I became a feminist as a young girl. When I was born women generally still had to get credit accounts in their husband’s name. If you wanted prescription birth control you often had to pretend to be married, and some doctors even wanted proof you had your husband’s permission to get it. Employment ads were divided into “Jobs — Men” and “Jobs — Women”. And even if the job was open to either it was perfectly acceptable to reject the females because the men had “families to feed” or refuse to hire a woman if they even suspected she might become pregnant some day. Somehow I knew this was not right.
I celebrated as women gained independence and autonomy even while knowing that sexism was still alive and well because too many of the dominant cultures in this society had treated women as property for millennia. What has dismayed me is that this seems to have resulted in what I view as a sexism toward women who have not broken from those old cultural norms.
Most of us acknowledge that prominent women are considered legitimate targets from all sides. And many here have come to the defense of these women numerous times. I hope I don’t have to review all the ways sexism reared its ugly head with Hillary Rodham Clinton. But this diary is about a woman who could be considered HRC’s diametric opposite, Melania Trump.
I don’t know Melania Trump and I doubt few, if any, others on DK know her. So I can’t defend her person or personality. But I am bothered by many of the attacks aimed at her, particularly regarding the fact that she married Donald Trump. A diary about her not wanting anything to do with the US Presidency made the Rec list* and, as I expected before I read it, it was full of “she got what she deserves” comments. So here are my thoughts on this subject.
It is NOT okay to judge another person’s reason for marriage. The reason WHY two people choose to marry is no one else’s business but theirs!
Why do so many people act as though loving a person that other people respect is the ONLY legitimate reason for marriage, as though there is only one reason for marriage? This displays a depressing lack of knowledge of the history of marriage. I heard a comedian do a bit where he initially shocks his audience by saying he doesn’t want gays to be allowed to marry for “love”. He then states he thinks they should be allowed to marry for any damn reason they want to marry. Which is only fair as heterosexual people have been doing that since the concept of permanent pair bonding became the norm.
Marriage is a legal and social (including often religious) construct to establish rights of succession and property (through “legitimate” offspring) and to establish permanent relationships that help to keep a social group (or political partnership) stable and bonded. Sometimes love, or at least mutual attraction, was part of the equation but it was certainly not the dominant one in many cultures.
In the societies with which we are most familiar here, men were the ones who controlled property and wealth and women were responsible for maintaining the home and provided children to inherit or to bring in income.
Boys worked or managed the land or went off to bring back wealth. Girls were assets to work in the home and most options for women to actually earn money, if allowed to do so, were low paying and involved a form of servitude. So marriage to a man with a regular income was appealing — if you had to clean a home or make clothes wouldn’t you rather it be your own? If a woman’s social class ruled out employment, and she was without any inherited funds she could be an extra unwanted expense to a male relative until they found a husband. Waiting for “love” and a man who would treat you as an equal was often a luxury (assuming it was a society where unmarried women were even allowed to socialize with men even under very controlled circumstances.)
In many cultures marrying off daughters/sisters was a way to gain assets as well as end the expense, as they commanded a “bride price”. It is up to the father (and maybe the mother) whether to accept a bride price from a suitor, otherwise, no marriage. The value of any particular female’s attributes varied with the society, but attractiveness usually upped the price. Having powerful (male) relatives, i.e. status, also helps. So if a man had more assets, and status as well, he had a wider choice of brides. Hopefully, the parents also took personality and compatibility into consideration, but women usually had little, if any, say in the matter.
So for women the accepted way to achieve a comfortable, secure income for yourself and your children, and your own home to manage, was to marry well. Especially as they knew that they could end up having several children, and it would be nice if they didn’t have to apprentice them as chimney-sweeps at age 5. Married women usually also had more freedom to go out and about than unmarried women. (There was no longer any need to guarantee their purity.)
And for most women, marriage provided safety and protection, for themselves and their children. Too often they were at the mercy of the husband but that might still be better than being at the mercy of the cold, cruel world.
If you think this system has been eradicated and we don’t have a modern version of it, as well as lingering traditions that don’t necessarily make sense to a modern mindset, you have a very poor understanding of the consistency of human behavior since civilization began. Why is it still assumed the woman will give up her name X to become Mrs. Y if we no longer need his name as a form of protection and identification as his property? And why do we still hear couples pronounced man and wife? Be nice to hear a couple pronounced woman and husband for once. Why has one cable TV channel just launched its fourth (or fifth? have lost count) “reality” show about polygamy? (Did you know they apparently tried a pilot episode of a show about polyandry? Since it didn’t take I presume many others didn’t either.) Or turn a show about a husband who didn’t care how many times his wife went through childbirth because God hates birth control into a show about getting their many daughters married because the only career they should have is wife and mother. It also means you haven’t been paying attention to public statements still being made now by elected officials, responsible for policies affecting women at the local, state, and federal levels.
Why is it okay to call someone a gold-digger?
Okay, let’s posit she came to America to hook and marry the richest man she could find. BIG EFFING DEAL! Please explain to me why that makes her the villain. Are you saying those poor men are being taken advantage of because they believe the beautiful young women they focus on really love them for themselves, not the money? Isn’t that the reason most men want a lot of money, for the power it gives them to buy the most toys and the hottest women? One of my signs for sexism is when there is a derogatory name for a woman’s behavior but not a name for the corresponding man’s behavior. In this case, the woman is called a gold-digger. What is the name for the man who salts the mine with gold nuggets?
