by Chinweizu
To soften up a man to the point where he proposes, a woman can either withhold sex from him or lavish it on him. In the sex-Iavishing tactic, the woman gives him sex, quite readily and freely, till he is addicted and can no longer do without his regular dose. Then, like an expert drug dealer, she can make him pay any price for what she supplies. And her asking price? A trip to the marriage altar. A woman who uses this tactic tends to lose all interest in sexually servicing her husband soon after the wedding. This phenomenon gave rise to the following joke in San Francisco: "How do you make an Irish woman frigid? Marry her!"
The sex-withholding tactic was much favoured before contraceptives became commonly available. It is probably as old as the missionary position, if not older. It is still favoured by diehard puritans who regard sex-before-the-wedding as a mortal sin. The aim is to frustrate the man to the point where he becomes obsessed with having sex with the woman. Claiming that she is not a cheap woman, she proves her costliness by not yielding her alleged virtue for anything less expensive than marriage. At its most bizarre, the hapless fellow gets conned into her way of seeing things, into her way of defining virtue, and joins her in regarding readily available sex as "cheap", as devalued by the very ease with which it could be had. When converted to her frustration theory of value, he values her even more for her very refusal to have sex with him. He can become so obsessed with her that, in terminal frustration, he capitulates and accepts her terms for sleeping with him, namely, a wedding! The pop band, Meatloaf, has expertly parodied this tactic in the song "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights".
This tactic was much helped by the cult of virginity which venerated the virgin bride. She held out, it was claimed, in order to give him the honour and pleasure of receiving her with her hymen intact! In practical terms, the poor sod was sex-starved into buying unsampled goods. If the sex turned out lousy, or if her frigidity ruined the honeymoon, or if her vaunted virginity proved to be fake, tough luck for the hapless chap. The woman would by then have filed her title to his labours at the court registry or the church altar. There being no refund clause in the marriage contract, he could not ask for release from his sworn {55} obligations to his new boss, no matter how lousy she proved in bed, no matter if she proved incapable of bearing children.
The motherly care tactic is based on the christianly notion that she who would be your queen, let her be your house servant. Accordingly, the woman manoeuvres to take over her suitor's cooking, house cleaning and housekeeping. Her opening gambit is to relieve him of the chore of cooking for himself. She will tell him that he will feed better on her cooking than on his, and will march into his kitchen to prove it. If the bachelor, has no kitchen of his own, and depends on eating out, she is not daunted. She will offer to cook for him at her own kitchen. Should he try to resist, excuses will spring readily to her honeyed tongue. Ah, the cost of eating out! Or she will complain that there are no places to go for a decent bite after midnight, or after whatever hour the local eateries shut down. She will persist until she has him feeding off dishes she herself has prepared.
That opening move accomplished, she will contrive to have them live together in his house or hers. The ostensible objective is to see if things will work out, if they can share each other's company for long without suffering cabin fever. Or it is simply to save the inconvenience of commuting from one dwelling to the other. Once they move in together, she gives him the VIP treatment. She showers him with smiles at every opportunity; she covers herself in glamour from waking up in the morning to bedtime at night; she offers him meals when he wants them, where he wants them, even serving him breakfast in bed, and even spooning the delicacies into his watering mouth, should he as much as hint at wanting that pleasure. She will darn his socks, sew on his missing buttons, mend his shirts, wash and iron his clothes, fetch his slippers, and even give him a nightly bath if he as much as hints that he did enjoy such treatment from his mother. She will do all the shopping and bar him firmly from the kitchen. She will pamper him even more than he ever was pampered when he was his mother's precious brat. She will persevere with this plan till she gets him used to not cooking for himself, to not cleaning his house, to not taking care of himself. She will persevere till the fool begins to imagine how wonderful it would be if this could go on for ever; till the mad fool begins to believe that this cosy life would continue for ever if only he married her!
If he does not get down on his knees fast enough to suit her schedule, she will start giving him hints, subtle at first, then more loudly later on. If he still is slow, she might suddenly take off to visit some aunt she's {56} never visited in her life, some aunt she had never talked of before, but who conveniently lives on the far face of the moon. The man, by now helpless, cannot stand the prospect of doing without her, for even an afternoon, let alone for the weeks she would need to travel to see her most cherished aunt. What is the now dependent fellow going to do? Crisis! He begs her not to go. But she goes off anyway. And the moment she returns (following periodic phone calls to hear how inadequately he is coping without her), it would be a miracle if even a court injunction, or an order from his employer, would keep him from falling on his knees and proposing to marry her at once.
Of course, these weapons, and the tactics for using them, are usually wielded in combination, depending on the skill of the man-hunting woman. They are normally adequate to bring even the wildest, freedom loving bronco of a man to his obedient knees. Sometimes they do fail, and the woman has to resort to rough tactics.
