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From: akl@hjuxa.UUCP (A. K. Laux)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.social
Subject: Re: more of the same and a related topic
Message-ID: <434@hjuxa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Jul-86 11:55:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: hjuxa.434
Posted: Thu Jul 24 11:55:29 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Jul-86 05:49:05 EDT
References: <1056@watdragon.UUCP> <15040@ucla-cs.ARPA> <4054@sun.uucp> <1971@mtgzz.UUCP>
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp. Holmdel, NJ
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Xref: watmath net.women:11567 net.social:1235
Summary: sorry, I agree with Cheryl

()
  Cheryl Stewart:
  %So why is it that married women are more likely to commit suicide than
  %unmarried women, and married men are less likely to commit suicide than
  %unmarried men?  Statistically, marriage has more negative effects on women 
  %than men?  It is then vailid to conclude that women are more oppressed
  %in marriage than men.  Therefore, divorce can be considered a success for
  %women who find themselves oppressed in marriage.
  %
  %Cheryl
  
In article <1971@mtgzz.UUCP>, eme@mtgzz.UUCP (e.m.eades) writes:
> I object to your attitude that marriage is oppressive to women. 
> Obviously you have made some choices that you
> were not happy with. While divorce does not make you a failure, I do think
> it implies that someone(s) made a mistake somewhere (possibly in getting
> married in the first place).  I don't think that marriage as an institution
> is oppressive, I do think some people make it that way.  I'd guess that
> more of the stress on women has to do with the changing role of women
> in society as a whole than because a woman got married.
> 
> On a slightly different track, why are there so many woman who want to get
> married?  According to the above statistics (and I do know from an article
> that I have read that married women rated themselves the least happy and
> married men rated themselves the most happy) woman do not seem to enjoy
> being married as much as men do, yet most of the single women I know 
> (myself included) want to get married and most of the single men I know
> in the same age group (~25) do not want to get married.  Those men who
> are aprox 25 and are getting or have gotten married recently seem to have
> been given the choice of get married or find someone else.  Am I looking
> at an unusual slice of people or do others find this true also?
> 
> -Beth Eades

Sorry, Beth, we may agree on cats & kittens (net.pets.oldnews), but I'll
have to agree with Cheryl here. In a generic sense, without talking about
individual people, the laws/social customs/whatever make it rather oppressive
to be a wife. A woman DOES surrender a good deal of her individuality when
she marries. Now it's true that there are a LOT of young men and women out
there who are waking up to the "good old boy" system that has prevailed for
so many years, and they are changing it. But both you and I know, as well as
a lot of net.singles and net.women readers, that there are certain males that
shall remain nameless who still have inane and archaic ideas about women.
Fred whatshisname wrote what I hope was a satire, but I've seen real, live
human males who actually think this way. Old habits die hard. The one that
gets me is "Mrs. John Jones"  - whereinheck is it written that the woman lost
her FIRST name, too?! Mrs. Mary Jones, if you please! Just try to keep your
MAIDEN name when you marry - you want to see insurance, credit card and other
companies have a heart attack? ("But you can't DO that!!") BS!

As for why people want to get married, it will vary from couple to couple.
I have yet to run across anyone who was a victim of marriage blackmail -
"Marry me or leave me!" That kind, be it male or female, doesn't rate too
highly on my list.

For the record, I'm divorced. We BOTH made a mistake. It happens. He expected
a good little wife just like mommy to always be there and play maid. The
craziest thing is, he didn't really give any indication of this attitude while
we were dating. Did I know him well enough, you ask? Is ten years enough?

The IDEA of marriage is basically good. Western society has made it hard to
be a wife. 

AKL@DEC