Aisles of the Damned
Reprinted from 21 February 2009
Marriage is a Christian concept designed to make women into property!”
“Hey, Angry-Vegan-Lesbian, good for you for saying words out loud! Two things though: One, that’s not really true; and two, we probably should’ve stopped being friends when I quit doing drugs.”
Despite what your “I-took-an-anthropology-class” friends might tell you, marriage has existed in every culture since time in memoriam – including matriarchal societies (which, according to Women’s Studies people, were perfect cultures, except for the men with their violence and penises and everything. We got it. Men have oppressed women forever, and blah, blah, blah. You know, you’re never going to meet a nice boy if you keep talking that way). The way we produce and raise offspring makes parental-union necessary. The way we form societies seems to require the formalization of that relationship. Hence marriage. It’s not the most perfect system (witness Guy Ritchie and Madonna; if those two couldn’t make it work, who can?), but overall, it gets the job done (yeah, six billion! That’s a fucking winning species – suck it dinosaurs!).
Because we are animals which need ritual, we formalize marriage with the wedding ceremony. It’s an important rite for everyone involved. When we were hunter-gatherers weddings were a good deal. Someone would say, “Hey, Kate and Jim are getting married on the solstice.” And you would say, “Great, I have literally nothing else to do that day, because we haven’t invented anything worth doing.” When the solstice came, you got a day-off from hunting or gathering (both pretty shitty jobs). You walked, maybe thirty yards, to see a shaman say a few words over some naked thirteen-year-olds (“May you have children that don’t die in infancy, and may you both live to be thirty two – L’chaim!). Then everyone would eat a feast – which was a big deal, what with starvation and all that. The thirteen-year-olds would go off and have awkward sex, and everyone would be happy…until something bad happened, which always did.
As we became agrarian, and then manufacturing cultures, we fucked-up the wedding beyond all recognition. Take for example, the dowry system, still practiced in many Asian and African countries. “Wait, my Father has to pay you, so that you will marry me? You do understand I have the vagina and pleasant disposition, so how does that work?”
Even in the United States, in this day and age, weddings have become a serious pain in the ass. Months of planning, tens-of-thousands of dollars, and untold stress for one day featuring an antiquated ritual and a shitty party (you know it’s shitty, because there are old people and children dancing). Let’s look at the ceremony itself:
It used to be, all weddings came in four flavors: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Hobo (not much is known about the Hobo ceremony, except that it ends with the bride and groom punching each other in the face, then feeding each other canned beans). The ceremony was boring, but it was simple, and you could drift off and have little fantasies (“What if I was a pirate…or didn’t feel shame about masturbating”). Besides, as shocking as this might seem, ritual does mean something which is done over and over the same way. You know, like a ritual…like something that isn’t made-up for the occasion. Weddings were conducted by priests, ministers, rabbis or hobo elders (the rank of hobo elder could only be obtained by drinking a bottle of rubbing alcohol and living – like “Dune”). These were people trained in officiating these ceremonies. Nowaday, anyone can officiate a wedding, and they might say anything. At some wedding, you might see that Angry-Vegan-Lesbian, now ordained, and she’s going on and on about Kabbalah, Lillith, and her “Flow.” This is a relatively pleasant scenario. Remember, anyone can get ordained online. It’s not uncommon to see a wedding run by the groom’s stoner high-school friend saying things like, “Love is like ‘Halo 3’ – I swear to God! Follow me on this – it’ll make sense…” Then it all ends with, “Now, by the power vested in me by a website, I now pronounce you person and person – Let fly the bees!”
Stay Strong America, and Await Further Instructions.
