by either partner – butonly wives have the right to oppose it. They also automatically get half of the bloke’s property list – whether currently owned or due for inheritance – whilst her landlord portfolio remains off the table. Meanwhile, over in Australia, there’s a ‘Mistress Law’ whereby a married man’s assets can now readily be accessed by the other woman. In a breakthrough test case, the bit-on-the-side told press: ‘I gave him the best years of my life. He always told me he would look after me, then he left me. I had committed myself fully to him for all those years. So this is also about giving our relationship a validity.’
Er, forget validity. This is about punishment and female self-entitlement. Why couldn’t she look after herself like every other adult on the planet?
I put this radical theory to Suzanne Venker, journalist, author and professional feather-ruffler. Speaking to me from St Louis, she tells me in no uncertain terms that the problem is women wanting to have their cake and eat it. See, I told you she was controversial.
‘We messed with the old marriage structure and now it’s broken,’ she says
Back in the day, stay-at-home mothers got a financial reward in divorce settlements because child-rearing doesn’t pay cash, which was fair – that’s an option afforded to women by working husbands. It’s teamwork.Now, we want total independence from men, but if we divorce one – even without having kids – we still expect to get alimony forever. We can’t have it both ways.
This, along with bridezillas and the prospect of endless domestic criticisms, is exactly why we’re saying ‘I don’t’ rather than ‘I do’. Men need marriage like a fish needs a bicycle.
‘Many women have been raised to think of men as the enemy,’ Venker adds:
It’s precisely this dynamic – women good, men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. After decades of browbeating, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault. The ‘rise’ of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off.
Maybe she has a point. In one way, the appeal of marriage is like old VHS tapes. We look at them via our childhood with a warm, nostalgic glow. Almost through a sepia-toned Instagram filter. But deep down we know the quality was always a bit shit – you’d be ten minutes into
The Goonies
(which you had to watch that night or face a fine) and be stuck manually adjusting the tracking,which didn’t make a difference anyway. Yet people had faith in it because it was the best option they had. And big money fuelled the fire. Blockbuster was one of the biggest business models in its sector – it was a tent pole in home rental movie revenue. But suddenly, without warning, the bottom fell out of the market. Change happened. Ideas developed, thinking shifted. People wanted greater convenience. First, this came in the form of DVDs – something lighter, faster and more understated – which, at the risk of battering a metaphor to death, is what marriage experienced with registry offices. They were modernised, compact, less-is-more. Then, like blu-ray or special edition boxsets, they too became pimped, like eloping to Gretna Green or drive-thru chapels in Las Vegas.
Still, behind all the clever technology and shiny, new rebranding remained an ageing transaction. People were still asked to buy.
Eventually, like the free love philosophy of the ’60s, LoveFilm ditched that altogether, meaning that, with new technology, we didn’t even need to leave the house to get what we wanted (although I’m saying absolutely nothing about mail-order brides here). More recently, the once leading concept behind Blockbuster was boiled down to live streaming on Netflix, which created a game-changer when it simply allowed entertainment – read: pleasure – to be enjoyed on demand.
Today, people
Er, forget validity. This is about punishment and female self-entitlement. Why couldn’t she look after herself like every other adult on the planet?
I put this radical theory to Suzanne Venker, journalist, author and professional feather-ruffler. Speaking to me from St Louis, she tells me in no uncertain terms that the problem is women wanting to have their cake and eat it. See, I told you she was controversial.
‘We messed with the old marriage structure and now it’s broken,’ she says
Back in the day, stay-at-home mothers got a financial reward in divorce settlements because child-rearing doesn’t pay cash, which was fair – that’s an option afforded to women by working husbands. It’s teamwork.Now, we want total independence from men, but if we divorce one – even without having kids – we still expect to get alimony forever. We can’t have it both ways.
This, along with bridezillas and the prospect of endless domestic criticisms, is exactly why we’re saying ‘I don’t’ rather than ‘I do’. Men need marriage like a fish needs a bicycle.
‘Many women have been raised to think of men as the enemy,’ Venker adds:
It’s precisely this dynamic – women good, men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. After decades of browbeating, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault. The ‘rise’ of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off.
Maybe she has a point. In one way, the appeal of marriage is like old VHS tapes. We look at them via our childhood with a warm, nostalgic glow. Almost through a sepia-toned Instagram filter. But deep down we know the quality was always a bit shit – you’d be ten minutes into
The Goonies
(which you had to watch that night or face a fine) and be stuck manually adjusting the tracking,which didn’t make a difference anyway. Yet people had faith in it because it was the best option they had. And big money fuelled the fire. Blockbuster was one of the biggest business models in its sector – it was a tent pole in home rental movie revenue. But suddenly, without warning, the bottom fell out of the market. Change happened. Ideas developed, thinking shifted. People wanted greater convenience. First, this came in the form of DVDs – something lighter, faster and more understated – which, at the risk of battering a metaphor to death, is what marriage experienced with registry offices. They were modernised, compact, less-is-more. Then, like blu-ray or special edition boxsets, they too became pimped, like eloping to Gretna Green or drive-thru chapels in Las Vegas.
Still, behind all the clever technology and shiny, new rebranding remained an ageing transaction. People were still asked to buy.
Eventually, like the free love philosophy of the ’60s, LoveFilm ditched that altogether, meaning that, with new technology, we didn’t even need to leave the house to get what we wanted (although I’m saying absolutely nothing about mail-order brides here). More recently, the once leading concept behind Blockbuster was boiled down to live streaming on Netflix, which created a game-changer when it simply allowed entertainment – read: pleasure – to be enjoyed on demand.
Today, people
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