Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 October 9

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October 9

Difference between marriage in the USA and “elsewhere”?

Hello from France to the Reference Desk Users. My « strange » question comes from the end of Andrea Dworkin's strange quote in a book about “The Economics of Sex” (I can't find the exact title): “A man wants what a woman has - her sex. He can steal it (rape), convince her to give it to him (seduction), rent it (prostitution), lease it long-term (marriage in the US), or acquire it outright (marriage in most countries of the world).” I read that quotation in Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature (a translated book to French). My question concerns the words in bold.
I'll take the risk of trying to answer my question: Could this be an allusion to the fact that, statistically, marriages end much (?) more often in the USA than elsewhere in divorce, followed by marriages, then divorce, then marriages, sometimes with the same person (rare in France, I think?). Thank you for your matrimonial cogitations. Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 12:04, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Andrea was kind of "damaged", and it's hard to tell what she thought she was getting at. But if you google "divorce rate in france vs us", for example, you'll find they are comparable. A century ago and more, divorces were much harder to get in America, and probably elsewhere as well. You couldn't just say "we want a divorce". You had to show "cause", which led to bitterly contested trials. (That still happens sometimes.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

However, since colonial times, divorce laws in British North America / The United States were much more rational than the horrible pre-1857 divorce system in England, and during parts of U.S. history, there has been a state with noticeably laxer divorce laws than most of the other states (Indiana during part of the 19th century, Nevada during much of the 20th century). AnonMoos (talk) 19:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

This would be my assumption, a sarcastic allusion to the serial marriage practice found particularly among the rich and powerful. I doubt that Dworkin undertook a serious statistical examination comparing the US with other Western countries in the 1970s, or whenever she penned these words. (Rather unscholarly, neither Pinker nor others quoting these sentences provide a traceable bibliographic citation that allows me to date this passage.)  --Lambiam 14:01, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as P. G. Wodehouse wrote in Summer Moonshine, "Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag." Deor (talk) 16:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• The original seems to be called "Sexual Economics: The Terrible Truth", possibly first published in 1972 in Ms.. Having skimmed the article, she never explains that aside remark - she actually talks mostly about socialist Czechoslovakia and the USSR in the rest of the piece. Some modern quotations of her adapt the quote to "lease it over the long-term (modern marriage/relationship) or own it outright (traditional marriage)" That said, 1972 was just after the first no-fault divorce law was passed in the United States (in California), and looking at Divorce law by country, slightly before most European countries (which liberalized in the mid 70s. Smurrayinchester 14:12, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

This is the full original quote:

In fucking, as in reproduction, sex and econom ics are inextricably joined. In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has—sex. He can steal it (rape), persuade her to give it away (seduction), rent it (prostitution), lease it over the long term (marriage in the United States), or own it outright (marriage in most societies). A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again.

It is indeed from "Sexual Economics: The Terrible Truth", first given as a speech to women at Harper & Row in 1976, and later published by Ms. in what Dworkin calls an "edited" version (her air quotes). The full original speech is published in Letters From a War Zone (1989). See p. 120. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:22, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Economics certainly figure into it, for example ugly rich guys getting pretty women. That's a universal truth. Did Dworkin ever elaborate on her perceived differences between American and other marriages? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:40, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes economics figures into everything and that's a truth, but what's supposedly this universal truth? How about a source? Where in pre-20th-century history was it not true that a rich and high status person, regardless of superficial appearance or indeed gender, could not exert comparable influence on any in the lower classes? In the 21st century so-called-middle-class of developed economies, are there numbers on those who would sell themselves into the described effective rape and slavery to marry those in the uppermost socioeconomic classes? These are all economic questions that are hardly universal, which is the point others are making of how this was an aside remark. SamuelRiv (talk) 05:12, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

A source for the obvious? What color is the sky in your world? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Marriage and divorce ratios in selected countries: 1960 to 1992 shows that the divorce rate in the USA was more than double that of any Western European nation throughout the late 20th century. Alansplodge (talk) 11:43, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Even before that, the ease of divorce in some of those there United States was proverbial. "King's Moll Renoed in Wolsey's Home Town". DuncanHill (talk) 17:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's pretty much a modern expression of an old theory of Marx's. He was writing polemically at the time—hyperbolically, even, perhaps with an element of tongue-in-cheek for the worthy tailors—but the topic is similar:

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives ... Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common.

Dworkin's was an updated working, in theme and language, but the hyperbole is akin. SerialNumber54129 12:59, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

The issue is not, however, the hyperbolic nature of Dworkin's passage, or the contrast between bourgeois and proletariat, but the alleged contrast between the US and "most societies", something Marx is mum about.  --Lambiam 15:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Freud had something to say about Marx's Mum. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:13, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

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