Marriage?!
Rukhshona Uktamova
What is marriage? Two love birds living together? Escaping oppression or walking into oppression? A form of punishment? A form of freedom? Liberation? A form of slavery? Paradise? The book Women Race & Class written by Angela Y. Davis brought up many good important issues and topics about women’s history. Some topics are legacy of slavery, birth of women’s rights, racism during the women suffrage movement, women’s education and liberation, rape, women’s role in housework and more. Throughout the book Davis show how women throughout history has faced many unfairnesses, they had to fight in order to have rights to education and to get job outside of their homes. In the book Women Race & Class written by Angela Y. Davis, it states “Well – situated women began to denounce their unfulfilling domestic lives by defining marriage as a form of slavery” (Davis, 33). I respectfully disagree to some extend with this thought that middle class women had because slavery is just more than working for less to no pay it is when one person is treated as property with no rights. Slaves are not free, women are. In the text it said, “They seem to have ignored, however, the fact that their identification of the two institutions also implied that slavery was really no worse than marriage” (Davis, 34). Slavery in my opinion was so much worse than marriage, being taken away from your home, getting separated from your family, forcing to work in difficult conditions for long hours less pay and less food, getting raped by white men, and getting whipped and chained for trying to escape, cruel treatment is not same as marriage. Yes, marriage can be challenging, difficult, especially when the wife is a full-time employee, full-time mother, and a house worker but at least you are at your own home with your family. You chose to get married, to have kids, to work outside of home, slaves did not choose to be slaves.
During slavery, White women and Black women couldn’t really get a long because White women believed they were superior to Black women when they were really not. They treated them poorly, Black women were maids, and nannies. When White women started working outside of home, they faced similar unfairness like Black women faced. Long hours of work but low pay. Because of the similar conditions White women compared their situation to slavery. Then they came together and fought for their rights. In 1833, Philadelphia Female Anti – Slavery Society was created and “…enough white women were manifesting their sympathetic attitudes toward the Black people’s cause to have established the basis for a bond between the two oppressed groups” (Davis, 34). You don’t know what somebody is feeling and going through until you wear their shoes, so after experiencing similar treatment White women understood what Black women were going through. “….they learned how to challenge male supremacy within the anti – slavery movement” (Davis, 39). By helping others, White women’s political involvement increased.
So, marriage is still not a form of slavery, it can be a blessing, there are people who are out there who want to have their own family, kids and loving partners. There are women who are infertile, who can’t have kids and wanting to have kids. Taking care of your kids shouldn’t be a burden and shouldn’t only be the women’s responsibility. Men did take action in bringing the kids to life they shouldn’t say I am babysitting their own child or helping their wife when they are doing the home chorus. Because cooking and cleaning are basic life skills that everybody needs to learn and use. Women are hardworking, patient, strong individuals if they think marriage is a form of slavery because they are moms, wife, cleaning lady, cook, nanny, worker in factory all at the same time, they should look on the bright side. They are going to advance their multi-tasking skills, they can be role models for their kids, they can increase family income, enjoy their salary by spending on what they want they don’t need to ask for money. If they couldn’t handle this God wouldn’t give them all of this. God gave them all of this because he knows women are capable and strong enough to do anything that they set their mind to.
Citation
Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. Vintage Books, 1983.
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I think this is definitely a better response and an add on to your draft before. I like how you stated that marriage is a blessing because it always amazes me to see two people who are in love with each other create a family of their own. Us woman are definitely role models for our kids because we do multi tasks and are so eager to learn more things.
Hi Rukhshona! I really enjoyed reading your blog post. The way you formatted your ideas was extremely informative and made me understand the idea you were trying to get at. The one part that was most attentive to me was where you boldly said “marriage is not slavery” and I agree with that comment 100%. We definitely live in a society where women are portrayed as such a strong viewpoint now and marriage shouldn’t define them as anything less. We women definitely play an extremely important role in marriage, kids, work, how we influence others and so much more. You definitely pointed that out through out your paper. Great blog!
I absolutely agree with Rukshona and Syedah!
In the modern civilized world, marriage is not slavery. As I already wrote, marriage is proof of the serious intentions of two people to start a family. But slavery is completely different, it is when a person is forced to do something against his will, and at the same time, the person experiences suffering.
First off, great work! I really enjoyed your reading your viewpoint on the correlation between marriage and slavery. However, I slightly disagree on marriage not being slavery. There, unfortunately, are incident of people who are forced into marriage against their will and are left in horrible circumstances. While these situations are few in comparison to regular marriages, they are still in existence. In many ways, a lot of modern day slavery is made to look legal through marriage, where people are human trafficked and then sold into marriage.
Here is a great website that goes into depth about the different examples of modern day slavery (with a few examples of marriage as well): https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/
Hi Rukhshona! I really like the way you started your blog post in which you utilized many questions to start your topic. It really caught my eyes. I agree with a lot of your ideas, but there is a point, I think it is likely to depend on the situation. For example, as I said in your blog post draft before, it depends on the situation of marriage. If you are forced to marry or being arranged by parents. Marriage is not based on the concept of equality and love. Then I would say marriage is a form of slavery. Since sometimes from the male point of view, in real life, for a man: in the marriage system, male can force their wife (slave) to have children, and wife will acquiesce. Therefore, in some cases, the essence of the marriage system becomes slavery based on the deprivation of women’s sex and uterus. So it really depends on the situation and this kind of case happened in the real life and still exist.
Hey Rukhshona! I may have not commented on your draft blog post, but I found your blog post very interesting and I agree with your argument. The only comment I have is that you mentioned that you get to choose to get married or not, however, that is not really true. Still to this day people get married off by their parents to arrange marriage. So I would say that you should have mentioned that side of marriage as well. Nevertheless, this is still a very great blog post, great job!
Rukshona,
You have so many sharp observations in this essay, and you do a good job of making points and using the Davis to support them, but there are a couple of historical inaccuracies, and your structure is a bit hard on a casual online reader.
Your paragraphs are a bit long for the reader (especially the imagined casual reader who isn’t in our class) to hold in their head. And it’s not immediately clear what specifically has struck you about Davis’ argument, for instance, and the reader has to read a fair bit before getting to it.
Be very careful of accidental historical inaccuracy. Remember my comment about the quote in the first graf — Davis is describing a historical phenomenon linking marriage and enslavement. You can disagree with how she writes about it, but you can’t disagree with the fact itself (how it happened). She is very critical of white women’s involvement in anti-slavery work, like we talked about in class, rather than presenting them as helping Black women, as you sem to suggest.
And your point about choice at the bottom of the first graf applies to a lot of modern day marriages, but not so many historical ones. Davis writes a fair bit about women not having choice in the hetero-marriage context in the nineteenth century, for example.
Your title is stupendous — perfect punctuation to make your point.
I’m looking forward to your final project and more of your annotations!
Prof A