Modeling

[lillibet]

Much of this comes out of a conversation I had earlier with dpolicar.



I find it really useful sometimes to try to figure out a way of thinking that would lead someone to position obviously wrong to me. Today I was thinking about homosexuality and how it seems to be considered by most of the English people I know, a sort of "well, of course everyone did it in school, but we're not kids anymore and it's certainly not something one speaks of in polite company," attitude. dpolicar commented that he's been told that this is also a common attitude among the Japanese, that it's childish. He compared it to his mother's attitude toward people of his generation who continue to move from job to job, instead of sticking with one company for forty years, as her generation aspired to do.

Hearing that, and thinking about how employment has changed in the past few decades, something clicked in my rudimentary model of someone being anti-gay marriage in specific and anti-homosexuality in general. I think the problem is that we're working from some entirely different basic ideas about how society functions.

I mean, if you take as a given that it is the responsibility of men to protect and provide for women and for adults of both sexes to procreate in order to ensure continuation of the tribe/carrying on of the family name and fortune/eldercare/etc. then yeah, under those terms, homosexuality is clearly dead wrong. Homosexuals are shirking their duties. They are lingering in an adolescent state of self-gratification, based on what they want and what they like. They are refusing to take up the mantle of adulthood, giving precedence to personal preference over responsibility. Even in societies where homosexuals have not been shunned, they've been shunted into occupations that are outside of the business of society--shamans, actors, artists.

As a side note, the former set of assumptions about what it means to be an adult also disregards the idea of sex as being fun. It's immaterial, given those priorities, whether or not one enjoys sex. In fact, enjoying sex is frequently discouraged by the Powers That Be as frivolous, selfish, and--worst of all--distracting. Like love in marriage, in most societies good sex is a nice potential side effect, not the point of one's life. The idea that women not only can but should enjoy sex is still not something everyone believes. As someone once said, conservatives hate homosexuals because they can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

Now, from this perspective, what homosexuals are asking in campaigning for the right to marry is to have their child-like status given the societal stamp of responsible adulthood. They want the rights and privileges that adults contributing to the business of society have, without taking up the responsibilities. And therefore they are threatening straight marriage, because if gay people are permitted to marry, then marriage no longer marks the abandonment of childish pleasure seeking. It is no longer a pact with the rest of society to participate in the business of taking care of the women and making babies to carry on our way of life.

Of course, from my perspective, they've got it all wrong. Women don't need taking care of. Women are adults in their own right and responsible for taking care of themselves. And, really, much as I'd like to have kids of my own, I'm under no illusion that what the world needs now is more people. The business of society should not, in my opinion, being the perpetuation of our own genetic and cultural lines, but an acceptance of ourselves as part of a much larger world. My marriage is not constituted in order to have children, or even to provide for me--much as I appreciate that jason237 values what I bring to our lives enough to foot the bills--I was doing okay before I met him and if I had to go it on my own, or even if we just decided it would be better to have another income, I'm confident that I could do okay again. And I don't think that I'm at all unusual, as a straight person, in marrying for personal enjoyment and satisfaction--I think that's actually the way most people do it now. But that's a relatively new thing and perhaps it's not surprising that a lot of people haven't caught up. Or perhaps they do realize that these assumptions are no longer valid, but they've got hold of the wrong end of the telescope and see the process of liberalization in love as being the cause, rather than the effect, and think that they can still combat it successfully.

I make no claims that any particular individual thinks this, but I'm finding it a useful model for explaining positions that are deeply mystifying to me, so I thought I'd share. Perhaps it's time to move the argument back up the logic tree a few steps and do a better job of defining terms in the public discourse.

Comments

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I think this is a useful way of looking at it, and in some ways, I actually agree with it. (Not in terms of its implications for gay marriage, though!)

I have always maintained that love was not a sufficient reason to marry someone. I believe that the main point of getting married is to build a future together, and I mean that in a fairly practical way. Knowing that you're going to be together with this person for the rest of your lives means that you can develop truly long-term plans. You can make sacrifices today for something that won't come to fruition for decades. One of you can leave the working world in order to raise children or go back to school without any resentment that they're not contributing financially, because it's part of your long-term plan as a family. And so on.

Obviously, I think it's best to marry someone whose company you enjoy and whose presence in your bed brings you pleasure, but I actually think those things are considerably less important than some people do -- and that with the genuine desire of both parties to make the marriage work, those things can be learned. I know a number of people who've had arranged marriages, and they seem quite happy with their lives and with their spouses.

[thatwesguy.livejournal.com]

Boy, I'll bet you're fun in the sack.

No, seriously, though. I think that there's a lot to be said for that worldview insofar as it produces stable families and stable lives. But I just can't get my head around the idea that ignoring physical chemistry (or, to your point, knocking it down in importance a bunch of pegs) is part of a ticket to happiness.

I could see how an arranged marriage could happen to work out well if you were very, very lucky.

I could also see how one could lead a full and rich life from within a prison cell.

But neither of these outcomes sound particularly likely to me.

What I'm really driving at is this: is it really possible (unlikely though it seems to me at present) that my family values (namely, interact with people primarily in the ways in which you are able to exploit synergism) aren't serving my future well at all?

