"There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference." --June Jordan

Friday, June 22, 2007

Feminism Friday: Marriagefest 2007

RhianWren has a great roundup of recent posts about marriage over at Cheerful Megalomaniac. As she notes, June seems to have been the month for feminist bloggers to reflect on matrimony.

To add to her list, there was also Twisty's The Post on Marriage, followed by The Post on the Post on Marriage, and tigtog's "I will...NOT" at Hoyden About Town.

So I thought I would contribute by recommending three great feminist books on the topic:

The Meaning of Wife: A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-first Century by Anne Kingston - ALL about the insanity of the Wedding Industrial Complex and a little bit of depressing info about the history and origins of marriage.


I Do, But I Don’t: Walking Down the Aisle Without Losing Your Mind
by Kamy Wicoff - a sort-of-memoir by a young feminist who is struggling to understand and reconcile the entire process of her wedding, from courtship to engagement to wedding planning to the actual big day. I have to warn you that it comes of as slightly classist at times, since the author obviously comes from a family with means (she ends up going for the Vera Wang gown, after all), but her tone is genuine and her struggle makes for a really good read.

The Bitch in the House: 26 women tell the truth about sex, solitude, work, motherhood, and marriage ed. Cathi Hanauer - a collection of essays that seem to echo the exact same sentiment of the commenters at Twisty's. Lots of feminist women who married their partners with visions of completely egalitarian marriages and were then in for rather rude awakenings. But I love personal stories, and I loved the book.