Monday, July 12, 2004

Should I Include This In My Wedding Vow?

To put it another way: choice is always a meta-choice; it involves a choice to choose or not. Prostitution, for example, is a simple exchange: a man pays a woman for having sex with her. Marriage, on the other hand, involves two levels: in traditional marriage, with man as breadwinner, he pays the woman much more (maintains her as wife) in order not to have to pay her (for sex). So, in the case of marriage for money, one cay say that the husband pays the wife in order that she should sell not only her body but also her soul -- that she should pretend that she is giving herself to him out of love. Yet another way to put it would be to say that one pays a prostitute to have sex with her, whereas one's wife is a prostitute whom one has to pay even more if one doesn't have sex with her (since in this case she is not satisfied, and one has to appease her in another way, with generous gifts). (S. Zizek, The Ticklish Subject)