Rights, Privileges, and Pork
I’ve heard that there's an old joke in the D/S community about the difference between a slave and a spouse: the slave is involved in a consensual relationship.
There's also a tale about the wild pigs that no one could catch. The man who finally undertook the task wasn't a skilled hunter; all he did was build a pen with an open gate and leave slops in it. As time went by, the pigs started to visit the pen, stopped looking for food in the wild, and finally made no effort to escape the pen when the man came and closed the gate.
These tidbits come from opposite sides of the political spectrum; I read the second one in Alberta Report, the editors of which are, ironically, substantial recipients and supporters of the sort of largesse recently referred to in the Hey Hetero! exhibits. The first was once the sort of joke made by the same people who liked to say that what went on between consenting adults in their own homes was no one’s business but theirs.
I speak of this sentiment in the past tense because, of course, both groups have shown themselves only too willing to belly up to the trough and give up their freedom and their principles when they’re offered a few… well, I’m not sure just what to call them. “Rights” are supposedly things which should be inalienable, possessed from birth, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Can marriage, which is designed by the state, societal convention, and consumerism to give higher status to those people who adopt it, be called a right? I don’t think so; not if rights are supposed to be compatible with a society dedicated to equality of opportunity. Marriage can’t be entered into at birth, either, without infringing on the child’s freedom of choice.
Even in adulthood, there’s still some infringement on freedom of choice because marriage is all about making opportunities unequal; it’s the number one predictor of upward mobility, even more so than education, and it's a lot easier to obtain. The apparent advantages to be gained from it are so great that economically disadvantaged people almost have no other other choice but to get married if they want to move up the economic and social ladder.
Can marriage be called a privilege, then? The inherent advantages of marriage, such as having someone to share expenses with and have sex with on a regular basis, are theoretically available without getting married, just as the pigs in the story were at least as well fed in the wild as they were by the man who trapped them. Was the food offered to them a privilege? Not in comparison to that eaten by any other domesticated pigs. If a privilege is supposed to be an exemption from evil, or as suggested by one of its synonyms, a liberty, then the food appeared to be a privilege, but it came with a price. The pigs took the equivalent of political pork and most likely ended up as literal pork in the end.
The exploitation of humans resembles enslavement more than slaughter, since people are still squeamish about eating each other. However, if people that I’d spent years developing friendships with were eventually rounded up and shipped off to a meat processing plant, I’d probably be better off socially. Maybe then some people would put up a fight and resolve not to have the same thing happen to them. Maybe I’d have a sense of closure, rather than wondering whether I might some day pick up where I left off with my former friends when their children are grown, and no longer be treated as persona non grata because I haven’t made my own contract with the meat packers.
Whether the people I once knew will still be the same after all those years of marriage, though, seems unlikely to me. Recipients of pork don’t like to be reminded of it; they become more and more entrenched in their views, more hyprocritally committed to defending their “rights,” more fearful of either having to fend for themselves or take responsibility for their own happiness. Women stop studying, working, and growing, men give up things they once enjoyed that aren’t directly concerned with providing for their wives and children.
Hearing gay people lobby for the supposed right to be treated the same way as straight people sounds to me like the oppressed are identifying with their oppressors. Once gay people can marry, I’ve lost that many more potential friends and political allies. If there were so many gay people that allowing them to marry would cause the marriage pork barreling system to collapse, I’d be much happier about it, but unfortunately, it’s not true. Gay people have gone over to the other side, as far as I’m concerned, and now they’ll probably call me right wing for not liking it, even though they’ve won the “right” to call themselves superior for the same main reason that conservative people do.
As a single person, I’m not sure I have any political representation, whether it’s on the left or the right of the spectrum. If I want to be considered the equal of married people, who can I vote for to make it happen? How many single American presidents have there been? There may not have been a female American president, but there have been plenty of unelected women in the White House; in fact, it’s virtually impossible for a man to get there without one. If one includes those not currently married and those too young to marry, single people may be the largest and most politically disenfranchised group in society.
