I was under the impression that the most controversial thing about the recent royal wedding was Princess Beatrice’s vagina hat (later apparently adopted as the official headgear of the Obama White House*). Not to Petra Gajdosikova, a guest commenter on The Spearhead who has worked herself into a snit over Kate Middleton’s refusal to pledge to “obey” her Prince. “Now, this may seem a silly little issue to pick on,” she says, at the start of what turns into an 1800 word rant,
but, would it have been too intolerably oppressive for Kate Middleton to have kept to the traditional vows including promising to ‘obey’ her husband? Yes, I know such a thing is not just hopelessly out of fashion but considered almost a crime against their human rights by feminists and millions of brainwashed modern women. But if the Royals won’t preserve the last remnants of tradition, who will? And what’s the point of Monarchy if not tradition?
Petra acknowledges that Lady Di also refused to say the word “obey” when she married Prince Charles, snidely remarking, “[a]nd we know just how well suited she proved to be for her role and responsibilities.” (Yeah, that was the problem with that famously troubled marriage.) She continues:
Undoubtedly the decision to modernize the vows was taken to show the Monarchy being in step with contemporary culture and to present the new Duchess of Cambridge as a thoroughly modern woman and role model for millions of young women throughout Britain. And that’s the biggest tragedy of it all… The country doesn’t need any more progressive ‘role models’ infected with feminist ideology. What we do need, if this society is ever to reverse the present degeneration, are those who stand up for traditional values and mores.
Yeah, because there’s nothing even remotely traditional about celebrating a gigantic, extravagant, broadcast-live-to-billions wedding involving about 8 hours of hymns and AN ACTUAL MOTHERFUCKING PRINCE. I mean, they might as well have had a “commitment ceremony” on a commune, or something.
But apparently making a big deal out of a wedding doesn’t mean that today’s degenerate women actually take marriage itself with any seriousness:
Marriage today is, to many women, just an extravagant social occasion and party, their very own ‘princess’ fantasy. It doesn’t seem to include any consideration on what marriage really means, much less on how to be a good wife. Undoubtedly the mere concept of a ‘good wife’ would be deemed oppressive these days. (Are you saying women should have responsibilities and not just rights?!) After all, millions of women feel entitled to ditch their marriages and perfectly decent husbands for no better reason than feeling bored or ‘unfulfilled’. The princesses deserve to be happy – and if they harm their husbands and children in their insatiable quest for fulfillment, so be it!
Damn those women and their infernal desire to not be miserable!
So why on earth could any decent woman possibly have a problem with pledging to obey her husband? Petra assures us, in all seriousness, that
promising to ‘obey’ one’s husband has nothing to do with being oppressed, a second class citizen with no power or say in a relationship, or a servant to a man. It’s a statement of trust and respect, acknowledging the authority of the man as head of family, responsible for and dedicated to his wife’s and their children’s welfare. Despite us wanting to pretend otherwise, a woman’s natural role is to be loving, nurturing and supportive in a relationship. When women usurp the masculine role (power and leadership) and emasculate men it doesn’t bode well for marriage.
Dudes, if you feel “emasculated” because your wife doesn’t unquestioningly follow your every dictate, you must have an awfully fragile sense of self – and an extreme sense of entitlement. Learning that other people have their own needs and desires, and that the world does not bend to our every whim, is one of the most basic developmental lessons we all learn in our lives. Most of us do it when we are babies.
But to Petra, the insistence of most contemporary western women that their marriages be partnerships of equals means that they’re the narcissists:
Women are deluded in thinking they have been ‘liberated’ from some imaginary shackles, when in fact they’ve only sabotaged themselves and contributed a great deal to the rotten state of our society. The anti-male bias is ever present in the West today; we are ‘empowering’ females at the expense of males and conditioning women to disparage men.
The self-absorption and sense of entitlement of today’s women make it nearly impossible to form healthy, sustainable marriages and relationships.
What follows is a by-the-numbers rant about “sky-high divorce rates,” degenerate single mothers, “welfare dependency … sexual depravity,” human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together.
Sorry, I got carried away; those last bits were from Ghostbusters.(Not the bit about “sexual depravity” – she actually did said that.)
While Petra is perfectly comfortable preaching special treatment for men – having someone literally pledge obedience to you; how much more special does it get than that? – she’s incensed at the notion that “women have long been enjoying – and often abusing – a privileged and protected status (as the ‘oppressed sex’).”
To Petra, the fact that some women choose not to pledge obedience to their husbands means that men are the real oppressed class, facing pervasive “anti-male bias” and the “emasculating” power of women … demanding to be treated the same as men. In other words:
The explicit subordination of women in marriage = not oppression.
Equality in marriage = oppression of men.
I’m sorry, but Petra’s argument here is even sillier than Princess Beatrice’s hat.
And since when do the guys on The Spearhead give a shit about marriage? I was under the impression they all thought it was some sort of evil feminist plot. .
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*Note to literal-minded Obama-haters: I was making a little joke there. That picture is not real. Also, Obama was not born in Kenya.
