Please Marry a Man Who Understands Feminism

Because you don't have time to debate why misogyny is bad with your partner.

I live across the street from a lovely little church. I chose my apartment because it overlooks the rose bushes they grow on the roof there in the summer. Every so often, I go in there to pray. Pretty early on in life someone smart told me that when you pray, you should never pray for yourself, because God is neither Santa Claus nor a Genie. You should pray exclusively for other people. So, I do, and lately I’ve been praying for a lot of people who I wish I was not praying for. I pray for friends who are not doing well in these unhappy times to be happy. I pray that Heather Heyer’s mom knows that her daughter’s death meant something. I pray that the world will become more compassionate. I don’t know if God exists. But if he/she/they doesn’t, I still don’t think it’s ever a bad idea to be mindful of the ways other people in the world are suffering.

But, since I met my fiancé three years ago—who I’m marrying this Saturday—I always include one prayer for myself. It’s a very small prayer, so I don’t think it’s cheating.

I pray that I get to die first.

People always think that’s a gruesome thing to wish for, but I think the really gruesome thing was the loneliness that preceded him.

That’s not to say I was alone. I dated people before my fiancé. I loved some of them, and some of them loved me. But, sometimes, when we were sitting in bed doing the crossword I would ask why they loved me. Some people said that it was because “you can’t define love, it’s just a feeling, like stars in your stomach.” I never had much faith that they were not describing indigestion. Other people described things I did for them. I suspected they had confused love with gratitude. Always, at some point, these people would stare at me quizzically and say, “I just can’t figure you out.”

"When I’m upset he listens to me, and, in three years, he has never once called me crazy."

I told my almost-husband this about three months after we started dating, that this was a thing a lot of people had told me. “Well, they must have been idiots then,” he replied, “Because I figured you out in about two minutes.”

I have this sneaking suspicion it is because he listened to me when I was talking.

He always listens to me. If I ask him why he loves me I know he can list a hundred traits that are unique to me, a human. He can tell you about how I cry during literally any televised program (movies, car commercials, a Cheerios ad) featuring old people in love. He can tell you how I invariably side with sophisticated super villains in superhero movies, even though I wouldn’t in real life. He can tell you how he loves it when I can’t wait to tell him facts about plagues I’ve learned as soon as he walks in the door. When I’m upset he listens to me, and, in three years, he has never once called me crazy.

Being respected is a nice thing for myself. It is not always a trait that has been evidenced in my male partners. Perhaps the fact that it has not always been a trait that seems necessary is because women are so often told that we’re lucky to have a man at all. That is something I believed, once. I do not believe it anymore. 

My early 20s were populated with dating a lot of guys who would make statements like, “most women are crazy, but not you!” While I briefly felt complimented by that, I quickly learned that, if a man thinks most women are insane, you will not stay the exception to that for long. Then there were others who wanted to loudly state they were feminists. They never realized that being a feminist meant that you might need to sit quietly and let women talk. Some seemed to feel that their reading of Judith Butler made them more of an expert on the subject of womanhood than I would be, as an actual woman.

This was not all that much fun.

My fiancé would never go around loudly announcing he’s a feminist, any more than I think he would go around shouting, “I try not to be racist.” If you asked him, he’d tell you he’s a feminist simply because the alternative is announcing, “I hate women.” He doesn’t understand why it’s something celebrities hem and haw over. He doesn’t understand why it would even be a question.

I can’t tell you what a relief this is, but I can try.

It is a great, endless relief to have someone who can understand why I am angry when women are patronized, or harassed, or denied opportunities for being women. When we come across news about women in comics being harassed because they took a picture of themselves drinking a milkshake, it is a relief to know that I will not have to sit and explain why that is infuriating. My fiancé already knows. He’s angry about it, too. Because we are on the same page as to whether women should be harassed viciously for existing in the world.

"They never realized that being a feminist meant that you might need to sit quietly and let women talk."

He also understands that women’s opinions are fundamentally not worth less than men’s. I remember a time when people were talking about how a musician should not be taken seriously because teenage girls loved them, and he shrugged, nonplussed and replied, “yeah, you know teenage girls loved the Beatles, right?” And I thought, “well, I will marry that man or die trying.”

An appreciation of feminism is a quality I would have hoped for in a partner at any time, but one which seems essential now. A few years ago we could perhaps hope that misogyny could remain hidden in the internet, in 4chan and subreddits. We could tell ourselves that MRAs would stay confined to their parents’ basements.

We can’t say that anymore. We could tell ourselves that it was just an act, that these people were probably very pleasant offline. If anyone thought that, as I did, 2017 has been a year where we learned we were naïve. As it turns out, who you are on the internet is who you are in “real life.”

Similarly, some years ago, in my early twenties, I could have imagined myself happily married to an old fashioned man. I could imagine having polite debates with him about why it was not such a good idea to call Kim Kardashian a “ho” as I made dinner. That would be fine, because, after all, America seemed to be mostly on the same page.

