Forced Marriage
The government has made an announcement today that they
want to make forced marriages illegal. I have to confess that I thought that
forced marriages were already illegal but apparently there is insufficient
stringency in existing law to prevent this abhorrent practice from happening.
As if forced marriage wasn’t bad enough, can you imagine
what it must be like to be a young woman living a relatively contented and
peaceful life in Asia suddenly finding herself shipped over to the cold and
heartless land of Britain, to be placed in a situation where she is living with
someone and sleeping with someone for the first time and she doesn’t want to be
here?
Can you imagine what it must feel like? Can you imagine
what it must feel like to sleep night after night with a man that you find
quite disgusting? Can you imagine if that man then tries to have sex with you
when you have never experienced sex with another and are quite frankly terrified
of this oppressive invasion of your being? Can you imagine having to do what
your husband and your family say without any possibility of being your own
person?
Can you imagine this?
It is not a story that is a fable and a figment of imagination
that some racist conjures up. This is happening to far too many women.
Of course it is wrong, of course it is abhorrent and of
course Cameron is right to strengthen the law to protect these women. However,
as there always is with this government, I would have been far happier with
this announcement if it hadn’t come as part of a package on immigration. If he
had been speaking about the rights of all young women, for instance, then it
might have been more credible. However, fair do’s. At least it has brought this
vile practice to the attention of the media and the general public.
But let us look at this a little closer. Where should one
stop? Should we ban just forced marriage or should we consider banning arranged
marriages as well? Or perhaps we might consider banning marriage altogether?
Let’s look once more at those questions.
Can you imagine what it must feel like? Can you imagine
what it must feel like to sleep night after night with a man that you find
quite disgusting? Can you imagine if that man then tries to have sex with you
when you have never experienced sex with another and are quite frankly terrified
of this oppressive invasion of your being? Can you imagine having to do what
your husband and your family say without any possibility of being your own
person?
Can you imagine this?
Yes, I am sure that there are plenty of women who can imagine
this because this is the reality of their own marriages, be it forced, arranged
or entered into of their own volition.
Whatever way you look at it, marriage is a shackle that
restricts personal freedom, even for those who are happily ensconced in
coupledom. Even those who are blissfully happy have to acknowledge that there
is a part of themselves that has been lost to the very state of two-ness.
I’m biased. I admit it, and I am genuinely not trying to
be flippant here.
If we were starting society now for the first time, I
doubt very much that we would see marriage as the aspirational modes of living
that so many imply that it is.
Why not marriage then? For the very reasons mentioned above.
It’s abhorrent.
When you sign that contract, you lose something of
yourself. You may not feel it at the time. You may be all stoical and consider
that it is a bond that embraces the fact that you love another human being to
the point of never wanting to be parted from them. But is this really the only
way to demonstrate this, even if this in itself is a realistic thought in the
first place? Isn’t the greatest love to acknowledge that the person you love is
a human being in their own right?
A marriage does restrict. A marriage by the nature of the
beast places two people together in a contract. In doing so, two become one.
That is the beast. That is what marriage is.
Marriage means that all decisions apparently have to be
shared. Marriage means that you cannot go off and do what you like without
considering the needs of another human being.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I happen to believe that
any relationship and any friendship has to consider the needs of others. That
is what friendship is about but the obligation within marriage puts such
personal needs on a different dimension. It diminishes them to the point that
individual needs are almost non-existent.
So sad.
So yes, forced marriages are despicable. I have met a
couple of women who have had forced marriages. I also went to school with
people who suddenly, at the age of fifteen, disappeared off the face of the
earth, only to reappear a few years later with a ring on the finger and a
couple of kids in tow. I remember one poor girl who was a bright young thing,
terribly shy and timid and yet once she had gained her confidence with a small
group of people, had the most wonderful sense of humour. Just as we had got to
know her, just as she had found her voice and her light, she vanished, never to
return, having been flown over to Pakistan to marry a cousin. It was truly
shocking.
I wonder what happened to her and whether she ever
returned to the UK.
But what of arranged marriages? Again, I am not being
flippant but if there has to be such an institution of marriage then this
arranged marriage is probably not a bad thing, especially if there is a clause
within the marriage that says you can go off and bonk whoever you want,
enjoying the full force of your sexuality with others if that is what takes
your fancy. Arranged marriages to ‘protect the line’ or make a viable contract
between two families wouldn’t seem so bad if all involved could agree that it
was simply a business arrangement. After all, isn’t this what royal families
have been doing for centuries?
