A Passion for Friends (Toward a Philosophy of Female) by Janice Raymond

Author:Janice Raymond [Raymond, Janice]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: women's studies
Publisher: Spinifex Press
Published: 2001-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

The Political Worth and Weight of the Marriage Resistance Movement

Assessments of the resistance movement have been inextricably conditioned by hetero-relational standards. In general there have been two main evaluative patterns that hold sway in the sparse summaries of its political impact. First is the dynamic of psychologizing, and second is a simplistic and often cavalier dismissal of the movement as insignificant and apolitical. Often, these two evaluations are found in conjunction with each other.

Psychologizing pervades statements such as the following: “Most sources stress fear of marriage as the women’s principal impetus.”66 Reducing female independence to this kind of cause has been a tactic consisently applied to many Gyn/affective women and movements who are not bound by the usual constraints of hetero-relations. It is a widely accepted assessment, in part because people do not think how absurd it would be to apply this psychologizing to other groups who resist dominant structures and systems. For example, nowhere do we read that individuals become socialists out of a “fear” of capitalism.

This pattern of psychologizing can also be found in explanations that equate marriage resistance with a “distaste for heterosexual relations.” Such language is comparable to the reasons adduced for the celibacy of western nuns.

To be more precise, there may well have been a “distaste” for heterosexuality on the part of the marriage resisters, just as there was a “distaste” for slavery on the part of those who revolted against it. However, the language of “distaste” devitalizes the political weight and worth of any resistance movement and summarizes that resistance as an individual quirk or as a defect of the resisters’ collective character. It trifles with the willful choice, the political philosophy, and the public actions of group movements, and it is consistently applied to women who choose to spend their lives with women and are indifferent to men.

In spite of the evident political quality of marriage resistance, other commentators dismiss the resisters as insignificant and type them as apolitical. My work on the marriage resisters could not have been done without Marjorie Topley’s ground-breaking and original research. It is therefore unfortunate to find in Topley’s doctoral dissertation on the movement the following assessment:

By neither kinds of organisation [the pu lo-chia or tzu-shu nü], however, were new rights for women in marriage demanded. The anti-marriage movement of Kwangtung cannot be regarded as any positive progressive movement; the women merely refused to accept sexual relationships with men. [Italics mine]67

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