exactly

They don't have to. It really is just a legal/religious thing. You can choose to partake in the states/your faith's affairs, or not. It bares no relevance to your emotional commitment to a relationship. People who love each other get married all the time. People who want to get married for other reasons, get married all the time. Society needs a benchmark, legally speaking. That is it. Unfortunately we have not reached the point where the benchmark is accessable for all.

that isn't marriage, that is a ceremony. It can be whatever you want it to be.

......................

I dunno. it was just weird reading that.

Shit! You totally figured me out! I need to put down Discipline and Punishment....

I was not attacking girlgun or any person on this forum who is married. However, I believe that it is fair to point out the inherent inequalities in the institution. I was explaining why I have no intentions of ever getting married. I don't want to be a part of something that has historically been used as a means for trading women, and it's not fair that marriage still perpetuates a system of heterosexual (and at times class) privilege. That being said, I've never been one to argue for gay assimilation...I'm not equal to you breeders, I'm fucking superior lol:D

"you breeders"

heterophobia.

i keed i keed.

Yeah well it's not especially funny. Imagine if it had been the other way around.

And equal rights for all us a fucking given. And I will fight for it. You should be able to marry who you love if you so desire, but don't hate on it because you can't....yet :)

For the record. All of history is filled with the oppression if women. Shit changes.

Can't deal with normalcy? That sounds childish.

yeah really. it's happening. slowly. these things don't happen overnight.

"Notyourfriend" sounds like a radical feminist.

Sorry for lil typos btw. On phone typing with thumb.

man, nothing gets by you

Yeah, I know.

Radical anything is never good.

It's too narrow. Unforgiving. Women weren't allowed to voted until the 20th century. Does that mean it's inherently flawed and a woman should not participate?

I'll say this much. Women deserve equal rights, equal pay and on and on, same as any other human being. I do believe a woman can support this and still act as a woman if she likes. Competing in a man's world doesn't mean you have to be like a man. You saw so much of that in the past... Even some today.

and yet you feel in the right to come here, blinded by stereotypes and preconceived assumptions, and start spewing shit at people.

1) I think I made it pretty fucking obvious that I was joking about superiority, you know with the lol and the huge grin. I'm constantly reading threads on this board that are jokes are horribly horribly misogoynist, homophobic etc and nobody sees to be offended. To stand up to those means that you *gasp* don't have a sense of humor and are here to kill the fun. That being said, I think that people are trying too hard to be PC by pretending that there are two equal sides in this arguement. As somebody who is not going to get married/who could not get married even if I wanted to I will likely have to face a lot more barriers than somebody who can get married. I'm constantly listening to reasons why marriage works etc, I have ever right to assert my side of the arguement.

And no, I'm not one for assimiliationist arguments because I don't want to assimilate into and become equal with an institution that I view as being inherently violent. I kinda disgust myself when I start advocating for gay marriage since marriage alone perpetrates a system of stupid fucking hierarchy. Single people should have the same rights/privileges as married people. People should not have to get married so that they can be able to afford to live. That mentality paves the way to so much domestic violence/abuse etc. End of story.
2) Equal rights are not a given. They are something you have to continue to fight for.

I am a self-identified radical feminist. I am radical in that I believe in addressing the root causes of gender inequality (and i do believe that marriage has been a core perpetrator of more violence than any of us could ever know about) I really don't think that being a radical feminist is all that shocking. I think that most people who are feminists who actually think things through are radical feminists, even if they don't want to admit to being radical feminists due to all the stereotypes.

I don't believe that there is anything wrong with radicalism. I am radical because I am passionate, because I seriously care about human rights. I don't believe that life is worth living if you are not that passionate about something.

I don't pay attention to any sort of "revolution" mentality that is essentialist. And yr problem with human nature - I don't think that you can ever truly know what human nature is or isn't. I refuse to believe that it's human nature for men to rape women since the vast majority of men don't rape.

I predict Swa(y) is married within 5 years and not because of a shotgun.:)

Myself I was married for 20 years because that was what she wanted and I loved her to much to let her go. So I payed the ultimate sacrifice my freedom. Still it wasn't a bad trade I ended up with a beautiful wife, 3 terrific kids
and 20 years of great memories.

Now I'm divorced and I wouldn't give up my single life for anything except a 2 million dollar bank account, and all the toys my heart desires.:cool:

passion for something? art and music and people i love.

i could give a fuck about a bunch of people whining about stuff not being fair. ideally things would be fair for everyone and that would be great but that ain't life. so you get by in spite of the assholes who are in charge of you. don't let the man bring you down, live your life etc.