The other day, there was a programme on the radio about the marriage arrangements for Queen Elizabeth, the virgin queen (why was she so named when it is clear from all records that she had a perfectly healthy and fulfilled libido, thank you very much?). All was arranged for her to marry her Frenchman (lucky gal) despite the language problem because it would strengthen both countries against the dreaded Spanish. Only there was a slight stumbling block. He was a staunch Catholic who refused to renege on his devotion to the Papa.
Sometimes, there are insurmountable differences in
personal philosophy, and indeed religion.
Seriously though, who in their right minds can possibly
suggest that arranged marriages are a good idea? How can any other human being,
even a family member, especially a family member, know another human being well
enough to make such a huge decision for them? It’s pretty abhorrent too really,
isn’t it?
I appreciate that there are cultural and religious
adherences that make this practice happen but it doesn’t make it right.
People are people and nobody can possibly tell another human
being what to think, what to feel, what to do and certainly nobody should tell
another human being that they have to live the rest of their lives with a
person that their family deem to be the right choice.
Whatever happened to personal choice?
So that brings us to a chosen marriage where both parties
are in agreement to the contract.
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I am not quite
the same person as I was when I was 25. I was a different person at 35 too and
I was a series of different people at 45!
The choices that I made about many things at the age of
25 were different from the ones I might make now. I made a choice to marry in
my late twenties and whilst it was not an arrangement or a forced marriage,
there was certainly an expectation from family, friends, society for me to do
the honourable thing and stick that ring on my finger.
Marriage is an expectation, to the point that people
aspire to it, even late in life because that is what they think they ought to
do.
Yesterday, Sir Paul McCartney got married for the third
time. There is always the possibility that had his dear Linda not passed away
he might have only had one wife. However, she sadly succumbed to the dreaded
cancer. So he married once more.
Surely having endured what the onlooker conceived as a
challenging union one would possibly consider not getting married again, but
some people seem to be addicted to the whole concept.
Why isn’t it enough for some people to just accept that
they are committed to one another without the need to declare it to the world?
But that is what people expect. Other people have expectations, marriage or
not. Other people assume, and one of the assumptions people make is that if two
people love one another then surely they must eventually settle down together
into coupledom and get married.
I am suggesting, albeit slightly flippantly, that there
is a possibility that every marriage is forced or arranged by the very fact
that societal expectation forces us to think in a tunnel or a box and a closed
one at that, with only one viable means of expressing commitment and love to
another.
I am suggesting that marriage is forced and that this
whole notion of conjoining is something that in any other part of life would be
seen as an invasion of privacy and in direct contradiction to the Human Rights
articles.
Calling marriage slavery may go a little far, although in
some forced marriage situations, it sadly happens. However, shackles is
shackles, and once a person feels those shackles, then it really is time to get
the key and get the hell out.
So why is Zenpuss writing about this? What has this to do
with sexuality, which is what I am most interested about?
Well, I am also concerned about women and their rights,
and I am also concerned about human beings and how they can live the best life
possible. I happen to believe that sexuality is a key component of a good life,
and if I had restricted my sexuality to the marriage that I was in, then I
would have lived a half life.
We are only here once. Yes, we fuck up. Yes, we all make
huge mistakes. Yes, we all have choices and sometimes we make the right choices
too, and anyone who makes a choice to be sexually enlightened is making a right
choice, even if it contravenes all those societal rules and contractual
arrangements.
No piece of paper should stand between me and my
sexuality. No piece of paper should suggest that I cannot be the person that I
am and that I want to be. No piece of paper or ring around my finger should
prevent me from doing anything.
And yet it did.
Yes, I entered into marriage freely, though I have to say
there was a huge expectation that I would do this, and I know for a fact that
decades on people still feel that expectation rather than desire. However, if
you look at this institution objectively, it cannot possibly be right.
Restrictions, shackles, just not being completely
yourself, ever, means that marriage, whatever type it is, feels as though it
lacks liberty.
Forced marriages are merely an exacerbation of this
feeling; arranged ones, a convenience for those involved.
We expect marriage in this society and we expect
conformity but what we tend to forget is that there are individual human beings
within this, and as ever, we always forget the needs of the individual, and we
certainly forget the sexual needs of the individual.
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