MRAs, and manosphere dudes in general, tend to have some strange notions about marriage, many of them believing it to be little more than an elaborate scam, perpetrated by women, to rob men of their money and freedom and even their precious bodily fluids.
Given that they generally see marriage as a tool that women use to pry money from men, MRAs tend to be simply baffled by the very idea of gay marriage, and lesbian marriage in particular – why would any woman want to marry another woman instead of a man whom she could exploit?
Now the right-wing Center for Marriage Policy has put forth a case against gay marriage that’s even more bizarrely conspiracy minded than any MRA screed on the evils of straight marriage.
In a recent post on the Center for Marriage Policy website, the group’s president, David R. Usher, argues that proponents of gay marriage like the National Organization for Women are using the issue as a Trojan horse to promote a new kind of evil he calls “feminist marriage.”
Forget the adjectives “same sex” and “gay” as prepends to marriage. These are victim-based marketing ploys invented by NOW to send us off into a heated debate about homosexuality and equal rights – distracting us from seeing their real goal of establishing “feminist marriage.”
Feminists … intend to convert marriage into a feminist-controlled government enterprise and subordinate the rest of America to fund it.
So what exactly is the strange beast he calls “feminist marriage’?
Feminist marriage is a three-way contract between two women and government. Most women will have children, and few women can afford or will go to the extreme of using artificial insemination to achieve pregnancy. Government is the automatic third party collecting “child support” entitlements for children born in these marriages.
Even non-lesbian ladies will want to get on this gravy train:
Feminist marriage will be far more attractive to women than heterosexual marriage. Sexual orientation does not matter when two women marry and become “married room-mates.” They can still have as many boyfriends as they want and capture the richest ones for baby-daddies by “forgetting” to use their invisible forms of birth control. On average, a feminist marriage will have at least four income sources, two of them tax-free, plus backup welfare entitlements.
Meanwhile, those in traditional man-lady marriages will pay through the nose:
Those in traditional marriages will pay taxes that will be used to support feminist marriages where child support or welfare cannot be recouped, as occurs in our existing welfare state. Traditional marriages have only two income sources, neither of them entitled or tax-free. Over time, many women will prefer “feminist marriage” because of the very substantial economic and sexual liberation advantages. Heterosexual marriage will be heavily burdened by costly marriage penalties, and be comparatively unattractive to women.
But what about dudes who marry each other? Tough luck, fellas!
Marriages between two men are destined to be the “marital underclass.” In most cases, these men will become unconsenting “fathers.” Women in feminist marriages will not mention they are not using birth control. Men in male-male marriages will be forced to pay child support to women in feminist marriages and become economically enslaved to these women.
Apparently, most of the dudes who marry other dudes will not actually be gay.
Most men in these marriages will still have regular sexual encounters with women. Some men in these “marriages” will want to have children. These men will have even more illegitimate children with women in (or contemplating) feminist marriages, most often without informed reproductive consent. Over time, reproductive fraud will become the norm in the United States.
In addition to being so very very evil, feminist marriage is apparently very very complicated.
Women will no doubt enjoy the financial benefits of these new arrangements. But all of us – even the ladies married to other ladies — will pay in the long run when “feminist marriage” ushers in a sort of economic fempocalypse:
Feminist marriage will demolish men’s drive to be successful, motivated workers. It will also further weaken the American job market and harm women’s employment opportunities. Our “Competitiveness Gap” with marriage-based Asian economies will expand as men’s productivity and educational attainment continues to decline, while increasing social problems, violence, and higher taxes stimulate businesses to remove jobs overseas.
Oh, hypothetical women using hypothetical girl-on-girl marriage to extort hypothetical money from hypothetical men, why must you be so hypothetically evil?
Even though the Center for Marriage Policy is little more than a cheerleader for traditional hetero marriage, I wouldn’t be surprised to see marriage-hating MRAs taking up this argument as their own. Politics makes strange bedfellows. As does “feminist marriage,” at least in the fevered imagination of David Usher.
Burt Manstrong? You mean this guy?
