Left Behind By the Alter: Why Queers and Sociologists Need Materialist Feminism

Abstract

The United States marriage rights movement just culminated in July 2015 with the Supreme Court declaring same-sex marriage constitutional. The mainstream -the mainstream media and the mainstream LGBT rights movement -all applaud this trajectory, with no attention to those who get left behind in marriage politics. In this paper, I will argue that same-sex marriage is in need of a materialist feminist analysis. I will critique my discipline -Sociology -for failing to adequately theorize same-sex marriage as a key component of the 21 st Century landscape of the capitalist mode of production. I will also critique the mainstream LGBT rights movement and the media attention given same-sex marriage for their lack of attention to the classed relations embedded in marriage rights. A materialist feminist analysis will allow us to see that there's still a need for a larger, more emancipatory sexual politics.

Feminism and Solidarity on the Left: Rethinking the Unhappy Marriage Metaphor

“…Our discussion above foregrounds feminist critiques of marriage in terms of internal relationship dynamics, yet socialist feminists have long argued marriage has a wider structural function as a lynchpin of state control and of racial and class power. Ensuring stability of property between families and through descent, marriage has allowed upper- and middle-class White families to entrench ideological and economic privilege, as well as facilitating nation-building and the stabilisation of state borders (Edwards, 2016; Ingraham, 2008; Peterson, 2014). This is true even of more progressive forms of marriage (Josephson, 2010; Wilson, 2010).…”

Assimilation in Suburbia? Geographical and Cultural Barriers to Working With LGBTQ+ Students in Suburban Community Colleges

“…Legislative changes, like marriage equality, impact LGBTQ+ people in many different ways, from not at all to very much (Edwards, ). In the case of marriage equality, one supposed benefit of marriage is access to partners’ health insurance.…”