From The Nation, in which a woman writes to Liza Featherstone for advice under the headline "I'm a Marxist-Feminist Slut - How Do I Find an Open Relationship?":
"I’m a 32-year-old woman who would like to have kids and a life partner in the not-so-distant future. And lucky me! I’ve recently started dating an excellent candidate. But I can’t even pretend to think it’s possible (or desirable) to have sex with just one person for the rest of my life or even, frankly, for a few years.
Monogamy feels antithetical to the type of feminism and anticapitalism I subscribe to. I am repulsed by the idea of being a man’s property. Also, monogamy—like capitalism—requires us to believe in a false scarcity: that we have to struggle for every little bit and that everything we gain comes at someone else’s expense. The kind of liberatory future I’d like to see is one of abundance and generosity and sharing. One of the few places we can experiment with that now is in our love lives.But ALL the decent men I’ve dated are really opposed to open relationships, while the men I’ve slept with who say they fancy the idea don’t ever stick around long enough for the “relationship” part of an open relationship. This leaves me feeling like once I find a partner, the options are: 1) cheating (crummy and unethical, also a big anxiety-inducing headache); 2) waiting for the mythical “one” who will magically make me never attracted to anyone else (I’m fairly certain this is a hoax); or 3) retire from my glorious days as a loud, proud slut and gradually wither away inside as I suffocate one of the parts of my life, personality, and politics I cherish most. Please tell me there is another option out there.
—A Marxist-Feminist Slut "
Dear MFS,
I'm a 36-year-old woman who has four kids and a husband presently. And blessed me! We're still together after 14 years of marriage with no end in sight. But I can't even pretend to think it's possible (or desirable) to limit yourself to only one choice of polyamory in your future, no matter how difficult you think it may be.
Monogamy is likely antithetical to the feminism and Marxist leanings you subscribe to, just as polyamory is antithetical to the Catholic and conservative leanings I subscribe to. But your assumption that monogamy is a false scarcity is quite untrue, let me assure you. Let me break down the two items you highlight:
"...we have to struggle for every little bit..." Little bit of what? Tapping enough booty in your lifetime, earning every dollar with some honest work, allowing failure to become the ultimate teacher and guide? Let me tell you, if you find the right person, getting enough booty will never be a problem again. Trust. But I'll address the honest work and failure in the next item:
"...that everything we gain comes at someone else's expense." Capitalism is not a finite pie that you must grab enough of before someone else does. Where capitalism creates opportunity for both failure and success, it also creates a space for opportunity, flexibility, and competition that puts you and me, the consumers, in full control. Small business owners, when mostly unchecked by crippling governmental regulations and red tape, start to realize that the consumer is the one who can check and uncheck a business's success faster than any government agency could dream of.
The government you dream of brokering abundance, generosity, and sharing is what is mythical, unlike a dude who likes sharing you with others. Also, abundance and sharing are directly non-proportional in a socialist society (see Venezuela), and so the third quality, generosity, gets thrown to the wayside when citizens don't even have enough for themselves to live. It leaves a vacuum where desperation, violence, and eventually rebellion are inevitable.
As a Catholic married prude, however, I wonder if I can't convince you that a monogamous marriage has not withered and suffocated me from my life, personality, and politics.
In the commonwealth where we were married, my husband and I didn't have to sign any document that stated I was his property. In fact, if that were the case we'd like have found another state or commonwealth that DIDN'T have that obligation listed. The marriage contract we entered into (recognized by my community) and eventually the marriage covenant we entered into (recognized by God) did not have anything to do with ownership. The key here is sacrificial love.
Yes, I gave up my maiden name and took his; it makes our family unit easily identifiable, my children a living and breathing testament to our singular unity.
Yes, I gave up working outside the home; this enables me to provide abundance, generosity, and sharing of love in our home of my own free will.
Yes, I gave up making choices exclusively for myself; I now practice budgeting, instruction, cleanliness, and sacrificial love for the benefit of five others.
In return of giving myself up for the betterment of my spouse and family, my husband has done the same. He travels extensively and I'm lucky to see him 50% of my week. He works incessantly and tirelessly, many nights dragging himself to bed as the sun peeks above the horizon. He makes choices not based on whether it is healthy for him to be sleep-deprived and sitting in a car or at his desk for thousands of hours a year, but for what he can do to provide peace of mind and abundance for his family's future.
Think of a marriage as each person having a glass full of water, representing their very self, their identity, their political and religious beliefs (even lack thereof), the core of their being. Marriage is not the exchange of a portion of that water. It is not the exchange of an unequal portion of that water, in which one person gives more than the other; you're just going to have wet socks. It is not instantly dropping your glass and withering away as a dependent on someone else's water. Marriage is the free will to exchange your glass with your spouse's. Kinda scary, right? You're still you and your spouse is still them; yet in your hands rests the most precious part of your spouse, and in his hands, yours.
Now, if you find that you have similar values and beliefs in politics or ethereal beings, you might see how you might treat this glass of water as carefully as your own. Sometimes, you may get scared and try to take your glass back. You may try to hold both glasses at the same time. You may purposefully empty part or all of your spouse's glass. You may break your spouse's glass, intentionally or not. If you have kids, then you both are juggling their glasses that eventually you need to give back to them, hopefully intact and full to the brim, when they go into the world. And yet, in the context of the relationship, the goal is the same: Observing your spouse handle the most cherished part of yourself will show you how much they love you.
So, don't despair if you have to give monogamy a go. My gentle final suggestion? Perhaps you should consider practicing capitalism in your community and elements of socialism in your relationship/marriage and not the other way around.
-- A Concerned Catholic Citizen
P.S. Liza's lamentation that "radicals can be conservative in their personal lives" is wholly exclusionary. There are radicals on all sides of the political spectrum, even if we don't have the fortitude to study and recognize it. I'd take on the rest of Liza's advice to you, MFS, but frankly I don't have the fortitude to offer enough charity to that "advice columnist" this late in the day. Perhaps another time. --CCC
