The term “marriage strike” has gained some currency in recent years. Any good strike needs a specific set of demands. After some consideration I’ve come up with the below list of demands. I’d appreciate any suggestions for improvements. I know some points could be a little more specific, like #7. Maybe this can serve as a basis for an actual marriage strike movement. Although naturally every jurisdiction and individual will have their differences, I’ve tried to make this fairly inclusive while not drifting too much into other men’s rights issues that aren’t directly related to marriage.
- Abolition of common law marriage or any other quasi-marriage arrangements which are entered into automatically or involuntarily.
- Equal access to marriage for all regardless of sex or gender.
- Retention or instatement of adultery as a ground for divorce.
- Abolition of all laws, regulations, and policies relating to abuse which discriminate on the basis of gender or sex.
- Felony charges for demonstrably false accusations of abuse.
- Organizations which openly espouse or advocate gender- or sex-biased views or policies barred from government funding.
- Remove incentives for judges and attorneys to draw out divorce proceedings.
- Auditing of judges for gender- or sex-based discrimination in rulings with consequences up to disbarment.
- Abolition of the “duress” exemption for prenuptial agreements.
- Abolition of alimony (maintenance).
- Presumed 50/50 custody unless one divorcing partner can be verified as abusive or incompetent.
- Property gained by divorcing partners prior to marriage, or its equivalent, devolves to original owner. Presumed 50/50 split of property gained after marriage.
- Right to abortion on demand up to the 20th week of pregnancy.
- Right to relinquish all parental rights and responsibilities up to the signing of birth certificate.
- Right to a paternity test on demand at any point prior to the signing of birth certificate.
- Prohibition of adding a parent’s name to a birth certificate without informed consent, except in cases of mental incompetence.
- Right to be informed of the birth of biological children.
- Felony charges for paternity fraud.
- Recognition of parental alienation as a form of child abuse.
Marriage strike is cope and delusion, and it is bad framing.
(1) women do not care if men go on “Marriage strike” since there is a massive demand imbalance. Women are not interested in deselected men, if men do not meet the demands of women they get deselected.
(2) Marriage strike implies men will come crawling back to marriage if they get their demands meet. When the concept of marriage should be rejected totally, (Not that men are in any position to make demands, if they do they get deselected.)
(3) Marriage strike is posturing, since soon as men are selected, the pretence and ego defence is dropped and they come crawling back to women.
(4) Men’s rights should not be about relationships and it is bad framing. The only position should be. “no state interference in relationships, therefore no marriage.”
A lot of your demands come across as political correct and have nothing to do with the gender dynamics between men and women. Marriage is power play of women to emotionally submissive men, that is the dynamic at play, and that power imbalance has led to the current state of marriage. Since men want to get married so badly, women set the terms.
Also no marriage, no worry about adultery, the state should not care if women sleep around or not, and mate guarding is a trad con obsession. If a woman wants to slut around and screw other guys, no one is going to stop her. You are not going to get the state to enforce adultery laws, and even if you did they would be applied against men more than women, due to legal bias.
The marriage strike is a failed concept, it is mtgow tradcon cope and posturing.
That’s a lot of labels. I won’t really get into them specifically because they’re all “kind of yes, kind of no”.
You raise a good point about how successful this movement could be. To be honest I’m using it more as a thought experiment to come up with all of the policy changes that would be needed for men to be on an even playing field with women in family law. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need the state to intervene in people’s personal relationships, but that world is far off. A set of specific reforms is more achievable in the short term.
Regarding supply and demand: altho there are a lot of naïve men out there that still believe in the Disney happily ever after, a lot of younger guys are being quickly disillusioned given the state of dating these days. If the old stereotype holds true, it’s mainly women who push for marriage. So here’s the main point on which a marriage strike would fail or succeed: we would have to get those top ~10% of desirable men to get on board. They are the only ones that really have the leverage. As the bottom ~90% of men are invisible to most women, their opting out marriage will largely go unnoticed.
In the end, we won’t know if it works unless we try it.