Apologies for the abstract and non-snarky nature of this post, but there’s no good source material to shred here, just some thoughts I’ve been having inspired by our continuing discussion of Harpy House and other forms of personal support.
I like to consider myself a good friend to people, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I think the obligation has to be reciprocal. I can’t afford to be that selfless about it, because for me, friendships are a primary means of support. I don’t live close to home, and for that and various other reasons it isn’t realistic for me to rely on my family for things like hospital accompaniment and emergency cat care. As I’ve spoken about here before, too, I’m an only child. And I’m single, possibly doomed to be so in perpetuity. (Note: I’ve been working so hard I have no dating updates to bring you… yet.) So when my parents go, it will not just be unrealistic to rely on family for all the things we hope our families will do for us: care for us when sick, help us out when we are in need. For me, such reliance will be impossible.
I say all of this by way of identifying my personal bias against bonds forged of blood, so to speak, in discussions here and elsewhere. Because I will also say that I think it is a primary responsibility of a feminist to develop relationships formed outside the boundaries of traditional family structures. Why? Well, I’ll let MacKinnon say it:
Family and kinship rules and sexual mores guarantee reproductive ownership and sexual access and control to men as a group.
Now, I know that some recoil when they hear this kind of thing, because it is drilled into our heads, and quite often reinforced by experience, that family bonds just deserve priority. That family should be unassailable. This belief can come from indoctrination – your kin may have drilled it into your head – but it can also be self-imposed. You watch a family-based drama on TV, and you think to yourself: I want that. You go to supper at a friend’s house, with all her raucous siblings trading in-jokes as they set the table, and the refrain starts up in your head again.
But let’s unpack this a little bit. It is demonstrably not the case that a blood or genetic relationship to someone necessarily leads to a bond forged of mutual respect, mutual interest, and mutual caring. There are hundreds upon thousands of adoptees and children in the foster system who can tell you that. It is demonstrably the case, by the testimony of these same people – nevermind those who marry and couple off with people they are not related to – that one can feel more loved and cared for by someone not related to themselves.
I am nonetheless aware that for people oppressed on other bases than gender, the family can seem like a refuge from the daily grind of being devalued, ignored and generally treated as something less than human. For better or for worse, the way we construct families in this society means that there is a strong possibility that one can find those bonds in family.
So let me be clear. I am not calling for an end or a devaluation of family and kinship. I am calling for a destabilization of the rules that surround who we can and should be able to rely on in this culture. That, like it or not, does involve removing the family from its current position at either the top of the pyramid or the center of the Venn diagram (take your pick of visual metaphors) of your treasured personal relationships. And I think the best way for us to encourage this is to advocate the changing of the law to allow people to choose anyone, regardless of affiliation to themselves, to enter into a legally recognized relationship of mutual support. That’s right: I’m running straight for that slippery slope the anti-gay marriage conservatives talk about. I’ve got a toboggan with me.*
Not only would this resolve the incredible human rights abomination of the refusal to recognize gay marriage in one fell swoop, it would immediately force people to ask themselves: who can I rely on? This is an immensely scary question in a patriarchal society, because often the people we are told to turn to for support, who we are told have some obligation to us – men, politicians, doctors, lawyers – do not actually feel driven to respect that relationship. Oh, they may understand it as a matter of theory, professional ethics, but it isn’t the kind of thing they feel when confronted with someone with whom they have forged a bond based on nothing stronger (or weaker, one might say) than mutual interest and respect who is in a tight spot and needs their help.
Moreover, wouldn’t it mean that we all start regarding responsibility for each other as something we have to take on, as something chosen and carefully constructed, instead of the passive way we all currently regard each other?
* Shut up, I am Canadian.
My parents both came from deeply dysfunctional and abusive families, so I’ve always eyed the whole romance of needing the perfectly heteronormative husband-and-kids thing with a healthy dose of suspicion. Your point about being able to pick for ourselves whom we can rely on is well taken. I was just talking to someone yesterday about my father, who is going through a lot of tough stuff, and how it’s falling on my shoulders when he has not always been there for me in the past. It gets complicated, and my sister has simply opted out of the situation. Part of me wonders why I still feel such filial piety in instances like this, because that “mutual caring” you reference has not been so mutual for me in years past.
Anyway, this has turned into a rambling overshare of a comment. But this post makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
Oh, and regarding this bit: I am nonetheless aware that for people oppressed on other bases than gender, the family can seem like a refuge from the daily grind of being devalued, ignored and generally treated as something less than human. LGBT oppression extends into those familial structures all too often and all too painfully (which I know you know, of course), and that is one instance where that “mutual respect” can be put to the test and shattered really fast.
