Amanda writes about gender, Part 2: Marriage (1 of ?)

Even when I would have said I wanted to get married, I don't think I ever believed I actually would. The strongest evidence that I wouldn't get married was my track record of romantic relationships, which is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent. This is, I understand, pretty uncommon for a 27 year old, but apart from occasional angst ("Why doesn't anyone want me???"), which I'll get to, it hasn't had much of a negative impact on me. You might think that never having been in a romantic relationship, and never having made much of an effort to begin one, people would have been tipped off to the idea that maybe that just wasn't my thing. However, when I started announcing that I didn't want to get married, no one believed me. This was a weird, unsettling experience, but one that kind of made sense to me at the same time. 

What actually got me thinking about the relationship between marriage and women wasn't so much my decision not to get married (or let's say, not to pursue marriage), but this reaction to that decision. So why does everyone expect me to want to get married, and why did I want to get married for such a long time? For starters, engagements and weddings are the ultimate source of social approval. On the most superficial level, you're pretty much guaranteed at least 100 Facebook likes, which I have to assume would be fairly satisfying in itself. Then there's the whole wedding planning process and the wedding itself, where someone declares their love for you publicly and emphatically, potentially hundreds of people tell you how beautiful you are and compliment you, and you get all kinds of nice kitchen appliances and dishes that match. There is literally no other way for these things to happen at the same time (or, not without people saying a lot of not very nice things about you behind your back). 

At a deeper level, the social approval a woman gets from marriage is more insidious. Not to put too fine a point on it, you have practically no value as a human being if you are an unmarried woman in our society. People don't know what to make of you, and you're most likely to be viewed as an object of pity. Intentional singleness for a woman is so anathema to most people that they reject it as a possibility. I only feel comfortable speaking for myself on this point, but romantic rejection, even when it's subtle, even when the possibility of an actual romantic attachment had been remote, and even when the potential romantic partner is totally undesirable, always feels like a punch to the gut, but it's more than that. Any romantic rejection feels like a judgment on my value, and not just as a romantic partner, but also as a human being. It's never, "Well, I guess that wasn't meant to be," it's, "I don't deserve to be loved," or, "I hope someday someone sees my worth." That's crazy, and to be clear it doesn't last very long, but it still happens, even though I rationally don't hold a lot of stock in men's ability to make determinations about my value as a human being (which I will discuss in more detail in another post). 

In contrast to that experience of rejection, a wedding is an affirmation of a woman's value. A woman who is getting married has found someone who appreciates and loves her, therefore society can confidently understand that she deserves to be appreciated and loved. But it's a bit of a double-edged sword, because although a wedding is an affirmation, it's also the end of her story. Sure, she'll do things afterward, but none of them will be as dramatic as falling in love and getting married. This attitude toward marriage was one of the reasons having some of my closest friends get engaged and married was so disturbing to me. Here were incredible women who were brilliant and hilarious and talented, who, I was certain, had incredibly bright futures and so much excitement in front of them -- but this was the end of those stories, right? After this, wasn't it just buy a house, have some kids, work? Of course, I wasn't thinking any of that consciously, but that was pretty much the only narrative I'd ever been given about women, and even the part of me that knew that my friends had goals and interests they were going to pursue after marriage (and for the rest of their lives) couldn't get past this story line. 

A couple of closing notes about marriage: I have a lot of friends who are married, going to be married, or plan to get married eventually, and this has been an excellent decision in practically every case. I'm so supportive, in fact, I've done, and plan to do, some of the marrying myself. I certainly don't believe getting married is necessarily a bad thing to do, and I'd be open to the possibility of getting married under the right circumstances (especially if my need for a KitchenAid mixer increases at all). As my mother has told me many times, there are many advantages and opportunities for personal growth associated with marriage, and I don't want to diminish those. For me though, and especially right now, the idea of ever getting married seems borderline ridiculous, and for the record, there's truly nothing you could tell me that would change my mind about that.