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Women's Liberation and Christian Marriage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
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Any serious analysis of the systematic oppression of women must focus the greater part of its attention on the structure and role of the family. For us in the West the prevailing ideology identifies as central to a woman’s task in life the running of a husband-and-family, while for the man, his wife and family belong to the private, ‘unimportant’ side of life—to his ‘spare time’. We are taught to equate marriage with having a family, and a family with the bourgeois nuclear family of two parents and a few children living as a self- contained unit. In this guise the family is justifiably condemned by feminists and some psychologists as the most immediate locus of the oppression of women and children. It has the complex function of underpinning the capitalist economy by being the consumer unit it depends on, and of perpetuating both itself and the repressive economic and political system by being one of the most influential places (along with school) where children are brought to see themselves and the world in the terms of the prevailing ideology, and thus to become law-abiding citizens. On top of this is the severe economic pressure on women to marry, while men can afford not to if they like. Working-class and many middle-class women cannot earn enough to survive on their own.
The means proposed by various feminist analysts for the economic, political, psychological and sexual liberation of women always include the abolition of the nuclear family. A Christian committed to the struggle for women’s liberation must question the point and form of Christian marriage as it is normally expressed.
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- Copyright © 1972 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
page 196 note 1 E.g. Firestone, Shulamith, The dialectic of Sex, London, 1971Google Scholar; Mitchell, Juliet, Women's Estate, Pelican Books 1971Google Scholar; Greer, Germaine, The Female Eunuch, London (Paladin edition), 1971Google Scholar; Laing, R. D. and Esterson, A., Sanity, Madness and the family Pelican Books, 1970Google Scholar; and other works by R. D. Laing.
page 196 note 2 On this and other points which I shall be treating from a more specifically feminist standpoint than he did, see Bernard Sharratt, ‘Corruption Begins at Home?’, New Blackfriars February, 1971, pp. 69–80.
page 196 note 3 This lies behind the reasons Mr Michael de Marco, a Bronx Democrat, gave for opposing the proposed bill to make it illegal to discriminate against homosexuals in housing or employment. ‘I think that policemen, firemen, and teachers are image builders for our youth. At least I hope they still are.’ (Guardian, January 29, 1972). Homosexuals in these professions would undermine the image of the ‘real’ male character necessary for the maintenance of the status quo, at the same time as threatening the ‘father‐figure’ image of policemen, firemen and teachers.
page 196 note 4 E.g. Germaine Greer, op. cit., pp. 219–238.
page 198 note 1 Bernard Sharratt, op. cit., p. 79; Irene Brennan, ‘Women in the Gospels’, New Black‐friars, July, 1971, pp. 291–299.
page 199 note 1 Thus when the Bishop of Derry appealed for restraint on February 2nd he addressed his appeal ‘to you all, and particularly to the heads of families…’.
page 199 note 2 Introduction to Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in Marx, Karl, Early Texts, ed. McLellan, David, Oxford, 1971, p. 116Google Scholar.
page 200 note 1 Magaŝ, Branka, ‘Sex Politics: Class Politics’, in New Left Review 66, March-April, 1971, p. 85.Google Scholar
page 200 note 2 Tove Reventlow, ‘Women and the Liberation of Men’, in New Blackfriars, July, 1971, pp. 300–304.
page 201 note 1 This sort of opinion is of course held by many men. One of the difficulties experienced in the attempt of students of Essex University and miners to co‐operate in the miners' strike at the end of January was that the ‘recognition of the students' seriousness was qualified by the miners' divided attitude to the women: women en masse were seen as militants; in individual encounters the miners tried with difficulty to assimilate them to their image of women.’ (7 Days, No. 14, 2–8 February, 1972, p. 17) In the debate on the Anti‐Discrimination Bill on January 28th, Mr Sharples, the Minister of State, Home Office is reported by the Guardian to have said that ‘discrimination did not arise in employment in the vase majority of cases … men and women were not competing for the same jobs in a huge field of industry, including hea? engineering, transport, and coal mining. The majority of women were working in jobs which were ‘an extension of their traditional domestic role’… women wanted jobs in fields such as nursing, food, shops and the social services. A survey published in 1968 showed that the majority of women were satisfied with their jobs.’ An extreme point of view on the same topic was that attributed to Mr Ronald Bell (Cons.): ‘of course women are inferior. They are second‐class citizens and ought to be treated as such.’
page 202 note 1 Op. cit., p. 124: ‘Ask many a woman whether she wants equal pay and the answer is likely to be “no”. “It wouldn't be fair, men do heavier work, we don't want to take away from their pay‐packet, they are the bread‐winners, we work for extras.’” The author treats this subject in some detail on pages 124–131.
page 202 note 2 On the Scotland Road Free School see, for instance, John Hoyland, ‘Teachers on a Tightrope’; in 7 Days, No. 15, February 9–15, 1972. The Free School is Britain's first Community school, and has 45 working‐class children aged between 9 and 16. There are no rules, compulsory attendance or formal lessons. There are five teachers, four with degrees. ‘But we don't regard ourselves as teachers, in that sense. What we are trying to do is to extend the definition of teacher, so that it will include anyone in the area. Lots of the kids at the school get most out of the people in the area. Lots of people come into the school and do a few jobs, and end up teaching the kids… Most of the opposition we get comes from teachers, particularly in this area, and the Catholic Church. The local priest spent his sermon last Sunday criticizing the Free School, though he's never been there. Because we won't teach religion there. But the place is more religious than lots of his schools are. They beat the kids…. They indoctrinate them, they control them, they suppress them…. I see state education as being inherently elitist, but we started the Free School because we believe you can't have a revolution within the state system… The system is tied to society, and if society says tomorrow, we've had enough of their liberalism, now we'll start teaching other things‐the teachers'll jump to it. They're a depressing lot.’ In Italy the school of Rarbiana had similar success as an alternative, and a similar, liberating effect on the children, in this case peasants. See, on that, Letter to a Teacher by the pupils of the School of Barbiana, Penguin Education Special, 1970.
page 203 note 1 Luke 20.34‐5: ‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die.’
page 204 note 1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.2.q.23 a. 1.
page 204 note 2 Cf.V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution passim, but especially ch.V.2 ‘… the transition from capitalist society‐which is developing towards communism–to communist society is impossible without a “political transition period….”’
page 204 note 3 Though some, for instance Shulamith Firestone, have some extraordinarily imaginative ideas about the ways in which their production may be shared with women by men and machines in the future.
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