See, for me I actually like the word partner.
Islam doesn't make me a partner, it made me a wife, a subordinate in a chain of command where I had very little.
The idea of calling someone my partner, that kind of means something to me. To know that I'm equal, that important decisions can be shared, with both views being valid since its a partnership etc, that would be nice I think.
Excellent points.
Fuck traditional marriage, the fact that I happened to be officially married to another person means next to nothing to me in terms of the institution this 'marriage' is supposed to represent.
Good for you that you are part of the group of people who are trying to redefine marriage. As a performative act, i.e. something we do to show to the world that we identify with a particular status or norm, marriage (especially the wedding itself) is a social construct, an institution with a history; that whole act is not just an individual choice. Like everything else we do, we are always both performing social norms and sometimes, changing those norms slightly by performing them slightly differently.
It's similar to someone claiming to be Muslim or Christian, yet trying and completely discarding the traditional, institutional baggage that those labels come with. Good for them. Does not mean those institutions will suddenly hold those iconoclastic meanings for everyone else. But over time, words and cultural institutions evolve, as people challenge their meanings, whether by refusing to play along, or by wrestling the old forms into newer ones, or some hybrid of the two approaches.
My relationship with my wife did not change one iota as a result of the fact that we actually got married. Plus there is a lot more to a relationship than just sex/monogamy, my wife is my best friend - I share stuff with her that I wouldn't share with anybody else - and she is also my partner in all things that we participate in.
Don't know why you feel the need to defend your marriage.
As I said earlier:
Like I said though, for those people who genuinely want monogamy, not just because they think that's what is expected of them, they should find other people who want the same and be monogamous together
Nothing wrong with that at all. I love seeing stories of people like that - there are too few who have been together for decades and decades and been happy.
Those who are inclined towards open relationships should not have to conform to monogamous standards.
Those are able to responsibly enjoy promiscuity with others like them, should not be restricted by those of us who never liked doing that or no longer feel the need to.
Just like monogamists should not be subjected to cheaters, many of whom may be inherently non-monogamous but have given in to the social pressures to perform monoamy, a performance they can not sustain and who then end up doing unethical things, worst of all, betraying the trust and confidence of their monogamous partners.
Sure there are societal pressures but both you and I are lucky enough to live in societies with quite large degrees of freedoms, where one can pretty much make one's own choices in terms of relationships etc. Hell, when I was a teenager my parents directly told me that they would accept me if I happened to be gay.
Great, good for you. So do you think everyone even in these societies we live in has that kind of freedom? Do you think everyone's parents say that to their kids? And how did these freedoms come about?
Again, it seems like you are defending something nobody here has argued against, i.e. that we have freedoms, despite social pressures. It is implicit...
All that said, most people are not inclined towards resisting social pressures in one way or another. Thus when systemic social norms are challenged, confronted or changed, a lot of people get scared, threatened or insecure as we disrupt the easy, familiar scripts many people still consider the natural, universal formulae for a "normal life".
The freedoms we cherish were not a fluke; they are a result of lots and lots of people challenging what was in their times, considered normal, whether it was the status of women and children as subhuman property, or the bans on interracial marriages, or the still ongoing bans and legal restrictions on same sex marriage, and consensual polygamy.
The choice of living in a monogamous relationship was my own.
And you are an outside observer, ahistorical, and completely unaffected by any and all social norms and pressures, ok got it.
Is that because you are attributing meaning to those words that might or might not be there?
The term 'my husband' or 'my wife' does not necessarily imply a subordinate relationship. Afaic it simply means that I am officially married to a person, that's all.
Meanings of all words are socially constructed and individually performed. All terms have ascribed historical meanings, it's not like these words were invented by you or me or any one person at birth. Individually, we each can and do reascribe different meanings to some words, but it takes mass efforts and generations of such rescriptions for those meanings to change for people and societies at large.
If you have the privilege of saying "afaic these words mean this and nothing else in their connotation or historical usage shall I acknowledge", then so does everyone else have the privilege to ascribe their own meanings, and/or to acknowledge the socially prescribed meanings for those words.
So forcing your surname on somebody is cool as long as you get to do it?
How about preserving your surname and talking your husbands name on top so that you have two surnames. Or you and your future husband could simply retain your original surnames.
In case you are wondering my wife and myself do have different surnames.
The fact that millions of women still change their surnames to their husbands' is a residue of patriarchal ownership customs wherein the woman, an object of beauty and an instrument of reproduction, was transferred from the father's to their husband's property upon marriage.
Indeed, if a woman does not change her name, from her father's to her husband's, she is still part of that tradition, as she still has her father's name (this last bit there applies to men too, who are also mostly surnamed after fathers).
I agree with keeping your own names, for both men and women, and I like the idea of a couple both changing their surnames, either to something that is a combination of both your and your partner's names or to a word that has a special meaning to the couple. Names, like all words, are symbols and they can symbolize anything from an attachment to traditional norms to a need to rebel against those norms, to a drive for creative expression, etc. etc.
Honestly, it is still a bit unclear what you are trying to defend. Monogamy? Marriage?
In both cases, just like with polyamory, I see no problem with a freely chosen system that works for everyone actually involved in the relationship.
If you are defending the fact that we have freedom to choose in many cases how we live, I never said that we don't. But we do not have ultimate freedom; We are individuals living in social realities. To deny our individuality OR the effects on us of socialization, social constructs and history, is to only get half the picture. It is possible to accept that yes racism, classism, sexism, etc. exist and effect everyone, and that it is possible to fight, work and change the system. The rift between individuality and social conditioning is based on a false binary that denies either that humans are social animals, or that humans have individual agency.
Topic: Whats your view on Promiscuity?