationships with a single man--relationships from which only the 19th century "invention" of divorce has mercifully made anything other than completely hopeless.

Nor does it invalidate my idea of marriage as female-centered that men also benefit from marriage (although my guess is that men who are already likely to be successful, happy, reliable and healthy gravitate towards marriage--rather than are made to be so by marriage). I agree that in modern, sociological terms, marriage benefits both sexes more-or-less equally. But the dissolution of the idea of marriage threatened (in my view) by the establishment of gay marriage would harm women more.
posted by Eve at 11:02 AM VOTE

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