Ha ha! I’ve been in a feminist marriage for eight years! But it’s with a man, so I guess that’s why I haven’t gotten any fat government subsidies for my satanic equal-rights-having lifestyle.
It’s like I’m reading timecube.
Shaenon, you’re doing it wrong. See, you’re supposed to fake gay marry another woman while your husband fake gay marries a man. Then you can live with your feminist wife, but rent out rooms in your home to your secret husbands. Imagine the movie I Now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry, only more complicated and without Adam Sandler. According to Usher, this is the ultimate get rich quick scene. You’ll be able to get a quarter of a million dollars a year in child support and government assistance. Even though it will make you rich, it will also cause the end of the world as we know it.
Shaenon, you’re doing it wrong. See, you’re supposed to fake gay marry another woman while your husband fake gay marries a man. Then you can live with your feminist wife, but rent out rooms in your home to your secret husbands.
That would actually be pretty boss.
Wow! As soon as can get myself into one of these feminist marriages, I’m going to need to hire an accountant to keep track of all that tax-free money pouring into my household! Oh, why, oh, why did I marry a man, when if I had just waited 20 years, this enticing option would have been available to me!
This whole rant…it’s like a poorly blended smoothie. Too many chunks (of stupid), goopy, and even when one finishes it…ugh. Why?
…believing [marriage] to be little more than an elaborate scam
Well, it is…for the diamond mining industry. Not gold diggers/feminists/tall spitting ALPHA WYMYNYN FUKCS, though, that’s just stupid.
Ah, a nice mess of homophobia and sexism with a dash of weird anti-asian racism on top.
I’m still all agog at the whole idea that men can get tricked into fucking without birth control.
MGTOW: I don’t want a kid
FeministMarriageWife: Oh, of course not, we’re just having sexy, sexy, sex here, that costs no money at all. This isn’t that normal kind of sex that is traded for money, this is super-free sex that comes with no strings attached!
MGTOW: Well, that’s good. But how can I be sure that you won’t get preggers?
FMW: You can wear a condom!
MGTOW: But I hate condoms. They make me sexy, sexy, sexy sex into sexy, sexy sex. How horrible is that?
FMW: Don’t you worry. You are a wise, wise man to hate normal condoms, but I have a friend with access to a brand new material for making condoms. With this new material, you get the best orgasms ever.
MGTOW: Really?
FMW: Oh, yeah, for realz. Also, it has this awesome feature. If you’re a liar, you won’t even be able to see or feel the condom, so if you notice that your partner doesn’t seem to be able to perceive the condom, you know that they’re not trustworthy about something and you can just not have sex with them at all!
MGTOW: Really? I’ve got to get some of those!
FMW: I always use them. Here, let me put one on you. If you don’t see or hear anything, let me know so I know not to sleep with you and give you an orgasm!
MGTOW: I’m a good guy, it will be fine.
FMW: Pretends to unwrap invisible condom.
MGTOW: Umm, is it on?
FMW: Yeah! Comfortable, huh? Or, wait…. you’re not saying you can’t feel it!
MGTOW: No! No! I totally, I mean, it’s great! Give me my orgasm, I’m ready with the birth control!
…
FMW: [The next day] You were right, wife! That man-person totally fell for it. Now we get another kid and MORE MONEESZZZ!!
…
MGTOW: [9 months later] You mean that there wasn’t a real condom? And now I have to pay child support? D’oh!
Kate that was awesome!
I read that post pretty carefully, and I couldn’t find any reason given for why two straight men would get married. He kind of implies that women will get some nebulous economic benefit out of it, but why the men? Did anyone catch a reason I missed?
Actually, the reason this sounds like MRA screed is David R. Usher is a MRA. I attended Knox, which is also his alma mater, and while I was there in 2005 the college had to block his email address to stop him from spamming professors and students to share his views. If you google his name + Knox College, there’s several articles of his decrying how feminism is totally ruining Knox because there are books on feminism in the library and everything!!1!