Before the sexual revolution undermined it, one of the most popular of rough tactics was the shotgun wedding. This worked best, of course, if the woman had lavished sex on the suitor. All it then took was to surreptitiously get herself pregnant. If he did not then capitulate, if he didn't offer to slave for the nest to which he had already contributed his genes, her father and brothers would arrive with their shotguns and march "the prisoner" to the altar. In these times, when there is no premium on unbroken hymens, shotgun weddings have declined in frequency. Without the cult of the virgin bride, shotgun weddings lose their rationale: it was that, having damaged their daughter's or sister's worth by breaking her hymen, the fellow had to hold on to the goods he had damaged.
Other tactics, a bit less rough, are still available to the woman who wants to hurry her suitor to propose. She can end his reluctance by hinting at, or even producing, rivals to whom his ego would be loathe to lose her. When such a woman seems determined to flirt with other men in her suitor's presence, her game is clear. A particular white American variant of this is for the girl to show keen interest in some black male in the presence of her dithering suitor. This triggers her suitor's racism into action, and he moves to save white womanhood from the defiling clutches of nigger erotomania. And he saves it by promptly marrying her! {57}
From such examples, the dispassionate observer cannot but be impressed by the woman's superior position in courtship, and by the cleverness with which she uses her weapons. While the fool man imagines himself the aggressive, powerful hunter tracking some weak prey, she hunts him down and carts him off.
It might be wondered why men do not usually tell the truth about courtship. Why don't fathers, and perhaps grandfathers, warn young men about it? Well, male pride for one. The hunting code requires a man to crow from the rooftops about his victories, not his defeats. This means that no husband will be eager to admit that he was tricked, and defeated, and enslaved by his little wife. Secondly, those men who have an interest in declaring the truth, the successful career bachelors, are very few. And even if they bothered to tell the truth, how many men would believe them? The reputation which women have woven for them (as inadequate, undesirable failures whom no woman would marry) would prevent them from being believed. To those conditioned to believe that being a husband is the natural, god-ordained, and happy destiny of every man, a bachelor's account of the perils of courtship would sound like sour grapes.
Thirdly, a sense of futility contributes to
men's silence on the topic when they consider all the men who fell into women's traps all through the ages, those who might be tempted to warn others are driven to despair. What's the use? Driven by his craving for progeny, the average man, forewarned or not, would still fall where his betters fell. {58}
7. Wedding: The Bride's Triumph Ceremony
O bride, how happy you are!
Lala shebo!
You have found a hard worker!
Lala shebo!44
- Song of Village Girls of Ethiopia.
According to some feminists, a wedding ushers a woman into that prison, that house of domestic slavery, that vale of misery which is marriage. As one of them has put it, marriage is "the hardest way on earth of getting a living',45 - which would, presumably, make it harder than plantation slavery! Another feminist, Sue Bruley, has said of it:
Someone coming from another planet and looking at a marriage contract and the semi-slavery it entails for the woman would think it insane that she should enter into it voluntarily.46
If weddings ushered women into semi-slavery, into the hardest way on earth of getting a living, women would, indeed, be mad to enter it voluntarily. That women do enter it, not just voluntarily, but eagerly, suggests that either women are daft or they are not the ones enslaved by marriage. Since women are the more down to earth and sensible of the two sexes, one must conclude that this talk of slavery is pure feminist propaganda. In fact, a look at the realities, including the actual behaviour of men and women, would give the lie to the feminist claim.
If indeed weddings ushered women into exploitation and hardship, why is it that the bride can be counted upon to appear for her wedding looking radiant and joyfully expectant? Why do bridal songs celebrate her happiness? If a bride is judged happy by women because she has found a hard worker (as is stated in the Ethiopian song quoted above), {59} who then is going to be exploited in the subsequent marriage - the hard worker or his owner?
Of course, the bride is happy because the wedding is her triumph ceremony marking the end of her man hunt, marking the beginning of her retirement on the earnings of her husband. She has spotted a suitable male, and disorganized him with the effects of her body-beautiful. She has sparked in him a craving for her womb. She has smitten him with love, put him through the obstacle course of courtship, broken his wild spirit, attached his emotions to herself, and taught him his commitments and duties. She has gotten him to propose, and is about to bring him before the public to accept to be her nest-slave. Why should she not be happy after such a successful campaign? Why should she not be radiant at the prospect of her fine reward - to live on his earnings for the rest of her days?
If she is less than perfectly happy on her wedding morning, there are usually two main reasons. First, of course, is that she now has to leave her parents and friends and set out for that new abode where she shall make her nest. Parting from one's home cannot be entirely joyful for anyone. But its sorrows are nothing compared with the joy of, at last, having her own nest. The balance of any mixed feelings she might have are on the side of leaving her mother's nest for her own. As a "Song of Bridesmaids" from Rwanda says:
We did not do it to you,
We did not want to see you go;
We love you too much for that.
It's your beauty that did it,
Because you are so gorgeous...
Ah, we see you laugh beneath your tears!