(That’s why I hate the term mistress. It is associated with concubinage, being a kept woman, her identity is tied to the man. What is the name for the man in the relationship? A man. Paramour at least is gender neutral.)
Frankly, I think part of the reason for using this derogatory term is to chastise the woman for daring to take the initiative in marrying for money, rather than waiting for the man to choose to bestow some of his wealth on her or for the parents to go out and find a wealthy husband to buy marry her. That mercenary motivations in a woman change her from the pure angel deserving of the title wife to the whore who deserves what she gets.
Melania Trump is a stunningly beautiful woman from a country recently freed from totalitarian control, not wealthy by American standards, where getting married and having children are very strong social norms. And reportedly has a dominant father who used his communist connections for financial security and material gain not typical in his country. Is it really surprising that she, and those around her, may have grown up believing that she could trade her beauty for a wealthy husband, and security for herself and her children, and that if he had a stellar personality it was a bonus, not a requirement? (Heck, we still have a society that sexualizes girls as early as age two, i.e. pageants where you win prizes for being the prettiest and flirtiest.) And if that is the original deal they made for their marriage, so what? It’s their business, not mine, why they took their vows.
She is criticized with “she should have known whom she was marrying from the beginning.” Interesting that so many people are so sure they know what she knew before she married him. Donald Trump is hardly the only person to minimize signs of a dishonest, controlling, abusive, etc. personality during the courting portion of a relationship, by action or history. So do the many other woman who marry men like him deserve what they get after marriage? Maybe a woman is given a “free pass” from criticism for making the choice only if no one else saw those deep flaws?
And, really, at what stage in the courtship do you think she should have said to herself, I better dump this guy because if he is elected President of the United States I will become an international object of ridicule? Donald Trump actually becoming POTUS was considered a big joke by many around the country right up until the night of November 8, 2016. So why should this have been a consideration for her 20 years ago?
This rant really isn’t just about Melania.
The point I am trying to make is that there are thousands, if not millions, of people who enter into marriage with seriously flawed people for many reasons. (Surely you know at least one of them.) They may think the positives will outweigh the negatives. Or that it is normal for a husband, especially a prominent one, to be something of a ba$tard, because those are the examples you have known in your life, and it’s just something you have to live with to be married and have children. Or that their “love” is enough to change them once they have the “security” of marriage. Or whatever.
But as liberals don’t we choose not to “blame the victim.” And aren’t we suppose to value empathy for all, even when conservatives don’t? Why is Melania exempt from this? Even if she is not a saint why do people think it is okay to say she deserves a miserable life and ridicule because her husband is a horrible person who rode a wave of horrible politics to office? Most people, perhaps Melania herself, considered Trump just a sometimes entertaining blowhard figure, whose flaws were not a big source of concern in New York, where most people knew about and could handle them. Can’t she be among those who are appalled now that he has been put in a position where he can do tremendous damage?
I am very uncomfortable with my suspicion that much of the animus toward Melania is fueled by hatred of Donald. She is not her husband! Attack her for her own actions. The interview where she promotes the birther BS? It’s fair game to criticize her saying that. (Though it could also be argued that was commanded by her husband.) Other statements that purportedly come from her or that she makes in her public role as FLOTUS? Yup. The clothing? Maybe, maybe not, because she comes from a world where people wear expensive clothing and are given expensive gifts by designers to promote their products. (Many of us probably admire at least one or two people from that world who do the same thing so shouldn’t they be equally criticized?)
Marriage is still important to a lot of women (and men). Some women often feel they have to make compromises to be married and have a family, and I am not going to attack a woman because she finds some compromises far more acceptable than I would. Or because they find divorce a less viable option than I would, particularly when children are involved. In recent decades there may be little stigma attached to being an unmarried or divorced woman in this country, but there is still some, and a notable amount still in other cultures.
In my family the women of the previous generation did make the expected compromises. I was fortunate that several of them did have a strong enough sense of self and independence to defy norms by divorcing when the compromises were too much so that I grew up thinking the same. I believe my mother is one who married not strictly for passionate love or for financial security, as she and my father had comparable and comfortable incomes, but to have a home and family, and she thought my father could help provide that. So did she deserve what she got, a terrible marriage and divorce, because he turned out to be a functioning alcoholic? I’m glad my mother got out but not all did so and I can sympathize why they made that choice.
My personal definition of feminism is that both genders, i.e. all people, have the same rights to making informed choices, not that those choices be the same as mine. But the chief hindrance to realizing this dream is the informed part. A lot of cultural practices and traditions depend on keeping people uninformed or ill-informed (“alternate facts”), meaning that others are operating on information different from mine. Thus, when I disagree with those choices, I hope to ask myself if those choices are really made freely to focus on the appropriate level or type of criticism.
So in defending Melania, I am trying to remind people that sexism and misogyny comes in many forms and we are all still facing it or practicing it in ways we don’t suspect. We humans are good at putting new faces on old prejudices, by setting higher standards for the morality of women, their conduct and their roles in society than we do for the men, so that the woman is responsible for the man’s behavior and he becomes the victim instead. And that she is the one to be blamed for making a choice that seems less than honorable but is her best option in a system designed to limit her power and options. Attacking Melania for Donald’s behavior and choices is no more legitimate than attacking Hillary for Bill’s behavior and choices.
*Note: I started this diary some time ago but didn’t post for a while as attention turned from his family to his associates in his illicit activities and the sheer chaos of his administration. But recent diaries about Melania at the state visit, the funeral, and about men who feel entitled to take out their anger on others, have prompted me to finally post it.