UPDATE: Fixed the link to that not-real photo of Obama and pals in Princess Beatrice hats. Which I’ll just link to here as well.
@Captain Bathrobe…you say “Negotiation and compromise: important skills for any marriage.”
If this was the case divorce rates would have fallen over the years yet they have risen. By your conclusion what must have happened is negotiating and compromising skills have fallen. Is this your conclusion?
NWO – there is no way to answer your question without considering the variables (as David did) because in the real world no situation will arise where there are no variable to consider other than the man wants one thing and the woman another, which I presume you know. This appears to be just an attempt by you to bait the people here into saying either that the woman should get her way (misandry!) or the man should get his way (obeying your husband, how horrible!).
What David said. Also, if it is a reasonably small luxury and doesn’t take our combined money to buy it he can just go buy it with his own money. I haven’t “obeyed” him – I registered my disapproval and he went ahead and got it anyway. Or maybe I manage to give him a couple of good reasons why not (we have other expenses coming up, etc) and he changed his mind. If it’s a really big item where he DOES need some of my money in order to buy it then he needs to convince me it’s worth spending my money on. If he does, I’ll give him my half and we’ll buy it. If he doesn’t convince me we won’t. Really, it’s all about talking over the issue.
It would be the same if two partners in a small business were discussing purchasing a new piece of equipment. One thinks it’s a necessary expense for the business to grow, the other thinks it’s frivolous and a waste of money. They talk through it and come to a mutual decision. You don’t even have to bring feminism into it because this could be two men in business together!
@Rachel…There are no variables. It will always no matter the price of object x, someone, “getting their way” as it were.
You of course know what happens to systems that try to stay antique (like monarchies as a whole); they fade away into the mists of time. My guess is that the only reason the royal family still exists is because they break “tradition” in all the right ways.
Funny how there seem to be only two options for married women; obey your husband, or ignore him and do whatever you want. Women have responsibilities in a marraige just like the men do, but those responsibilities do not involve unqeustioning obeyance (is that a word?) of the husband. Imagine the uproar from MRAs if someone had the gall to suggest that either men should obey their wives, otherwise they are immature children who are trying to avoid all responsibility to their wives.
…
Actually, isn’t that what they’re advocating? *sigh*
(Argh.. something screwy on my end happened… therefore, NINJAS!)
er, david, you can delete this commment and the one before. Something REALLY screwy happened that sent one of my comments forward in time… =_=
@Plymouth…Ok I’ll totally rephrase and be gender neutral, (oh how I love that). Purchase x costs $1000.00, not a little and not a lot. Genderless person A wants this purchase and there can be no compromise on this persons opinion. Genderless person B does not want this purchase and there can be no compromise on this persons opinion.
What is the answer?
NWOSlave:
The gist of my last comment: you’ve tried to redfine “submit” as “taking someones welfare as a major concern in every decision you make.” You’ve also tried to redefine “Obey” as “doing what someone says,” like buying beef jerky when asked. These are both very dishonest.
When you obey someone, it carries with it a lot of subtext: ie. following someone’s every order, sometimes against your own will. Simply doing something when asked may technically be obeying, but that’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about obeying the husband in marriage.
As many people have said, you cannot answer your question without more information, because every situation is different. Trying to boil the question down to “Should you always side with the man or the woman” is about ten different kinds of dishonest. But then, what else is new?
NWO – it is telling that you think there are no variables that matter other than that one person is the husband and the other is the wife (not that your thoughts are surprising given your previous posts on this blog). Most married couples would probably tell you that there are actually variables that matter, such as how they have decided to handle their finances. For instance, some couples choose to combine all of their accounts, some choose to have a combined account for combined expenses and separate accounts for “fun” money or personal expenses, some choose to combine nothing. Even if that was the only other piece of the puzzle, it could help someone answer your question. Also, as has been previously mentioned, most couples discuss decisions more thoroughly than simply saying, “I want this” and “We don’t need it” before making a final decision.
If the roles were reversed, and the husband wanted to purchase an item that his wife thought was unnecessary, how would you answer the question?
NWOSlave – of course the price matters! Like I said, if he can afford it on his own he can just buy it (assuming my arguments as to why it was frivolous did not convince gim). If he needs my money in order to buy it he needs to convince me. Sometimes he will convince me, sometimes he won’t. There is no ONE SIZE FITS ALL answer for every such purchase.
Either “man always gets his way” OR “woman always gets her way” are antithetical to the concepts of feminism and equal partnership.
NWOSlave:
The answer is that person A buys the item with his/her own money, or doesn’t buy it at all. If its a physical item that needs to be put somewhere, it is possible that A and B will have another fight about where to store it, and so on.
Generally, holding an uncompromising position is childish and shows a lack of ability to empathize with the other party. In otherwords, you’ve outlined an argument between a couple of three year olds.
I’ve given you the question @NWOslave | May 12, 2011 at 6:29 pm and I want an answer.