I can buy that love isn't sufficient for marriage. But I am hearing you say that it also isn't necessary, and that sounds to me like a one-way ticket to problems. Am I mis-hearing? Or misunderstanding?

Also, I don't buy that phsycial chemistry can be trained. Do you have experience to the contrary?

Thanks!

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I also have a few friends in arranged marriages, all of whom seem reasonably content. My one close friend in such a thing is actually one of the happier married people I know and we've talked a lot about her situation.

It's all about expectations. What she expects from marriage is respect, courtesy and shared values (e.g. education, dual-career, etc.). She did not expect romantic love, she did not expect sex to be anything more than pleasant, in short, she did not expect her personal happiness to be satisfied by her marriage, although she did demand that it not be impeded by same.

Could I have been happy in a marriage arranged by me for my parents? I don't think so. I think my expectations are too much a product of my society and that in this society parents are often not in the best position to know their children well. But I have sometimes envied my friends who were raised within a context where they could accept this solution.

I've got a couple of exes whom I would have married and I think we would have been fine. I got lucky and they pulled away and I went off and found someone who suits me more exactly than I had imagined possible--but I still think either of the other relationships could have been sustained and provided reasonable satisfaction to us both. But, fortunately for me, they were fools :)

Also, I do think that physical chemistry can be trained from neutral/weak to positive/strong, if not from negative. None of my best-in-the-end lovers have started out as particularly notable.

One last note about arranged marriage--it worked acceptably well for a lot of people for a long time. Like any system of human interaction, there were abuses and failures. It was only when people's expectations changed, following the development of romantic love as a societal concept, that it began to chafe. I'm perfectly happy that's the case, but I think there was a baby in that bathwater and where we are now has problems of its own.

None of which has anything to do with my feelings about gay marriage, of course :)

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Boy, I'll bet you're fun in the sack.

Snerk. Well, I wouldn't really be the best person to comment on that. ;-)

I can buy that love isn't sufficient for marriage. But I am hearing you say that it also isn't necessary, and that sounds to me like a one-way ticket to problems

As lillibet said, it's all a matter of expectations. Everyone I know who's in an arranged marriage would tell you that they love their spouse -- but that this is something that developed over time, as a result of their commitment, respect, shared values, etc., rather than something they came into the marriage with.

One thing you might want to consider is the question of why people who have loved each other fall out of love. I think there are a number of causes, but that some of the time, it's a matter of failing to continue to behave in a loving way. When people stop paying attention to each other's stories about how their day went, stop buying each other little gifts, stop taking holidays and anniversaries seriously, etc. I think it has the effect of allowing the mental patterns of love to wither, until eventually the people involved reach a state where they really don't love each other anymore. Conversely, it seems to me that doing those things, even when you're not necessarily motivated by being head-over-heels in love, builds up mental patterns that lead to the feeling of love.

So anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that it all depends on what you mean by love. I wouldn't personally recommend marrying someone you didn't love and respect, but I also think that the sort of love that sustains a marriage is something that can be very much influenced by what you actually do on a day-to-day basis to maintain it.

And yes, I love my husband very much, and have for more than sixteen years.

Also, I don't buy that phsycial chemistry can be trained. Do you have experience to the contrary?

I think there are certainly people with whom you feel an intense physical chemistry, and there are others with whom sex is pleasant but not earth-shattering, at least not on a regular basis. I'm not really sure that kind of intense physical chemistry can be trained, but I do think pleasant sex can become more intense and passionate if the people involved work at it.

Whether intense physical chemistry is required for a happy marriage is something each individual needs to answer for themselves, but I definitely think its importance can be overrated. I'd rather marry someone I very much enjoyed spending time with outside of the bedroom and had a pleasant sex life with, than someone I had an earth-shattering sex life with, but didn't really enjoy hanging out with in the living room.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Going back through my own posts I realized I'd never mentioned how interesting this is. It ties in really nicely with some things I'm working out about how the structure of marriage and the family are controlled. So nice to be able to look at the different social articulations, and how they expose different assumptions. Thanks!

[muffyjo]

Conversely, the disassociation with thinking their actions through is, to me, a sign of lack of personal responsibility. The actions taken by this course of thinking are based on assumptions which bear looking at. Then again, I feel the same way about people who talk about the literal bible. I'm glad they see fit to do some reference work, looking up things in the Bible can be a good place to start for inspiration, but you gotta remember that the English version (at least) was translated by monks who used the previous translations of at least 6 people, one of whom was killed for heresy in believing that he was capable of translating the bible into English!

I might argue that while they think they are being adults, from a different perspective they are also being child-like in making decisions based on suppositions instead of their own research.

[dpolicar]

This is, incidentally, related somewhat to the Lakoff-inspired article I recently linked to, presenting the argument that the conservative family model is built on a belief in "inherited" rather than "negotiated" obligations. The idea that, as a man, I have an obligation to find a wife and get me some kids and provide for them in various prescribed ways is an inherited-obligation model (regardless of whether, in violating it, I am marking myself as childish or something worse)... the idea that, as a person, I get to decide what obligations are part of my relationships (and the other people in those relationships get to, as weel) is very much in conflict with it.