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Saturday, September 29, 2012

"Ban all performative weddings, ban all crazy expenditures... Ban the marriage pages in The New York Times."

"Ban those things that turn otherwise sensible people to start buying into that fantasy," says Virginia Rutter — great name — a professor of — take a guess — sociology, quoted in a NYT "Fashion and Style" piece, written by Matt Richtel, who's mostly airing his own "whimsical" notion that marriage could be a 20-year renewable contract.

Richtel quotes another a professor of — take a guess — sociology, Pepper Schwartz — great name — saying, “We’re remarkably not innovative about marriage even though almost all the environmental conditions, writ large, have changed... We haven’t scrutinized it. We’ve been picking at it like a scab, and it’s not going to heal that way.”

But wouldn't being innovative be picking at it? What's Pepper planning to do to this scab? Sociology professors... can we just pick at them?

As to Professor Rutter and her objection to "performative weddings"... well, I'm more concerned about her attraction to the word "ban"... she decries emotionality while sounding utterly emotional. And who are these "otherwise sensible people"? Human beings get involved in all sorts of ideas and practices entailing love and beauty and religion and hope and sex and money. There's no stripping away of all that. It is humanity itself, not a fantasy (or a scab!).

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