Jennifer and her fiancé pictured at a fundraiser for the New York Academy of Art

Courtesy of Jennifer Wright

Not now.

Now, I do not have time to debate why misogyny is bad with a partner. I have marches to go to. I have articles to write (and, as a woman writing about women’s issues, I consequently have a great deal of hate mail to read). I have charities to give money to or fundraise for. When I go home, it much more pleasant to have a partner who has no interest in “playing devil’s advocate.”

The devil has so many advocates right now. I do not need one in my house. I need a good man there, who will sit and pour me a glass of wine while I rage about how a group of misogynists are calling a woman who fought for equality “a fat, childless, 32-year-old slut.” And when I finish telling him about it I need him to hug me and say, “That is so shitty.”

Having a partner who wanted to explain to me that the men on the subway shouting “smile baby” were just being friendly would be annoying in the best times. In these bad times, it would be very tiresome. When I look at the shockingly numerous divorces that seem to pepper the lives of prominent men on the far right—that rhetoric about how feminists will all end up alone must surely be more than a bit of projection on their part—I can’t help but wonder if this behavior was, perhaps, very tiresome indeed for their wives.

The alternative—to be married to a man who does not respect women, who sees them less as humans than as sex objects or walking wombs—seems so lonely. Sometimes, I look at Melania Trump, who I know is not a figure really deserving of pity, but still. I look at her and she seems so lonely. She chose her life, of course. Perhaps to her, marriage meant being a princess with beautiful hair up high in an impenetrable tower. Perhaps that is what she wanted. But marriage can mean the opposite of that. It can mean being freed from that, and having, at last, someone to go on adventures with. It can mean having someone who makes you braver, because you do not have to face your dragons alone.

Because to be a team is the best thing. God, it is the best thing. Before the Women’s March in Washington this year I was in Rwanda. I was flying back to arrive in Washington the morning of the March. I was going to meet my partner at the airport. I was so excited about it. I was so happy that perhaps we could show that women still did matter in this country (and, for the record, it was wonderful. That day, seeing dads with their daughters, and young men, and grandmas in wheelchairs gave me hope not just about the future of women but the future of the country.) Before the march though, I was a bit sad that I couldn’t bring a sign. Even if I could have found the poster board and markers, it would have been difficult to get back stateside. My fiancé asked me what I’d put on it, and, I made some jokes about what I’d write down. When he met me at the airport, he surprised me with a huge sign he’d made for me to carry. Someday, in what I hope will be many decades together, my partner will probably do something that infuriates me to my core. If that happens I hope that I will remember the vision I have of him crouching over the table in our apartment, spelling out a protest sign for me in huge letters. How would that not be enough to make me stay?

That may not seem like such a big deal, but consider the alternatives:

Always consider the alternative.

I love my partner for a thousand reasons. I love him because he always tips 25 percent, because he knows it makes a difference to people working hard. I love him because the only time I’ve ever seen him yell at people was when some people were making fun of a homeless man (and those people scattered). I love him because he is, truly, I believe this, the funniest human on the planet. But yes, I also love him because I think that we are two people who want to stand shoulder to shoulder and drag the world a little bit farther ahead. I love him because he is on my team, and, I believe, the team of women everywhere.

 here is great comfort in knowing that – if we had a daughter, and God made too good on my wish, and I died far before I wanted to—I would not have to worry about her. She would grow up knowing that she was capable of everything men are capable of. She would grow up knowing that if she was harassed it was not her fault. She would grow up knowing her body belonged to her. If anything, I would only have to worry that her father would push her to be the first female President too hard.

"The alternative—to be married to a man who does not respect women, who sees them less as humans than as sex objects or walking wombs—seems so lonely."

If we do have a daughter, gosh, I hope we can push her on that together. I apologize to her in advance if she just wants to be a poet or an astronaut.

People get married for a great many reasons. But I hope you don’t settle for someone you are a little lonely with. There seem to be too many people who settle for that, and life is too short. Feminism may not be something you value highly. But I hope you find a partner who does care about what you value. If one of those things is the notion that women should be equal, then hold out for a person who shares that sentiment. Because I fear the alternative will always be wondering if your partner is sitting around on the internet writing screeds about how women should blow him because Nikola Tesla invented some cool stuff.

I’m still new to this. And I don’t know everything, but if my opinion helps at all, then I would say:

Marry someone whose heart springs from the same soil yours does, like the rosebushes on the church’s patio. Marry someone who wants to grow in the same direction as you do. And marry someone who you can wrap around and form a bulwark against the storm with when the outside world turns frosty.

Marry someone who will be your true partner.

I hope you have that. I hope you never settle for anything less.

I hope we all have someone at home we can have a glass of wine and be angry with. I hope we can push forward and change the world, together, even if it’s just a little. And I hope we live to see it.