@Mish_mash: that is an awesome study. Nice find.
@NWO I really don’t want to feed the trolls, but just once perhaps. Now you have two answers! The answer is simple. Either they sit down and discuss the matter and come to a compromise, or the person who wanted the luxury decides to use their money to get it anyway. Probably won’t make the other happy, but it happens and they have the right. Many couple’s finances are not so bound up they don’t have private amounts to spend. Even if they do, they usually discuss the matter and come to some agreement. Easy.
Also, ‘Obey’ is a loaded word, and can be used several ways. To say it in a vow, especially ‘traditional’ marriage vows, implies totally obeying: “Submit to the authority of” version of the word. This is implied in the ‘traditional’ vows via “obey you as long as we both are alive”. You can also define obey as “Agreeing to a request”. So agreeing to get bacon is exactly that, agreeing with a request. Technically obeying, but one never says one will never obey a request in wedding vows. She simply didn’t say she will always obey him ever. Big difference. Not saying it in the vows doesn’t mean one can’t ever agree with the spouse. Jeeze.
Also, most pennies since 1983 are made of >90% zinc. the more you know.
@kirbywarp…Your answer is not an answer. You gave me person A does or does not buy product X with his/her own money.
NWOaf sounds just like a toddler, or a Republican Congresscritter. “No! NO VARIABLES! EITHER I GET MY WAY OR SHE DOES! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COMPROMISE!!”
Divorce rates have stayed flat-depending on the variables, they have even gone down. Where you are, who you marry, when you marry are all things that have a great deal of importance to the continuation of the marriage.
*pulls out the Statistical Abstract of the United States* Here is the US and some other countries’ divorce rates per 1,000 people. As you can see, the rate had a high of 7.9 in 1980 and now has a low of 5.2 per 1,000 people. More stuff on divorce this time for age.
Also, so what if that one time the wife prevails, next time the husband prevails. If it turns into a raging scream match, maybe they should divorce.
NWOSlave – I think my answer to that is pretty clear but since you’re being thick I’ll spell it out for you:
If person A has $1000 they can purchase it. Clearly person B can’t stop them.
If person A does not have $1000 they cannot purchase it. Since person B is completely unwilling to compromise and give them the rest of the money.
Pretty simple.
I don’t see why they have to be genderless. But if both of these people are completely intractable and unwilling to discuss the issue I would posit that their partnership is doomed, whether that partnership is a marriage OR a business.
Yes Nobby, obey is a loaded word and you choose to use it in the worst way possible. When a parent tells a child what to do, they “obey” not as slave or servant. Are the parents being evil overlords forcing their children to “obey.”
Rachel: It’s pointless to argue with NWOSlave when he sets up one of his hypotheticals. They are, as a rule, logically fallacious. This one is the false dilemma.
Any attempt to answer the actual question (how should a couple deal with issues of finance) will be treated as a, “non-answer” and he will strawman that as “no one answers my question/no one will admit I am correct.
If you fall for the gotcha, as said by Rachel, accused of some form of misandry/female dominance/desire to emasculate men, or claimed as proof that women need to act in the ways he prescribes.
In short actually responding to him is a no-win situation, and should only be done if you think there is still candy in the pinata (can we do a tilde…? Let’s seepiñata)
We can do html diacritical marks, even if I screwed up the spacing.
Wow, ninjas. That’ll teach me to be slow. Anyway, yeah, i suppose if 3 year olds got married they’d have a problem, NWO. If the two people have completely indivisible finances, and they have a purchase which they cannot possibly have any compromise, then i suppose a divorce is in order, because these people are obviously not compatable as a couple. What would you suggest happen, NWO? That we automatically default to the male? (would that be A or B, i wonder?) And why, precisely?
Oh dear, a question. How horrible.
@NWOSlave:
O.O That is the answer. I don’t know how to phrase it any clearer. You’ve given a situation that hides a huge wealth of background information, and the actual decision depends on that information. Its like asking “Add a postive integer to 3, what do you get?” and expecting a specific number… All I can say is you’ll get an integer greater than 3.
@Pecunium
Well, yes, it is a false dilemma… But him refusing to accept an answer still puts his credibility on the line. (Also its amusing that he bangs his fist and demands an answer to a question that I answer in the post before his. :P)
Man this board moves fast. Anyway, if you say ‘I will obey you for the rest of my life, that implies a continued submission that is against what she wanted. Not a ‘taking it as bad as possible’, that is the way it is spelled out. It’s not “Obey you as long as we live as long as we agree it’s a good idea”, it’s “obey”.
Rachel… I’m sorry, I got myself distracted, and then forgot I was responding to you when I went to get the comment about the gotcha. I’m sorry.
@Nobby | May 12, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Your post explains exactly why marriage today is a failed institution. A marriage cannot be an equal partnership. A bussiness cannot be an equal partnership, your government is not an equal partnership. There always has to be a deciding voice or a top CEO as it were to make the final decision. Otherwise all you’ll ever get is a failed “parthership.”