Thursday, May 07, 2009

A tiny request

Can we please, please stop holding up Britney Spears as the iconic irreverent heterosexual marry-er? As Scott suggested in an IM conversation with me, perhaps men who abuse their wives might be a better example of how "sanctity of marriage" arguments are bullshit.

And at any rate, those of us who regularly read and blog about the despicable treatment received by women in the public eye should perhaps consider that Spears deserves more compassion than scorn.

5 comments:

Maud said...

I'll third this. Someone invoked her name for this purpose in a comment at Shakesville today, and it struck me that it's always Britney Spears who's destroying het marriage - not B.S. and her erstwhile husband. This is why (real) men can't have nice things - teh wimminz and teh gayz are always ruining them!

Llencelyn said...

Yeah... I didn't want to be the party pooper, but it was Mustang Bobby's use of her as an example in a post of his today at Shakesville that set me off.

Olivia said...

I've been seeing her name used a lot lately and it bugs me too. She's hardly the only famous person to have short and/or bad marriages, so why is the first person people go to to make a point?

mzbitca said...

wow. I've totally done this as well. I will have to admit that not ONCE have I ever thought of using an abusing husband as an example and I worked for a year in a domestic violence shelter.

Just goes to show that we always need to be aware of how patriarchy shapes everything

mzbitca said...

wow. I've totally done this as well. I will have to admit that not ONCE have I ever thought of using an abusing husband as an example and I worked for a year in a domestic violence shelter.

Just goes to show that we always need to be aware of how patriarchy shapes everything