I have to add I believe I may have crossed swords with some radical feminists in my last job. I spent just over two years working in my local hospital, and would still be working there now if I wasn't pushed out by the insidious scheming of a clique of nurses, who, unfortunately for me, had connections with some of the management, I clearly upset by having a different outlook and attitude towards life than they did. They were quite a deranged bunch of individuals whose catty acts bordered on the puerile. People like that should be sectioned as they cause more harm than good.

I've printed this thread out and nailed it to a tree in my backyard. that way, the male cardinal will know that his committed monogamy is simply perpetrating 10,000 years of male domination.

power to the peehole!

No. The difference is marriage still continues to be an oppressive and discriminatory system. It makes it very difficult for people to escape violent situations, it perpetuates a set of privileges over those who choose to remain single.


Agreed. And I never said that getting married means that you are out there fucking over those who can't. I'm criticizing marriage as an institution not the people on this board who choose to get married.

I believe radical feminism is a mental illness.

I'm listening to Current 93 right now.

And I know for a fact gay men can't abide all that radical feminism rubbish.

To Satan - I continue to live a life which is a lot of fun and all that stuff. I go out, stay in, watch tv, listen to music, get drunk, get high, get laid, smile, laugh, joke around etc. But I'm not about to ignore some of the horrors I've seen/heard about just to have a good and easy time. I have been extremely privileged in my life and I believe that it is my duty to give back. History is not stoic. People have a lot of power when they fight back.


Once again, people on this board can say all they want about "my side" - saying that people like myself should be sectioned off from society etc - without anybody calling them out on it, but if I make one joke i'm toast. I think that demonstrates something about how unequal things really are.

Anyway, feminists, like all other people, have their problems. You know, cuz feminists are people. Nobody is perfect. That being said, that is some extreme stereotyping. I am a radical feminist - that is certainly a defining factor of the way in which I have chosen to live my life. I am also somebody who, in the real-o-sphere, has a lot of friends, a lot of love, and has made real measurable differences in my community. I'm not saying that to brag, and honestly it makes me uncomfortable to even talk about it since ideally, community service should not involve yr ego. But the point is that my radicalism has led me to get off my ass, raise money and help w direct services for causes I care about etc. I do not think I'm "deranged" in the least.

To be fair, marriages are not really fair on anyone, male or female, because they impose themselves as a mean to gain rights which you couldn't claim if you were not married. It's not far-fetched to think that the violence they so often spark between people stem from the tension that getting married in order to make the most of it in life carries with itself, as well as, you know, him being a bastard and all that.

Yup! I never said that it was only violence towards women, although I do believe that women are most often the ones who get the brunt of the violence.

marriage throughout history was also used as the only means a woman could move UP in the world, back when patriarchal society ruled all belongings go to the male children.

marriage is between two people. it doe snot require a wedding ceremony.

two people choosing to be with each other and making that commitment is a marriage. th wedding is a ceremony held to celebrate the union with all friends and family, for marriages join two families together.

rail8ing against marriage is as stupid as railing against graduation.

and again, world wide, divorce rates are just around 53%. HALF opf all marriages last. something along the lines of 75% of all second marriages last.

USA marraigedivorce rates are actually much worse than in much of the world.

Totally. It's a chain reaction that ends up making itself felt especially on women, in the form of abuse. What triggers it, though, I don't think is mysoginism itself. More or less I do agree with you, though.

95% of the planet's population has an IQ below 75.

what the hell do you expect?!?

Last night was pretty much the weirdest night of my adult life. I'm not going to go into specifics, but let's just say that at the end of the night, I accidentally hit a deer and it destroyed one of my headlights, blood went everywhere, I almost died, it was insane... yet I made it home okay, after almost having a fucking heart attack, and I noticed that -- while, again, the HEADLIGHT was destroyed -- the headlight BULB still shined brightly as possible. Brighter than ever, in fact. Really interesting. Metaphorical? As I pulled the deer hair out of the mangled remnants of tape and headlight destruction, which seemed to represent a conceptual part-cyber-hybrid platform that obeys and functions within both laws of physics and virtual-nonlinear reality and potential in Web 2.0/ultra-wiki communication malfunction liberation flow/add-on/debate presentation, I thought to myself, 'This was pretty much the weirdest night of my adult life.' Hence the first sentence of this paragraph...

my minion had to have a rabid cat put down this morning. coincidentally enough, she's married - the minion, not the cat.

DId j00 kill the deer? Or did it just spaz out and run away.

stop oppressing me!

It's dead.