Submission to Senate Inquiry into the provisions of the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill 2004

by susanne martain
Aug 9 2004

-in the dust kicked up
-over this aspect of patriarchy
-which is 'race blind'
-as womankind is the target
-we will strengthen the recognition of customary lore
-which itself i may give thought to support
-however second thought is necessary
-as patriarchy is present in customary lore
-as well as in gubba law and lore

i am seriously looking at laws and lores and wars
-i would like peace in my lifetime
-so i find conflicts between laws lores and try see what would be necessary to resolve them
-all are in fundamental breach of women's human rights
-to assert otherwise
-implies a claim to woman's body
-and it's products
-as male property

i find little solace in at under before or after 'the law' or 'lores'
-this 'issue' goes right to the manipulation of interpersonal relationships by patriarchal lore enforced through secular law eg  widows of prisoners denied widow status because they were not religious ie married even tho the state in the form of the tax office recognises them as defacto

i am aware of the group of women that would comprise the majority affected by this institutionalised discrimination and when deaths in custody are added to the equation it is chilling indeed to imagine the insult added to injury to be denied a widow's pension

on what authority
-in a secular or 'other' state
-are women to be surveillanced in their bed
-to see whether someone else had shared it
-and if so then when they had sex
-and whether her partner is a female or male
-and where her partner is now

eg of joint patriarchal control of woman and girls through both 'church and state' ie lore and law
-15yo girl held at gunpoint by older man claiming traditional rights to her body and total control of her life

if i appeal to law
-age of consent - 16
-is the line in the crime sand
-automatically turning girls from 'jailbait'
-into 'legal' women
-removing risk for males

according to the above
-she was 15 and the age of consent is 16
-his claim is untenable at law
-yet it started a move to recognise customary lore in the northern territory

i am still gasping
-his gender terrorism is completely ignored
-if he had held someone else hostage at gunpoint
-anti terrorism team would have been called in
-a seige would have been declared

even if we imagine that some females could have been willing to 'marry' him
-whilst still knowing that this particular female was not willing can we resolve the contradiction of being a girl at law and a woman in lore

and what of the many generations of all sorts of women who worked very hard
-so that men's claim to 'conjugal rights'
-was seen as the reality it is
-rape

there are reciprocal egs where lore is more helpful to woman over law

there are many other egs of fundamental conflict between laws-lores-women and men
-women and women-men and men
-children and carers
-and because we have taught it to them :(
-children and children

it would be nice if i could just support something like a group
-but they all have nasty bits for women and children and men
-and there is the 'us' and 'them' embedded within them all that causes untold harm

if something new is to come from us in these times for those who follow
-it can be something that is not dangerous to any of us
-especially in our beds
-we must be able to sleep with both eyes shut
-unmolested by anyone or anything

to not recognise what gives rise to abuse in all its ugly forms makes me saddest of all and would be an indictment on those in power

we hide behind party or platform or piety or penalty or patriarchy
-still occasionally burning the sacrificial few
-of different flavours
-to feed the hunger of imposed belief

yet domestic and sexual gender terrorism prevails in the sanctified form of family and marriage and its regulation

not to mention that the marriage contract
-would be thrown out of the industrial relations commission
-as a farcical and perhaps even illegal document
-as unpaid domestic and sexual labour is what another sector calls slavery and trafficking in women and is deemed criminal behaviour

even the under-reported and under-recorded statistics bear out - that marriage and the family - as we have constructed them - are THE most dangerous places for women and children on earth

'the church' has nothing to fear from women children and men living in harmony together or apart without reference to them
-unless marriage family and reproduction is a business that they cannot afford to lose

we must be brave enough to set women and girls and men and boys free of all the bonds of patriarchy
-so that we can find ways to be together and apart that do not destroy nor diminish but that help us to remember or to find our humanity
-so that we and our children have a chance to find out what being a member of the humanity family can mean

in all sincerity
susanne martain
loungeroom level politics

susanne martain
po box 1 annandale eora country nsw australia 2038

webweave@isis.aust.com

This story was found at: http://www.isis.aust.com/llp/marriageinquiry.htm

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