In the lecture yesterday Brian pulled up a photograph of a man and a woman, clearly on their wedding day and posed the question of Marriage as an institution. We then had a discussion with our peers about what marriage means to us, or what it generically symbolises. I thought this was an interesting idea, because the way media portrays the concept of marriage and the way it is reduced to things like a white dress and a black suit is often quite fair from the actual ‘sanctity’ of it. But I digress.

By talking about what marriage symbolises, especially with the rest of the class, helped get a sense of peoples’ perspectives. I think most people were pretty cynical, myself included and my friend even said “50 percent of marriages end in divorce” which sort of summed up the mood.

I wrote a few dot points down about what I was saying and what others were too. The most obvious is that it symbolises a union, a legal contract and monogamy. It has generations worth of rituals – like hen’s night and the rings and depending on the religion of the two individuals in question, a church. I think mostly though, it represents a very outdated social expectation and as someone said we are socialized to aspire to marriage as the ultimate relationship achievement. Whereas for many, marriage is just a legal contract and doesn’t consider things like gender and sexuality – rather it reinforces a gender conforming ideal of wife and husband. Don’t even get me started on the fact that Australia, among 174 other countries haven’t even legalized gay marriage yet.