h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Surely the point is that words apply to real things..

If you saw an advert for a "home" for sale and you found that it was the wreck of a car that someone was using as their home and , to their mind it was fine, you would probably feel misled.

In this respect I know that people often have problems with my very individualist way of thinking and the way that I apply words often in an presently unconventional way- often making a point of trying to use them in the light of their past meaning.

So marriage is a word that is not really about two people deciding to get married and living together, though historically the legal system did often eventually accept that such arrangements could be recognized as "common law marriages". In other words beyond living together these people were now acting and inter-acting with and within our wider society as if they were married. The wedding was a symbolism of the couple wishing to take on a position and obligations within the life of Society, as Kate Middleton took the plunge last year and now has to accept that she is a "royal".

So it is the wider society implications and not the personal ones that turn a relationship into a marriage. But we are living in a "post-social age" in which the social function of marriage as part of the way that our wider communities operate is very much getting sidelined.


It was immediately obvious that the industrial revolution was very destructive of social life, replacing organic, living and self-sustaining social modes of life, by economic mechanisms that encourage consumerism as the reward for "wage-slavery" with the idea we are sold that "the customer is always right" and really we have got individual freedom to live just as we please- to do our own thing. But it is a case of "you can have any colour you want, as long as it is black".

In the economism of the twentieth century collective life became enslaved to Capitalism and State Capitalism (Communist, Nazi and Fascist) in war and peace. And after the Second World War in the UK the Welfare State quite deliberately fixed on the mere nuclear family as the building block of its new reality, with Holywood etc having emphasised this consumerist ideal of two people starting off like Adam and Eve. "Social life" is now often short-hand for what people do with their leisure.

Where does gay marriage fit into this? A couple of weeks ago I saw a fragment of a reality TV show that featured the drama of two young men who had met through the internet, had then fallen in love, and intended to get married. Then it turned out that ,though they had not had any idea, they were in fact brothers. And for this reason it was automatically assumed that obviously they could not marry.

Why not? There are very good and sound biological reasons why marriage between sibblings of different sexes have generally been held taboo in most societies. But given the fact that a gay relationship is by definition- or at least by nature- sterile, I was somewhat bemused by the sheer conventionality of the reaction of all involved in the studio.

As for the ideal of heterosexual marriage, there is at least the hope that the couple will be part of the ongoing struggle to achieve wholesomeness through the resolution of "Yin" and "Yang", those two opposites that need to be brought into balance for harmony peace and prosperity to have any hope of prevailing.

Cass

This is a related question to esteemed members of H2G2:

Should the word "bastard" be acceptable to use and not perceived as a swear word? Bastard child just means a child born out of wedlock, and since having children out of wedlock is acceptable in modern secular society, should the use of the label "bastard child" be acceptable?

CASSEROLEON: That is an excellent point!

So should identical twin brothers (or identical twin sisters) be allowed to marry? Similarly should there be no restrictions to gay marriage in terms of family connections (as long as they are legally of age to have sex).

Technically, I'm a baastard as my parents weren't married when I was born. Their later marriage (and changes to birth registration laws) mean that I'm probably now regarded as legitimate offspring.

As having a child out of wedlock no longer carries the stigma that it used to, I don't see any point in referring to such children as 'baastards'. The word 'baastard' as an offensive term is probably so mild as to have lost its impact. It often has to be paired with another word - ing baastard - to have any real effect.

For some reason I had to add an 'a' to a particular word to get it past the filther. I notice that Stone Art didn't have this problem. I'm using Firefox 10.0.2.

What are you using/doing to get past the filther, Stone Art?

I caught one of those ridiculous, exploitative C4 programmes (It's as bad a Channel Desmond!) on large families. Two parents were getting married and mentioned that their children were teased at school because they weren't married.

I know that these programmes are completely made up and all...but that just didn't have a whiff of plausibility. Do people care if couples are married? Or notice?

Depends on the school, I suppose.

I imagine there are some schools where such information could become embarrassing - plenty of children are worthless pitiless little shits and will use anything they can to hurt and belittle others.

But I can't imagine there are many schools within a dozen miles of where I live where the baastards aren't the majority, and any such fact would either go unremarked, or if anyone did remark on it they'd get stepped on.

Stone Art

"As long as they are legally of an age to have sex".. and "should" quite correctly imply the fact that most languages and most cultures feel that it is appropriate and necessary "to draw a line" somewhere. In other words, though I have heard gay people giving examples of homosexuality in the Natural order, very few have expressed approval of paedophilia, incest, or rape, so not all forms of gratification of sexual urges are acceptable.

And one of the most crucial- if not THE most crucial function of a Society was to nurture and educate its children to have a clear sense of their identity and personal value. To this end it is perhaps amazing to Westerners to realize that back home the very physical and 'macho' Tuilagi brothers, perhaps the largest family group of top-flight rugby players in the world have (there are nine of them) have a brother who lives as a woman, as of coures the Chevalier D'Eon did in Georgian London.

