Criticism of marriage

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Criticisms of marriage are arguments against the practical or moral value of the institution of matrimony or particular forms of matrimony. These have included the effects that marriage has on individual liberty, equality between the sexes, the relation between marriage and violence, philosophical questions about how much control can a government have over its population, the amount of control a person has over another, the financial risk when measured against the divorce rate, and questioning of the necessity to have a relationship sanctioned by government or religious authorities.^[1]

Criticism of marriage comes from various cultural movements, including branches of feminism, anarchism, Marxism and queer theory. Feminist activists often point to historical, legal and social inequalities of wedding, family life and divorce in their criticism of marriage. Sheila Cronan claimed that the freedom for women "cannot be won without the abolition of marriage."^[2] "The institution of marriage – wrote Marlene Dixon of the Democratic Workers Party – is the chief vehicle for the perpetuation of the oppression of women; it is through the role of wife that the subjugation of women is maintained". Activist Andrea Dworkin stated :

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership.^[3]

Early second-wave feminist literature in the West, specifically opposed to marriage include personalities such as Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1969), Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch, 1970), Marilyn French (The Women's Room, 1977), Jessie Bernard (The Future of Marriage, 1972), and Shulamith Firestone (The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, 1970).^[4]