Marriage Debate | Germaine Greer | Proposition

I want to talk to you today about how women suffer under the current system the thing that strikes me about marriage is that it doesn't do what it says on the tin everybody who has been talking tonight's been talking about love and fidelity and support and how everybody's got the right feelings and blah blah blah 42% of our marriages will end in divorce is there more happiness at the marriage end before there is misery and hardship at the divorce end I don't know but it seems to me that a system that can be relied upon to fail nearly half of the time is a pretty rotten system and the curious thing is of course that in the marriage ceremony we make vows till death do us part that we don't mean the vows are I mean half of those marriages or most will end in divorce and some very quickly we've talked about marriage as a way of supporting children are we joking are we joking we absolutely cannot get child support we can chase people for everything else they can chase you for a parking crime they can chase you for unpaid council tax but they can't get the non-resident parent who is nearly always male isn't it curious there is such a heterosexual cast to the whole ceremony we might say the family is no longer patriarchal please of course it is of course we understand we have two women a week killed by their partner were they married or unmarried who cares basically the system is the same the system is a hammer and anvil system and women are caught up in that system you know is it extraordinary that it's girls who want to get married it's girls who think with stars in their eyes they want to get married and yet 66% of the divorces that occur the UK are initiated by women what do you think that means that means that the women who had the idea of what being a wife was going to be have found that it was something they couldn't even live with and do you know what it means to be a divorced woman in our country do you know what it means to become instantly a single parent when children under 16 are involved in almost half of all our divorces most of those women who try to get out of a marriage have also know that they're going to be single parents and they know what that means that means they slide straight down the economic ladder that means they become poor that means that their employment prospects are different well I'm excuse me if a woman chooses to be a single parent that's one thing but it's why would that why would the answer that question be important marriage is supposed to marriage is supposed to make sure that you don't have single parents that's the whole idea I didn't tell you that can you believe how people cannot hear what I say did anybody hear me say a single parents from bear am i speaking a foreign tongue I don't think single parents are bad what I'm trying to tell you is this that the life of a single parent is really really tough when you look at a woman who could maybe bear staying in a relationship keep her family together live under one roof not go into poverty not be solely responsible for the health and welfare of her children especially seeing as she can't get any dam maintenance when she chooses to leave a marriage she's taken a huge decision she is telling you something about that institution now you may say it would be the same in any arrangement in any agreement that she came to about how she was going to live with somebody and how she was going to bear children and bring them up but I don't think that's true at all we've been drawing a parallel between civil partnerships and marriage as if they were the same there's a number of aspects in which they're not the same at all one of them is for example that sex is not necessary in a civil partnership no one's going to tell you've got what you've got to do with your bits but in marriage they do if it's not consummated a marriage isn't null no one has ever said that about a civil partnership civil partnerships exist in Europe and it's really interesting that 95% of the people accepting get joining up in civil partnerships in Holland pretty smart country told us most of what we know about ships and gardening well it looks as it looks as if they know something about marriage as well 95% of people in Holland and heterosexual people entering into civil partnership in this country heterosexual people are not eligible for civil partnership now this is a pretty good example of total confusion and this is our problem with marriage it's a mess it's a mess from understanding what is supposed to be done in the religious ceremony and understanding how that affects the relationship and the deal it's supposed to be a contract I mean what a ridiculous contracts got no clauses you've got no idea what you're supposed to do am I supposed to clean the toilet or does he get to do it once in a while none of that is there there's nothing that tells you what your duties are there's nothing that tells you beyond notionally of how you will actually manage that interaction a mortgage makes more sense than a marriage and more people will be faithful to a mortgage then we'd be faithful to a marriage why because the terms are pretty clear and you know what the deal is and besides buying out your partner is just a bit too hard okay so what I'm trying to get you to see is in the period I know most about in the 16th and 17th centuries there were two sides to a marriage there was the settlement that was where the bride and groom's family sat down and thrashed out what would happen who owned what who was responsible for what what would happen if one partner or the other died whether heirs of the body would inherit and so forth this was absolutely hard-headed dealing we don't do that we go into a marriage with all these notions about how it's about love and about commitment and so on all wonderful then there but all very difficult to make happen especially if you don't understand each other very well being in love is a pretty rotten idea I mean a pretty rotten reason for doing anything you're out of your mind you know that you're obsessed whatever you do don't get married but you probably will so what I'm trying to say to you here is that we've got to think now about the families of the future we are watching extraordinary things happen to families now motherhood has been split in three between genetic motherhood you trying motherhood and legal motherhood whoever knew this was going to happen we've watched to see the injustice that is meted out to women who enter into surrogacy agreements because they're poor and who then find that the child has been dumped because it's considered not good enough has happened in a famous case involving my countrymen in India we now see that families have got to be rebuilt now family you know is not your descendents a family is your household now lots of you you're a bit young I can see but many of you will have watched friends which was all about being an age set living together being together being committed to each other it's your job now to rescue the family and you can't do it through this old confused muddled up pseudo religious recipe it isn't going to work for you you're going to end up like those women struggling the whim who write to me everyday the women who come and hear me when I speak these are my people these are the people I care about these are the people I would want to represent I want you to think about whether marriage is bearable given the measure of human suffering that it has already brought upon the women of the country you were born in

