Episode 50: Was Gay Marriage a Good Idea?

The advent of gay marriage in the Western world led to many third sector industry organisations in need of a new cause (step forward transgenderism). In this respect, was gay marriage worth it? Especially considering only 10% of gay people are married. We discuss that, cohabitation laws, wages for housewives, and the tension between women's role in the family and the state. What would a feminist vision of marriage look like? What could an adept welfare state offer to guarantee a living standard outside of marriage for mothers? If we take as valid the radical feminist criticism of the welfare state potentially operating towards women as a patriarchal father or husband, how could  such a risk be mitigated?The latter half of the episode is concerned with late capitalism's failure to secure working class marriage and social reproduction, making marriage and having children largely out of reach for everybody young, including straight people, creating a strange kind marital 'equality' in its growing impossibility. Hannah speaks about how she's convinced that capitalism and patriarchy are separate (dual systems theory, as outlined in Heidi Hartmann's essay Marxism & Feminism: An Unhappy Marriage) as capitalism structurally undermines patriarchy in certain periods and contexts, such as the present, making the nuclear family economically unviable for most people young enough to biologically reproduce. Jen suggests that perhaps soon banks will propose polyamory and 'throuples' as a way to secure a mortgage!