"demarriage" and French PACS

This post is two steps removed from its original source, since it's a guest post on a blog that's not mine. It's written by Barry from Baslow's Electric OmniumGatherum, cross-posted at Women's Glib. The whole post is worth a read, for the anecdotal aspect, but the part that really caught my attention was the reference to the French PACS, short for pacte civil de solidarité.

"[it] is a form of civil union between two adults (same-sex or opposite-sex) for organising their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage. From a legal standpoint, a PACS is a “contract” drawn up between the two individuals, which is stamped and registered by the clerk of the court. In some areas, couples signing a PACS have the option of undergoing a formal ceremony at the City Hall identical to that of civil marriage. Individuals who have registered a PACS are still considered “single” with regard to family status for some purposes, while they are increasingly considered in the same way as married couples are for other purposes."

Barry notes correctly that PACS are not regarded in the same way as marriage in France, in that family status of PACS signatories is still considered single, and PACS signatories without marriage licenses (namely same-sex couples) cannot adopt. But it's certainly something, in that a lot of the legal crap regarding healthcare and estate dispute that same-sex couples deal with here can be avoided in France if there is a PACS involved.

I'm in agreement with Barry that I would REALLY like a way to recognize the legal aspects of a marriage-type union without the religious and pseudo-moralistic connotations. For those who wish to ascribe religious significance to their union, why not, but not every marriage has anything religious about it. Not to mention the fact that the pseudo-religious regulations about marriage in the US are definitely Christianized in ways that, constitutionally, have no business in legislation.

Ten Things Wrong with Sarkozy's Burqa Ban

Via the Czech

1. Mandating how women should dress is mandating how women should dress, whether it is a mandate to wear a burqa, or a mandate not to wear one. When a man tells a woman how to dress, it’s paternalism and subjugation one way or the other.

2. Plus, as Dori points out, a man telling a woman that too much of her body is covered, and that she needs to expose more of it to his view, is pretty weird. How much modesty is too much? How much exposed flesh is enough to satisfy Sarkozy?

3. A Christian man imposing rules of dress upon Muslim women does little to actually foster the kind of gender equality he claims to be advancing.

4. Sarkozy talks as though there is no “subjugation of women” among the non-Muslim denizens of France. As though France is a wonderland of gender equality. According to WikiGender: “Compared to other countries, France has always been rather late in adopting gender equality as a goal and designing policies to achieve it.” So why suddenly all this concern for a certain subset of French women, who just randomly happen to come from a community hated and feared by many in France?

5. What other items of clothing does Mr. Sarkozy disapprove of? Do they also happen to correspond to certain disfavored, marginalized communities?

6. Any attempt to “eliminate” burqas in France will only serve to further marginalize the women who wear them. Burqas, for some women, represent a compromise. Some individuals believe women are not supposed to be seen in public, or be looked at by men outside of the family. In this extreme view, women would be entirely confined to the house and removed from outside society unless they can put on a burqa and go out. Eliminating the burqa for these women would mean eliminating their access to the world. Better conditions for such women require a little more work than outlawing a piece of clothing.

7. Eliminating burqas in France would not mean that women’s oppression in Muslim communities would end. It would simply be a cosmetic change that would do nothing to actually work with communities and empower French Muslim women to achieve equality. It is a measure that ignores all nuance and avoids all honest work to actually tackle the heart of the problem.

8. All this “eliminate the burqa” talk fits just a little too snugly with the popular “Islam oppresses women” meme that Christian Westerners like to toss around, particularly when they are trying to frame a “War of Civilizations”.

9. Also, doesn’t this just come off as a cheap attempt at burnishing his Women’s Issues credentials while effectively only harassing a marginalized, already-persecuted minority? And doing little to nothing to further true societal equality for all women in France?

10. What real issues do French women, and French Muslim women in particular, actually face that Sarkozy is completely avoiding by diverting attention with this stunt? Why randomly target French Muslims now?

overheard in Chicago: making my point for me

"Gir: (blowing her nose)

Woman: 'Oh, do you have a cold?'

Girl: 'No, my date is an ass.'

Woman: 'Well, they don't get any better when you marry them, honey.'"

Dissolution

Do our problems with marriage arise from our impoverished ideas about romance?

In this article at Salon, Amanda Fortini discusses the story of Sandra Tsing-Loh and the dissolution of her 20-year marriage, in "Why Your Marriage Sucks." Her premise, along with those of her sources, is that the majority of relationships fail because of warped expectations of relationships. It's not the first time we've heard this excuse.

I'd be willing to place a lot more fault on reality than on fiction. I'm even willing to "blame the feminists," in that yes, women have come to expect more from marriage than financial support. We want a partnership, which may be suggested in romance novels, but fuck.

I suppose I should note that this is coming in on the tail end of my engagement, which is dissolving like a sugar cube in boiling water. Yes, I'm a little jaded, because for a long time I held onto the idea that this was a good man, and he is. He is a truly caring individual, and is quite attentive. But.

I am capable and competent, and I want more from my life than comfortable. I want happiness. I did not have happiness with him, and without the complications of children to hold me to it, I find it difficult to force myself to stick it out. My mom says, "they're all like that, so you might as well keep the one that's nice to you."

If they're all like that, I don't want one.

There's no reason a woman shouldn't expect her man to share the load. I don't mean "help out." The jobs need done, it is OUR home, they are OUR jobs. Not MY jobs you can help me with. Most women I know will give you this same frustration, even if she is happy in her relationship.

At any rate, I think it's more an unwillingness to put up with the frustrations of married life than disillusionment. Few women expect that we will find a Mr Darcy, and on a romantic level, are frequently perfectly happy with mediocre romance. It's when the inequality becomes so rampant that it's unbearable. We were raised to stick up for ourselves and not be walked on; we shouldn't have to exchange that self-reliance for love.