Are there uninstituted legal arrangements beyond gay marriage here that you had in mind? I feel like there is from that sixth paragraph in your post, but I’m not a lawyer (yet) so nothing jumps out at me. Help!
I think also that broadening or “destabilizing” the rules about which kinds of consensual adult relationships receive the legal (and societal) benefits of marriage might help to break down the unequal power hierarchies that plague most hetero marriages. This might make the whole institution of marriage less oppressive and exclusionary, which would allow people to chose this officially recognized status without feeling so guilty and conflicted about it.
“Now, I know that some recoil when they hear this kind of thing, because it is drilled into our heads, and quite often reinforced by experience, that family bonds just deserve priority.”
Hey, my immediate (and most of extended) family members are certifiably NUTS, so you’ll get no recoiling from yours truly. In fact, that faint “Brava!” you hear in the distance? It’s me.
Hmm. I think that blood bonds *can* be some of the closest and most fulfilling. My brother and I get along better than either of us do with almost anyone else. Both of us find our parents to be endlessly supportive and caring (and I’ve never felt like my family was actively patiarchal — my father is, if anything, more excited that I’m going into engineering than my mother is). But. I have an uncle who is something of a toolbag. I find him mildly loathsome. And his family is extremely patriarchal. He has only sons, and he does not allow his wife to discipline them in any meaningful way. He does not allow her to have a job, even though she wants to work (his reasoning is not so that she can clean or what have you, but because they’re well-off and he claims he doesn’t want her to take a job away from someone who really needs one. And yet…). I feel no kinship with this guy, nor with his sons. I like his wife, but I see her very rarely. So…once my grandparents on that side die, I don’t really want to continue that acquaintance.
Basically! Family bonds can be great, but they aren’t necessarily and when they aren’t you should lose them because they suck.
Also, I agree with you about the slippery slope thing. Civil marriage is mostly just tax benefits! Anyone should be able to get them if they want to set up house together!
Sorry, in case it wasn’t clear, I meant to say that my own family’s craziness helped me realize at a relatively early age that blood ties aren’t “all that” (pardon the vernacular, but it’s 4:15 on a Friday). So I wholeheartedly agree that we need to seek out and form bonds outside the traditional familial structures. And if I lived in NYC, I would totally be your non-family family, to accompany you on hospital visits and assist in cat care. *hug*
I’ve heard some people advocate for a system wherein you could appoint various people to have the same legal standings as siblings – they would have automatic visitation rights and would be able to have/be power of attorney/health care proxy/etc if no one else was available.
Of course, the third option is to separate marriage from the state altogether (make it a religious or otherwise personally-determined thing) and put in its place some kind of civil union or domestic partnership or similar arrangement that doesn’t have anything to do with romantic involvement. The benefit of doing this is that you could have groups of closely bonded friends entering into these kinds of arrangements without freaking out the Pat Robertsons of the world.
Yes, Rachel, that’s more or less what I would advocate.
I thoroughly understand that in the gay marriage context there is a value to claiming the word itself in order to destabilize the hegemony of heterosexual relationships as the paradigm of romantic human involvement.
But otherwise, I’m quite happy to throw the baby (marriage as an institution) out with the bathwater (marriage as a heterosexist institution).
Both my parents grew up on a kibbutz so they weren’t around their parents much. In a kibbutz, everyone grows up with kids of their age group, and only get to see their parents for 2 hours every day, since infancy (at least, this is what most kibbutzim were like back in the day).
I think the kibbutz movement “proved” that you can’t just take away the instinct for familial ties, and that’s part of the reason why the kibbutz movement failed (watch the movie Children of the Sun to learn more).
However, there’s always a balance to these things. I think that a certain detachment from family is very healthy. But I also believe that a certain degree of attachment to family is natural and healthy, and keeps us feeling stable in the world. Ain’t nothin wrong with loving and relying on your family.
I think what PSoul is saying, May, is that not everyone has a family that makes them feel stable in the world; not everyone’s family is reliable. And those people’s relationships with non-family members should not be devalued just because they are not related.
Several commenters have mentioned creating legal categories that don’t rely on kin and/or romantic relationships. Hawaii did that in 1997 with “reciprocal beneficiaries.” It’s a legal category of non-marital relationships that’s often discussed in the context of same-sex marriage, but the idea goes even farther–reciprocal beneficiaries are not necessarily romantically/sexually involved. You could be reciprocal beneficiaries with your lover, sibling, best friend, aunt, whatever, and then you’d have the mutual rights of inheritance, state pensions, etc. Very interesting!