There's also a tale about the wild pigs that no one could catch. The man who finally undertook the task wasn't a skilled hunter; all he did was build a pen with an open gate and leave slops in it. As time went by, the pigs started to visit the pen, stopped looking for food in the wild, and finally made no effort to escape the pen when the man came and closed the gate.
These tidbits come from opposite sides of the political spectrum; I read the second one in Alberta Report, the editors of which are, ironically, substantial recipients and supporters of the sort of largesse recently referred to in the Hey Hetero! exhibits. The first was once the sort of joke made by the same people who liked to say that what went on between consenting adults in their own homes was no one’s business but theirs.
I speak of this sentiment in the past tense because, of course, both groups have shown themselves only too willing to belly up to the trough and give up their freedom and their principles when they’re offered a few… well, I’m not sure just what to call them. “Rights” are supposedly things which should be inalienable, possessed from birth, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Can marriage, which is designed by the state, societal convention, and consumerism to give higher status to those people who adopt it, be called a right? I don’t think so; not if rights are supposed to be compatible with a society dedicated to equality of opportunity. Marriage can’t be entered into at birth, either, without infringing on the child’s freedom of choice.
Even in adulthood, there’s still some infringement on freedom of choice because marriage is all about making opportunities unequal; it’s the number one predictor of upward mobility, even more so than education, and it's a lot easier to obtain. The apparent advantages to be gained from it are so great that economically disadvantaged people almost have no other other choice but to get married if they want to move up the economic and social ladder.
Can marriage be called a privilege, then? The inherent advantages of marriage, such as having someone to share expenses with and have sex with on a regular basis, are theoretically available without getting married, just as the pigs in the story were at least as well fed in the wild as they were by the man who trapped them. Was the food offered to them a privilege? Not in comparison to that eaten by any other domesticated pigs. If a privilege is supposed to be an exemption from evil, or as suggested by one of its synonyms, a liberty, then the food appeared to be a privilege, but it came with a price. The pigs took the equivalent of political pork and most likely ended up as literal pork in the end.
The exploitation of humans resembles enslavement more than slaughter, since people are still squeamish about eating each other. However, if people that I’d spent years developing friendships with were eventually rounded up and shipped off to a meat processing plant, I’d probably be better off socially. Maybe then some people would put up a fight and resolve not to have the same thing happen to them. Maybe I’d have a sense of closure, rather than wondering whether I might some day pick up where I left off with my former friends when their children are grown, and no longer be treated as persona non grata because I haven’t made my own contract with the meat packers.
Whether the people I once knew will still be the same after all those years of marriage, though, seems unlikely to me. Recipients of pork don’t like to be reminded of it; they become more and more entrenched in their views, more hyprocritally committed to defending their “rights,” more fearful of either having to fend for themselves or take responsibility for their own happiness. Women stop studying, working, and growing, men give up things they once enjoyed that aren’t directly concerned with providing for their wives and children.
Hearing gay people lobby for the supposed right to be treated the same way as straight people sounds to me like the oppressed are identifying with their oppressors. Once gay people can marry, I’ve lost that many more potential friends and political allies. If there were so many gay people that allowing them to marry would cause the marriage pork barreling system to collapse, I’d be much happier about it, but unfortunately, it’s not true. Gay people have gone over to the other side, as far as I’m concerned, and now they’ll probably call me right wing for not liking it, even though they’ve won the “right” to call themselves superior for the same main reason that conservative people do.
As a single person, I’m not sure I have any political representation, whether it’s on the left or the right of the spectrum. If I want to be considered the equal of married people, who can I vote for to make it happen? How many single American presidents have there been? There may not have been a female American president, but there have been plenty of unelected women in the White House; in fact, it’s virtually impossible for a man to get there without one. If one includes those not currently married and those too young to marry, single people may be the largest and most politically disenfranchised group in society.