Vote For Marcus

You might want to read this from last week if you haven't already: Libby Copeland's piece in Slate on Michelle Bachmann's marriage, "Hail To The Housewife" (June 30^th, 2011). In a nutshell (pun probably not intended when talking about the Congresswoman; or maybe it is), Rep. Bachmann appears to subscribe to that conservative, evangelical Protestant view that wives ought to be subservient to their husbands, a view that has caused evangelicals all sorts of headaches as they try to reconcile the realities of this modern life--that the economic requirement that women work outside the home increasingly brings them into positions of leadership--with their views of a woman's proper role in the home and church as a junior partner (related headache for evangelicals: that women also turn out to be quite qualified and able as church leaders in every respect other than what isn't dangling between their thighs).

It may surprise you, but I'm not going to sit here and condemn these kinds of marriages; I mean, okay, I think it's stupid and it's not the kind of relationship I'm interested in having, but if that's your thing, hey, it's still a (mostly) free (in principle, at least) country, right? I don't see how a woman deciding to submit herself to her husband in the context of a consensual Christian marriage is any different from a man or woman deciding to go home and wear a diaper and ball gag in the context of a consensual BDSM relationship; i.e. as long as nobody's being held against their will or suffering non-consensual abuse and you leave me out of it, it's none of my damn business. Do what'cha want to do, and if it works for you, power to you. The irony amuses me a little: I see these conservative Christian marriages as being morally no different from the marriages of fetishists, swingers, et al., indeed I'm tempted to label these people "Christian patriarchal dom-sub fetishists" and leave 'em to it.

What's bothersome about Bachmann's marriage, though, is something Copeland's Slate piece sort of bounces off of in the third paragraph and then dances around without addressing: the problem with marriages like the Bachmanns' in the context of politics isn't how the Bachmanns reconcile Michelle's ambitions with Marcus Bachmann's household dominance, but how the rest of us reconcile their marriage with democracy. I mean, in the unlikely event that Michelle Bachmann somehow manages to win the Republican presidential nomination--a possibility I find extraordinarily improbable, but that's sort of beside the point--if she wins the nomination, who the hell are American people being asked to vote for in the general election, Michelle Bachmann or Michelle-proxy-for-Marcus Bachmann or "The Bachmanns" as some hubby-led tag team or what? If a purely hypothetical President Michelle Bachmann is going to submit to her husband even in the White House, don't'cha think he ought to be the one answering questions at town halls and debates, shouldn't he be the one whose positions on the great issues of the day ought to be picked apart or glossed over by various pundits on the op-ed pages of the nation's papers? Why the hell are we even supposed to care about Michelle Bachmann's views on anything other than her marriage if her views on marriage are dispositive: ask my husband?

Copeland closes with:

Bachmann's description of herself as "pro-woman and pro-man" suggests a contentment with the status quo, as far as gender goes. Indeed, it may imply something more—that as a woman who defers to her husband, she believes herself to be more liberated than secular feminists are. According to Karen Seat, a religious studies professor at the University of Arizona, some conservative evangelicals argue that women's deference is itself empowering, because it's what God intends, and because it is the fullest expression of womanhood. In this world of opposites, submission is strength and inequity is proof of equality. It's quite possible that a President Bachmann would primarily define herself not as the first female president of the United States, but as a wife and mother. And she would not see that as anything less than progress.

Nice, but does that really matter? I'm not sure I'd disagree with a President defining herself (or himself, for that matter) firstly as a mother (or father) and secondly as the President. One might suggest that a leader who frames issues in terms of whether his or her own children will be asked to give their lives on a foreign field, will live in greater liberty, will breathe cleaner air, etc. would be a distinct improvement over Presidents who frame issues in terms of polling data. I'm not a parent, myself, but I can't help suspecting that a parent thinks of his or her child's future in terms of timespans that are longer than election cycles. No, it seems to me the real elephant in the room is the bait and switch that's being set forth, not the Presidential attitude once in office: vote for Michelle, elect Marcus, Hail To The Whomever.

Now, of course this is academic in all sorts of ways: I don't think Michelle Bachmann is likely to win the Republican nomination, and if she did I can't conceive of voting for her for all sorts of reasons, but then I also can't conceive of voting for anybody else the Grand Old Party might extrude from the nether end of their nominating process. But I still think it's worth discussing: for one thing, these evangelicals are pretty damn obdurate: if it isn't Michelle Bachmann in 2012 it'll be Nancy Sue in 2020 or Mary-Anne in 2028. For another thing, I think the gravitational field from this issue has a warping effect on actual, real, modern liberated feminists; a lot of people, f'r'instance, were evaluating Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy in '08 in terms of Mrs. Clinton, husband of Bill, notwithstanding the fact that there's no real reason to believe Hillary Clinton is anything other than her own woman, and while it's not inconceivable she might rely on Bill in much the same way that John Kennedy relied on Bobby, the idea that she'd cleave to her husband and submit is laughable on it's face. Anyway, the point of that last bit being: women like Michelle Bachmann do sort of ruin things a little for married women who are trying to be taken seriously as politicians, don't they?

I also have to admit that I find the political implications of the Bachmanns' marriage irritating as a matter of principle, said principle being a preference for leaving candidates' families out of things as much as possible. Of course, the candidates usually frustrate this ambition anyway: they campaign on their families until a family member does something embarrassing, at which point they plead for privacy and curse the lowdown tactics of enemy operatives, etc. They all do it, and none of them should, because normally their families really aren't all that relevant to anything at all. You have a lovely spouse and children, how nice for you, but unless you're bringing them up because you were going to give them guns and use them to invade a Middle Eastern state until you thought better of it, I'm not sure why I should care. However, if you're taking orders from a family member, aw, good grief, now I actually do have to care how they feel about healthcare reform or government subsidies for alternative fuels, because apparently you're going to pass the issue on to them anyway, and why aren't they just running for office themselves and cutting you out of the middle? It's pretty damn inconvenient and inconsiderate, frankly.