I literally couldn’t make any sense out of those quotes. It just made my head hurt. Then I started to re-read the quotes in an effort to understand, and then I realized it wasn’t worth it. This guy had to twist the world into a pretzel in order to justify his bigoted and misogynistic views. This guy must fallen and accidentally ended up with his head lodged in his ass. The sad part is part he’s still trying to think with it. Basically what I’m hearing is that he’s afraid that if women achieve true liberation, they’ll will no longer want to marry douche bags like himself, and then douche baggy life will become meaningless and men will stop being productive. Geez, I didn’t realize that men’s existence was so dependent on women. Get a life.
Wow, that was a lot of typos. Sorry, it’s late, and my head is still spinning from reading those quotes. Sheesh.
The emperor’s new condom. I like it.
“Marriages between two men are destined to be the “marital underclass.” In most cases, these men will become unconsenting “fathers.” ”
(Blinks. Pauses, rubs eyes, reads again. Nope, still doesn’t make any sense.)
Actually, wait, maybe this is the long-awaiting MGTOW plan for the future? To marry other MGTOW? And now they’re really pissed at feminists for coming up with the idea first (because they don’t believe in lesbians.) Poor MRAs, always 10 steps behind the evil matriarchy. If only they had better advance planning skills.
So, gay people are a feminist conspiracy now? I tell you guys, we’re stronger every day!
Anyway, all this mess could be solve by telling to men to use condoms.
Anyway, misandry again! If men don’t work to seduce, keep women and take care (by earning money) of their family, they don’t have any motivation to do anything.
Seriously. Sometimes people just want to get hitched. The last wedding ceremony I went to was with two brides who have no interest in having children.
The idea that some women would not want to have children (or that having children is not always the point of marriage or civil partnership) is completely incomprehensible to most MRAs though.
Whoops, I forgot to sign with my whole name and now my comment is awaiting moderation. :-/
This reminds me of another oh-so-convincing argument I heard recently about how allowing women to drive will cause virginity to die out completely and pornography, prostitution and homosexuality to skyrocket. And earthquakes. I’m pretty sure earthquakes got mentioned, or did I read that somewhere else?
BTW if it ever does come to kicking the faith-heads out of power and replacing them with feminists, what do I have to do pledge my support? Where do I sign up?
Wow… That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in ages. Good find, David.
Hum… I think the only way I can properly express my views of this article is with a UNIX shell:
user@box:/tmp$ wget http://marriagepolicy.org/2011/11/why-same-sex-marriage-is-unconstitutional/
–2011-12-08 02:24:20– http://marriagepolicy.org/2011/11/why-same-sex-marriage-is-unconstitutional/
Resolving marriagepolicy.org… 173.245.60.114, 199.27.134.40
Connecting to marriagepolicy.org|173.245.60.114|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: `index.html’
[ ] 36,550 –.-K/s in 0.03s
2011-12-08 02:24:20 (1.01 MB/s) – `index.html’ saved [36550]
user@box:/tmp$ cat index.html | grep -i -o feminist | wc
45 45 405
user@box:/tmp$ cat index.html | sed -e :a -e ‘s/]*>//g;/</N;//ba' | wc
328 1914 14504
user@tbox:/tmp$ calc 45/1914
~0.02351097178683385580
user@box:/tmp$ cowsay WTF?
______
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^__^
(oo)_______
(__) )/
||—-w |
|| ||
user@box:/tmp$ exit
In an essay that was less than 2000 words, he use the word “feminist” 45 times. That’s nearly 2.4% of all of the words in the essay. Although I have a lot of criticisms of feminism with regards to marriage and family, I’m just going to say that this really doesn’t make the slightest amount of sense.
Rats, the Cowsay contains whitespace, which is not preserved across html. I totally should have known that.
_________________________________________
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^__^
(oo)_______
(__) )/
||----w |
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Noadi:
It’s possible that he genuinely doesn’t. A lot of MRA thinking seems to based on a kind of collective delusion of reference. This is true in a lot of crackpot movements. For example, creationists often assume that evolutionary biology is a deliberate assault on religion. Any explanation that isn’t directly about them (e.g. women just living their lives, or biologists studying the world) is ignored.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
That the funniest thing I’ve seen all week!