TAMING MEN: Mark Barton replies to Sandy Frank

Sandy Frank writes: "Maybe allowing men to form marriages with other men could help society by stabilizing their relationships. But why, then, didn't marriage evolve that way in the first place, as a union of any two people?

"Because society's idea of marriage has always been to tame men, not by hooking them up with someone but by hooking them up with women. Women bring a different energy, a different point of view to marriage, and it's their energy that tames men, domesticates them, if you will. Without that domestication, society is in big trouble."

Mark B.: There's a bit of a disconnect with reality here. Certainly traditional opposite-sex marriage is in part about channelling the sex drive of "men" into productive or at least non-damaging directions. However it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense in this respect except to the extent society pretends gay men don't exist, or that they're evil monsters whose quality of life doesn't need to be taken into account.

The point here is that to a straight man, traditional marriage is at worst a tolerable deal. It means rather less sexual variety than might otherwise be achievable, especially for the young and attractive, but in compensation one gets consistent access and protection from predation by other men. In the old days one even got housekeeping services.

By contrast, to a gay man, traditional marriage is an unbelievably lousy deal. I'm "gay", in the sense that's standard among self-identified gay men: sexually attracted more or less exclusively to other men and not at all to women. I've never been the least attracted to a women in my entire life, whereas I've been attracted to assorted cute guys ever since puberty. And in this, I'm very typical of a lot of "gay" men and the exact opposite of straight ones. (I don't doubt that there are also bisexual men, but I'm not one and I don't claim to speak for them.) You might as well try to domesticate our sex drives by marrying us off to lampposts as to women.

On the one hand you won't succeed in getting gay men into opposite-sex marriages simply by making same-sex marriage unavailable. There's no honey of any sort on the proposition, only vinegar: opposite-sex marriage means no decent sex or sex-related intimacy ever, for a whole lifetime. You don't stand a chance of making it happen without bringing back the good old days where sodomy was a felony and not getting married incurred suspicion of sodomy. And on the other hand, it would all be spectacularly pointless or even counterproductive because (i) such marriages are not particularly stable, (ii) men in such marriages are likely to be cheating with other men in unsavory circumstances that promote STDs, and (iii) gay men are not particularly likely to father children except in such marriages.
posted by Eve at 8:12 PM | link

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