Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots Seksuele ontwikkeling Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Prostitutie Pornografie"And the philosopher (at least the English-speaking philosopher), as with most issues of socially controversial or sexual dimensions, ignores the question almost altogether." John McMURTRY - "Monogamy - A critique", p.587
John McMURTRY
"Monogamy - A critique"
The Monist, Vol. 56, No. 4, Contemporary Moral Issues (October 1972), pp. 587-599
"Almost all of us have entered or will one day enter a specifically standardized form of monogamous marriage. This cultural requirement is so very basic to our existence that we accept it for most part as a kind of intractable given: dictated by the laws of God, Nature, Government and Good Sense all at once. Though it is perhaps unusual for a social practice to be so promiscuously underwritten, we generally find comfort rather than curiosity in this fact and seldom wonder how something could be divinely inspired, biologically determined, coerced and reasoned out all at the same time. We simply take for granted."(587)
"And the philosopher (at least the English-speaking philosopher), as with most issues of socially controversial or sexual dimensions, ignores the question almost altogether."(587)
[Een mooie veeg uit de pan voor de filosofen.]
"The greatest obstacle to the adequate understanding of our monogamy institution has been the failure to identify clearly and systematically the full complex of principles it involves. There are four such principles, each carrying enormous restrictive force and together constituting a massive social control mechanism that has never, so far as I know, been fully schematized." [mijn nadruk] (588)
Hij bespreekt nu die vier principes.
"1. The partners are required to enter a formal contractual relation: (a) whose establishment demands a specific official participant, certain conditions of the contractors (legal age, no blood ties, etc.) and a standard set of procedures; (b) whose governing terms are uniform for all and exactly prescribed by law; and (c) whose dissolution may only be legally effected by the decision of state representatives."(588)
"The ways in which this elaborate principle of contractual requirement are importantly restrictive are obvious. One may not enter into a marriage union without entering into a contract presided over by a state-investured official. One may not set any of the terms of the contractual relationship by which one is bound for life. And one cannot dissolve the contract without legal action and costs, court proceedings and in many places actual legislation. (The one and only contract in all English-speaking law that is not dissoluble by the consent of the contracting parties.) The extent of control here—over the most intimate and putatively “loving” relationships in all social intercourse—is so great as to be difficult to catalogue without exciting in oneself a sense of disbelief."(588)
[Precies. Je kunt wel gaan samenwonen, maar dan krijg je:]
"employment and job discrimination, exclusion from housing and lodging facilities, special legal disablements, loss of social and moral status (consider such phrases as “living in sin,” “make her an honest woman,” etc.), family shame and embarrassment, and so on."(589)
"2. The number of partners involved in the marriage must be two and only two (as opposed to three, four, five or any of the almost countless other possibilities of intimate union)."(589)
"This second principle of our specific form of monogamy (the concept of “one marriage,” it should be pointed out, is consistent with any number of participating partners) is perhaps the most important and restrictive of the four principles we are considering. Not only does it confine us to just one possibility out of an enormous range, but it confines us to that single possibility which involves the least number of people, two. It is difficult to conceive of a more thoroughgoing mechanism for limiting extended social union and intimacy. The fact that this monolithic restriction seems so “natural” to us (if it were truly “natural” of course, there would be no need for its rigorous cultural prescription by everything from severe criminal law to ubiquitous housing regulations) simply indicates the extent to which its hold is implanted in our social structure. It is the institutional basis of what I will call the “binary frame of sexual consciousness,” a frame through which all our heterosexual relationships are typically viewed (“two’s company, three’s a crowd”) and in light of which all larger circles of intimacy seem almost inconceivable."(589-590)
"3. No person may participate in more than one marriage at a time or during a lifetime (unless the previous marriage has been officially dissolved by, normally, one partner’s death or successful divorce)."(590)
"4. No married person may engage in any sexual relationship with any person whatever other than the marriage partner."(590)
"In other words, the fourth and final principle of our marriage institution involves not only a prohibition of sexual intercourse per se outside one’s wedlock (this term deserves pause) but a prohibition of all one’s erotic relations whatever outside this bond. The penalties for violation here are as various as they are severe, ranging from permanent loss of spouse, children, chattel, and income to job dismissal and social ostracism. (...) The sheer weight and totality of this restriction is surely one of the great wonders of all historical institutional control."(590-591)
"Perhaps the most celebrated justification over the years has proceeded from a belief in a Supreme Deity who secretly utters sexual and other commands to privileged human representatives."(591)
"If we put aside such arguments, we are left I think with two major claims. The first is that our form of monogamous marriage promotes a profound affection between the partners which is not only of great worth in itself but invaluable as a sanctuary from the pressures of outside society."(591)
"The second major claim for the defence is that monogamy provides a specially loving context for child upbringing. However here again there are no grounds at all for concluding that it does so as, or any more, effectively than other possible forms of marriage... (...) Furthermore, the fact that at least half the span of a normal monogamous marriage involves no child-upbringing at all is disastrously overlooked here, as is the reinforcing fact that there is no reference to or mention of the quality of child-upbringing in any of the prescriptions connected with it."(591-592)
"There is, it seems, little to recommend the view that monogamy specially promotes “profound affection” between the partners or a “loving context” for child-upbringing. Such claims are simply without force. On the other hand, there are several aspects to the logic and operation of the four principles of this institution which suggest that it actually inhibits the achievement of these desiderata."(592)
"Taking such things into consideration, it seems difficult to lend credence to the view that the four principles of our form of monogamous marriage constitute a structure beneficial either to the marriage partners themselves or to their offspring (or indeed to anyone else). One is moved to seek for some other ground of the institution, some ground that lurks beneath the reach of our conventional apprehensions."()
"The ground of our marriage institution, the essential principle that underwrites all four restrictions, is this: the maintenance by one man or woman of the effective right to exclude indefinitely all others from erotic access to the conjugal partner."(594)
"In other words, the four restrictions of our form of monogamous marriage together constitute a state-regulated, indefinite and exclusive ownership by two individuals of one another’s sexual powers. Marriage is simply a form of private property." [mijn nadruk] (595)
"This line of thought deserves pursuit. The real secret of our form of monogamous marriage is not that it functionally provides for the needs of adults who love one another or the children they give birth to, but that it serves the maintenance of our present social system. It is an institution which is indispensable to the persistence of the capitalist order, in the following ways:" [mijn nadruk] (596-597)
"(b) The exclusive marriage necessarily reduces the sexual relationships available to any one person to absolute (nonzero) minimum, a unilateral promotion of sexual shortage which in practice renders hierarchial achievement essential as an economic and “display” means for securing scarce partners." [mijn nadruk] (598)
"If our marriage institution is a linchpin of our present social structure, then a breakdown in this institution would seem to indicate a breakdown in our social structure. On the face of it, the marriage institution is breaking down—enormously increased divorce rates, nonmarital sexual relationships, wife-swapping, the Playboy philosophy, and communes. Therefore one might be led by the appearance of things to anticipate a profound alteration in the social system."(599)
"But it would be a mistake to underestimate the tenacity of an established order or to overestimate the extent of change in our marriage institution. Increased divorce rates merely indicate the widening of a traditional escape hatch. Nonmarital relationships imitate and culminate in the marital mold. Wife-swapping presupposes ownership, as the phrase suggests. The Playboy philosophy is merely the view that if one has the money one has the right to be titillated, the commercial call to more fully exploit a dynamic sector of capital investment. And communes—the most hopeful phenomenon—almost nowhere offer a praxis challenge to private property in sexuality. It may be changing. But history, as the old man puts it, weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." [mijn nadruk] (599)