Good-bye, your husband is here
And already you don't seem
To need our consolations…47
The second reason for any unhappiness on her wedding morning is anxiety that the true picture of his future condition might have penetrated the bridegroom's befuddled mind. What if he should then fail to turn up at the celebration of his own defeat? And what if he showed up, but balked at saying his "I do!" before the assembled witnesses? Consider the following news reports: {60}
Antonio Iorillo giggled when the priest asked: 'Do you take this woman for your wedded wife?' Then he said: 'No.' There was pandemonium in the little church at Santa Maria Goretti, Italy. The bride sobbed and one bridesmaid fainted. Hastily the bridegroom explained that he was only joking, and asked the priest to continue the service. 'You have committed sacrilege,' the priest told him. 'Only a bishop can put things right.' Fortunately, the bishop was an understanding man. He told the priest to go on with the ceremony, which was delayed for more than two hours.
There was a shorter hitch at a Suffolk wedding when a nervous bridegroom became tongue-tied just when he should have said 'I will.' The bride, a hefty woman, nudged him and muttered: 'Say "I will," you fool', and her partner blurted out, parrot-fashion: 'I will, you fool’48
In each case, what gives any bride anxieties had happened; luckily, disaster was averted, and all ended well for each bride.
The reactions to these balking bridegrooms reveal that it is the woman who is all set to exploit the man in their post-wedding life. Would the Italian bride have sobbed, or would her bridesmaid have fainted in sympathetic shock, if women looked forward to being enslaved in marriage? Wouldn't the bride, and her bridesmaid, have rejoiced at her fortuitous escape from a terrible future? As for the Suffolk bride, she reacted with the decisiveness of an alert slave-owner who thwarts the escape bid of a slave she is buying. So much for feminist disinformation about who is set to be exploited within marriage.
Any intelligent man who plays participant observer at his own courtship realizes that he is being tricked, cajoled, bullied and prick-twisted into staying the course. He realizes that the wedding, in which he is about to play his bit part, is simply a public celebration of his own defeat, and of his bride's victory, in the great battle of courtship. He will recognize that the wedding is a public triumph where, like a victorious Roman general, his bride will parade him as the captive from her manhunt. He will recognize the non- reciprocal (and inequitable) terms of the contract which the officiating priest will ask him to consent to, especially those clauses which require him to share with the bride all his wealth and the fruits of his toil, but which do not ask her to do likewise. Any wonder then that an observant and intelligent man would balk at saying his "I will"? Anyway, who in his right mind and full liberty {61} would attend a parade which advertises his capitulation? Any wonder some bridegrooms just don't show up? Don't some defeated generals commit suicide to spare themselves the ignominy of being paraded in their vanquisher's triumph? Any wonder why that Suffolk bridegroom who couldn't stay away (like a general whose captors did not give him a chance to disembowel himself, or to bite on his cyanide pill) was far from 'enthusiastic at the ceremony? Perhaps the true significance of a wedding dawned on him too late, probably right there at the altar, and he took fright, and got tongue-tied!
Balking bridegrooms, and those who go AWOL (Absent Without Leave) from their weddings, recognize that a wedding is not a triumph for the man. But most men either are too daft to recognize that, or are too intimidated to do anything about it.
What, it may be asked, about brides who bolt from their own weddings? That does happen, but it is most rare. In societies where marriages are not arranged, it is rare because, as the employer, the bride calls the shots, and settles only for the best available candidate. She does not agree to any wedding unless she is sure the bridegroom is the best available to her. But when she does bolt from her own wedding, it is usually because she has spied a much better prey, perhaps a previous lover with whom she had lost touch, who suddenly turns up and indicates that he is available. Where marriages are arranged, a bride bolts from her own wedding if a man she finds revolting is being forced upon her by her parents or guardians. In that case, her action is a rebellion against parental insensitivity or tyranny rather than a manifestation of fear of enslavement within marriage.
To avoid incidents of balking, tongue-tied or no-show bridegrooms, some societies have built into the wedding process rituals like bride-snatching. Bride-snatching is designed to reassure the bridegroo
m that he is the victor in the courtship battle; it confirms his feeling that he has been the hunter, and that the bride is his prize. According to psychological experts: {62}
(The wedding ritual) is essentially a woman's initiation rite, in which a man is bound to feel like anything but a conquering hero. No wonder we find, in tribal societies, such counterphobic rituals as the abduction or rape of the bride. These enable the man to cling to the remnants of his heroic role at the very moment that he must submit to his bride and assume the responsibilities of marriage.49
Such counterphobic rituals are a tribute to the profound disquiet which the prospect of marriage, and of his sworn duties within it, provokes in the intelligent male. It also shows the lengths to which the male administrators of the female interest will go in devising con games that will trick a man into accepting his own enslavement.
The sensible male (and any fair person) has to admit that the bridegroom is the one person with every reason to be unhappy at a wedding. Everyone else is usually genuinely happy - the bride, the officiating priest, the parents of the bride, the bridesmaids and other hopeful brides-to-be, the groom's parents, and the merrily feasting guests. They have good reason too! The married women, like generals who have had their own triumphs, are glad to welcome another to their ranks. The unmarried women are having their hopes renewed, with each probably thinking: "If that silly girl can get herself a slave, so will I, sooner or later." The married men are there to enjoy the discomfiture of yet another lad: after all, misery loves company! In any case, why should they be unhappy at a feast? As for the unmarried men, the fools among them are hoping to be next in line for what they have been taught is bliss; while the worldly wise are rejoicing that it wasn't them this time.