Two friends of mine recently got married. The bride's father is a sort of grizzled old biker guy. He's a Vietnam vet, worked on the Alaska pipeline or something for a while, then he fixed motorcycles for a few decades until he was inured on the job in such a way that he is unable to continue doing so. His wife was a junkie and he raised his kids as a single father. Now he's on disability, he has diabetes, he has a hard time making ends meet and has to borrow money from his kids from time to time just to get by. He's a cranky old bastard, frankly, but at the same time he's a victim of a system that sent him off to war and then chewed him up and spit him out when he got old.
Both my friends are progressive-minded people, neither of them like or approve of the patriarchal implications of the groom asking the father of the bride for his permission to marry his daughter, or of the father giving the bride away, but, well, they're both happy, young, successful, well-educated people with bright futures ahead of them, and he's a cantakerous old guy who basically embodies the death of the American working class.
Being able to give his daughter away at the wedding meant the entire world to him, and had my friend not asked him for his daughter's hand in marriage, he would have felt hurt and insulted and that would have caused problems for their relationship for years to come. He doesn't have much else going on for him, and, to be frank, rubbing his nose in the fact that they find his values outdated, offensive, and embarrassing would seem more than a little cruel, and there would certainly be an argument that that would be classist.
I completely agree with the issues that Nina, Haus, and Flyboy have with the marriage rituals in question. They're beyond offensive, and they do in fact help prop up patriarchy. Any argument to the contrary is just naive. But Nina herself has pointed out that she was raised by a radical feminist, and I think Haus is in a similar situation, and I can't help but think they might see more nuance to the situation if they were saddled with relatives and loved ones with embarrassing and ignorant values.
I know my own family isn't exactly the model of progressive values, and as the 30 year old adult child of some fairly ignorant people (with regard to issues of race and sex and gender and sexuality), I know that there are some that just aren't worth going to war over. I mean, yes, her attitudes and expressed opinions are directly supporting all sorts of injustices and things I find horrible and oppressive, but she's my mom, and if she hasn't gotten it by now, she's just not going to get it, and she's just going to be hurt and offended, and all she's going to get out of it is that her better-educated son is ashamed of her because she didn't go to college and works in the mall.
I think my friend was in a similar situation, and I kind of bristle on her behalf at the sort of absolutism I'm seeing in here. I agree that the personal is political, and that the family and marriage rituals are sites of struggle and blah blah blah, but I think sometimes we need to temper our political zealotry with a little empathy. No, I wouldn't do it myself if I were getting married, and I will be happy to make my feelings on the subject known when and where it's appropriate to do so, but I just wouldn't agree that
"This is one of those issues the correct stance on which is so self-evident for anyone who is at all invested in making the world a better, more egalitarian place - anyone who is at all invested in valuing humanity - that it beggars belief that it needs explanation."
When you're dealing with real people that you love despite their appalling beliefs, it can be more complicated, and I just wouldn't agree that there's no grey zone here. |