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/vital-records/reciprocal/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Beneficiary_Relationships_in_Hawaii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Beneficiary_Relationships_in_Hawaii
love this post… I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I come from a family of 8 kids…
In Tasmania (in Australia) you can have a relationship recognised in a relationship register (and it’s not just about recognition of a couple of either or both sex)… this register is a formal and legal way for people who have supportive relationships that exist outside of what is considered the *norm*.
For example, an elderly person who has a supportive relationship the next door neighbour can have that relationship recognised so that issues to do with being informed and involved in pre and post hospital care need to involve that person…
Also there are some boroughs in England where a similar arrangement exists…
PSoul, I reckon bring it on!
SarahMC: Yeah, that’s fair. Carry on.
My thoughts are along the lines of Rachel_In_WY. Now, my mother was always a bit of a hippy before becoming a Baptist, so she’s not a perfect example, but I know that my conversations with her* about how the government should recognize legal “partnership” arrangements like this led to her being more open to the idea of civil/gay marriage. She came to acknowledge that the government administers the legal/taxation/inheritance/etc. aspects of marriage, but not the religious/spiritual/relational.
*I’m Canadian too, so these conversations took place 8-10 years ago.
@ bluenose sailor: Just a note – I added in that time reference to show that the discussions took place a few years before the provincial courts and then the fed’l government recognized same-sex marriage, to help emphasize that these sort of discussions are really pro-active.
I absolutely get what you’re saying. I have a sister who is no longer part of my life, and probably never will be. At the same time, I have two “friends” who go way beyond that – they are siblings to me. The word friend doesn’t do our relationship justice, especially considering my mother has very much become a second mother to them. I wish there was someway to formalize our relationship, legally. I think Hawaii has the right idea. There’s so much societal pressure that centers around the nuclear family – people are weirded out that I don’t talk to my sister. It’s like I’ve broken an unspoken rule or something. You make the family you want, I believe.
I realize this is not a very interesting comment, but I’m leaving it here as a marker to myself so I can leave more details Monday. The term before last, a legal scholar visited our class (her name is among the details I pledge to retrieve). Her studies focus on the status of “friend” in our society and really essentially I heard echoes of this through your post, PSoul. She also advocates for a legally recognized “friend” status for those whose closest relationships are not bound by blood. I do wish I could remember her name off the top of my head, but I’m out of town for the weekend. At any rate that should give you some source material.
It would be interesting to see you expand on the meaning of that quotation and how it applies to the family nowadays or applies to your family. Maybe I’m just tired but I feel like your entry wasn’t really about the quote.
When it comes to my mom’s family, I’m far closer to the women in my family. Through them, I’m closer to their husbands than the men who are my blood relatives. I’ve wondered why men seem less into family. I don’t know what consequences men being less into family might have.
I think I read that in France, they passed a civil-union-ish law several years ago. It was called something like ‘domestic partnership’, and it allowed for sharing of finances and insurance coverage and stuff.
It turned out that a lot of the people declaring domestic partnership were mother-daughter pairs. The law stops automatically allowing, say, a mother to include her daughter on her health-insurance policy, once the daughter reaches adulthood, so this was a way to arrange legal recognition of a continuing interdependent household.
@Rockthedebt You can give anyone power of attorney for money & health (at least here in Canada) but you do have to formalize it and make it legal. What I’m not clear on is if you have to explicitly state certain family members have no right to make such decisions or if the POA giving explicit rights to non-family is enough – and it may be different in the US.
Yeah, but POA, etc. requires hiring an attorney, which is more expensive than, say, a standardized “legal siblinghood”, “mutual beneficiaries”, or PACS arrangement.
(Disclaimer: I’m in law school; I should be in favor of increasing the need for attorneys.)
[...] a question that is pertinent to Kylie who is living in a different country and a question this wonderful blogger put to her [...]
For me the crux of it is I wish we didn’t have to completely burden our families be they parents/ siblings/ partner/ children or these friends relegated to “family status”.
Perhaps if we lived in friendlier, tighter communities, where the entire neighbourhood shouldered the responsibility, we wouldn’t have so much angst about who would be there for us to look after us.
Anyway great post, and really had me thinking and discussing with my friends! And even wrote my own post about it:
http://kapookababy.com/2009/06/25/who-you-gonna-call-and-are-your-friends-on-that-list/