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 173,054

Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University, Marriage, state, religion, Germaine Greer, Peter Hitchens

Id: nZZRjjJhfvI

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Sword_Of_Storms]

So - we have something rather like this in Australia.

Civil partnerships (non-secular marriage) and a legal recognition of “de-facto” relationships (an unmarried but co-habituating couple).

There are no tax incentives for being married in Australia - taxes are always filed separately and while the filing will be linked for departmental records - how much tax you pay is based on your earnings and deductibles as an individual. (There are a few exceptions - disabled and dependant spouses for example)

[u/celery_sacrifice]

I really love Germaine Greer, it seems she isn't arguing for the end of partnership, but rather a better way to do it.

I think the idea of civil partnerships with contracts as a replacement for marriage is interesting. Sort of what richer people do with prenups.

I think prenups are often looked down upon because of they Hollywood portrayal of rich men trying to protect their money.

However, I would love to see the normalization of civil partnership contracts/ prenups that allow women greater legal/ economic recourse. Like you could put in a cheating clause, monetary agreements, household responsibilities, alimony, child support etc...

[u/various_sneers]

Fucking 100 percent. Literally the only reason anyone gets "legally" married is because of tax incentives.

So essentially, our government dangles money in your face and gives it to you if you make a "lifelong" commitment to a human sexual/emotional relationship, which is probably the most fickle and turbulent kind one could possibly have and is essentially impossible to gauge if it will work out.

In exchange, it encourages people to try to make toxic relationships "work," including abusive relationships and other horrible circumstances that are difficult to escape without being legally tied to that other person. It creates massive opportunities for one or the other(Not just women, MRA douches. I've known countless women who've had their now ex-husbands absolutely destroy their finances and credit) partner to abuse and destroy the finances of another human. It adds extra layers of complication to already intensely complicated situations with child custody and support. It creates and encourages the insanity of exchanging your independence for a livelihood provided by another.

You could easily argue that the people who got married "should have known better" or "not made rash decisions," but if you do, you either have a false sense of confidence in your ability to judge what another human will do throughout the future or you're a fucking asshole.

Get rid of legal marriage completely. You think it's special because of some beliefs you have, there's no reason you can't get married without a marriage license. Your imaginary man in the sky, I hope, will understand that you did what you could with an "evil" government that won't let you tie your entire legal existence to some other person.

[u/DrunkUranus]

Absolutely. The state has extremely minimal interest in regulating personal relationships. It has an incredibly serious interest in regulating the wellbeing of children, though; the state should recognize supportive parenting relationships, which ought to include both rights (such as the right to make decisions for the child and the right to tax breaks, perhaps) and responsibilities (obviously, the safety and wellbeing of the child).

I would even suggest legally recognizing a relationship between coparents. This would often be the two biological parents of the child, but not necessarily. It could be open to grandparents, adoptive parents, and other parties who are willing to swear to put the child's interests first. The purpose of a formal coparenting relationship would be to promote social stability for children and to allow one parent (or guardian) to appeal to the courts when others are not upholding their parenting responsibilities. Because it centers around the interests of the child, the legal coparenting relationship could only be dissolved by mutual agreement, with the court ensuring that the child's needs will still be met.

[u/Golden-Canary]

the only reason I would ever get married is for US immigration purposes (especially if i had a child)..this only comes to mind because one of my friends parents got deported when we were young