But many years ago there was a BBC programme that examined the murky physical blurring between male and female, including a Bantu hermaphrodite, whose girlfriends were envious of his gorgeous breasts- but he was having them surgically removed. The same programme had some cases of girls who became young men at puperty. They all inherited a faulty gene from a woman who died c1832 so that at birth they had no penis. This was a RC Spanish -speaking island so they got given RC Christian names , which all have male and female versions. As girls they were brought up by their mothers and educated to do all the female things. But at puberty, the male genes kicked in and rectified the mistake. Their mothers rejoiced at the miracle of a daughter becoming a son, and, having lived in a Society in which gender roles were quite well-defined, they just changed and were treated as young men.

What worries me or worried me- especially as a teacher was that pupils were not receiving this kind of nurture, and that so many of the pressures that were-are placed upon them were essentially anti-social based upon encouraging premature predatory sexual prowess- the sexualisation of childhood- and aiming them at materialism, consumerism and careerism. The "you can have it all " message that was used by Western Capitalism to counter the arguments of Socialism and Communism.

It is a situation in which I think much of what is going on is harmful to marriage as a tradition that has underpinned human Society for probably thousands of years.. And- to use a phrase I have used before- the persistence of the idea of marriage shows a hunger for Steady State thinking in a Big Bang universe.

Cass

Yeah a lot of those programmes are horrible. One or two are good. I often try one and 9/10, switch off the 4OD.

I sometimes think there is a bit of a sense of going back to 'good old days'. Look at the spate of big dramas like Denton Abbey, Call the midwife...and now Upstairs Downstairs again. TV execs have been astounded at their mass popularity.

And those C4 programmes don't help...but it has a kind of contemporary 'celeb' back to basics twist.

Re the "B" word-- Of course historically it was often used with pride, Henry VIII acknowledged many and many-a great family is proud of being descended from someone born "the wrong side of the sheet".

But, of course, this ended long ago; and I have wondered about the severe condemnation that was heaped upon those who ran schemes to send children "born out of wedlock" to new lives in Australia. We have had their subsequent bad experiences etc detailed to us. But it was no joke in Forties and Fifties GB growing up as one.

By the way I read yesterady about how Lord Prescott gained his "third son" after the Press had dug up details of his wife's first pregnancy before they met, a son which she gave up for adoption.

Cass

Re the "B" word-- Of course historically it was often used with pride, Henry VIII acknowledged many and many-a great family is proud of being descended from someone born "the wrong side of the sheet".

But, of course, this ended long ago; and I have wondered about the severe condemnation that was heaped upon those who ran schemes to send children "born out of wedlock" to new lives in Australia. We have had their subsequent bad experiences etc detailed to us. But it was no joke in Forties and Fifties GB growing up as one.

By the way I read yesterady about how Lord Prescott gained his "third son" after the Press had dug up details of his wife's first pregnancy before they met, a son which she gave up for adoption.

Cass

Cheerful Dragon: I am using Explorer 9.

"Two parents were getting married and mentioned that their children were teased at school because they weren't married.

...but that just didn't have a whiff of plausibility. Do people care if couples are married? Or notice?"

But we are talking about children teasing other children rather than "people", although there are some that believe children are also people.

erratum: But "you are reporting that they were" talking about children

to replace

But "we are" talking about children

CASS: "As long as they are legally of an age to have sex".. and "should" quite correctly imply the fact that most languages and most cultures feel that it is appropriate and necessary "to draw a line" somewhere. In other words, though I have heard gay people giving examples of homosexuality in the Natural order, very few have expressed approval of paedophilia, incest, or rape, so not all forms of gratification of sexual urges are acceptable.


Except your previous point that if you remove the possibility of having offspring from the marriage - by allowing for gay marriage in this instance - the incest taboo could be removed?

There's a nice story in Jessica 'Decca' Mitford's letters. She signed the nomination papers for Jesse Jackson in the California Gubernatorial election. She found herself talking to a Republican socialite at function:

'Well I suppose that some think they have to do their bit for 'these people'.'

'What on earth do you mean?'

'Well, my dear...all they know how to do is breed.'

'I'm one of eight children.'

'Yes - but most of these ones don't even know who their father is.'

'I'm from a long line of bastard5 myself. We can trace our line back to a mistress of Charles II.'



(I'm in Chrome )

Well "son of a gun" - not sure what that means (the phrase) - unless it has something to do with a "shotgun" marriage?

Same meaning, different etymology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_a_gun

Hmmmm very interesting Ed.

This certainly seems like fertile ground for further study.

Stone Art

Re the incest taboo - that was my point about the conventionality of the studio response:

Cass