I Was Going To Ignore This ...

But can't let it pass - the Observer article 'Marriage Is Made In Hell" by- Chicago (Northwestern) professor Laura Kipnis.

Ms Kipnis, of whom I'd previously never heard, is a "cultural theorist/critic and former video artist" (a.k.a. 'media studies airhead' ?) whose works include " Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy", and "Marx - The Video".

It's a piece of stunning ignorance and stupidity.

Her thesis is straight from the 1970s - that marriage is "low-level misery and soul-deadening tedium", "emotional stagnation and deadened desires" - all afflictions that can be solved by simply walking away, or better, never marrying at all.

And the things marriage does to people !

"Consider, for instance, the endless regulations and interdictions that provide the texture of domestic coupledom. Is there any area of married life that is not crisscrossed by rules and strictures about everything from how you load the dishwasher, to what you can say at dinner parties, to what you do on your day off, to how you drive - along with what you eat, drink, wear, make jokes about, spend your discretionary income on?

What is it about marriage that turns nice-enough people into petty dictators and household tyrants, for whom criticising another person's habits or foibles becomes a conversational staple, the default setting of domestic communication? Or whose favourite marital recreational activity is mate behaviour modification? Anyone can play - and everyone does. What is it about modern coupledom that makes policing another person's behaviour a synonym for intimacy? (Or is it something about the conditions of modern life itself: is domesticity a venue for control because most of us have so little of it elsewhere?) "

Now I've got news for Ms Kipnis. All of the above can, and does, apply to cohabitees as much as to married couples - certainly those who are living together rather than merely sleeping with each other. It's not marriage that causes control and conflict - it's people and relationships - or 'coupledom' as she says herself. You don't need no piece of paper from the City Hall to play those emotional games. Maybe the author of 'Bound and Gagged' needs to notice more everyday and less explicit examples of power and control.

So what then ? How do we get happiness and satisfaction ? By "changing the things that needed changing to attain it" - presumably the unatisfactory partner. Yet serial monogamy is "for those who can't face up to the bad news - yes, keep on trying until you get it right". Ms Kipnis isn't specific, but you can't but wonder if she feels the ideal sexual model for Europe and America isn't some sort of liberated student existence - perhaps the kind of existence which would suit a young and not unattractive media studies professor.

Fluid relationships and a range of partners to choose from, plenty of variety to stave off possible staleness or boredom - the radical student ideal is also replicated in another social environment - the underclass in Britain and America's large cities. There it is associated with child abuse of all kinds.

The most offensive aspect of her writing is her ignorance of the damage caused to children by the decline of marriage which she celebrates. Children get precisely two mentions - coupledom features "childrearing convenience" but it's "rather shocking" for couples to stay together "for the sake of the children".

Thirty or forty years ago, in the first flush of the sexual revolution, such ignorance would be forgivable. But the evidence is now overwhelming that children are harmed by parental breakup.

The Observer, which claims to care about child protection, has helped and is helping to create the cultural setting within which abuse can flourish.

Ms Kipnis finishes with a couple of paragraphs suggesting that the world would be a much better place if we only paid more attention to our own needs and desires (and by implication less attention to others). From Rabelais to Aleister Crowley, 'do what thou wilt' has always been an appealing slogan. Ms Kipnis, whether she knows it or not, is calling for the death of altruism.

"What if we all worked less and expected more - not only from our marriages or in private life, but in all senses - from our jobs, our politicians, our governments? What if wanting happiness and satisfaction - and changing the things that needed changing to attain it - wasn't regarded as 'selfish' or 'unrealistic' (and do we expect so much from our mates these days because we get so little back everywhere else?). What if the real political questions were what should we be able to expect from society and its institutions? And, if other social contracts and vows beside marriage were also up for re-examination, what other ossified social institutions might be next on the hit list?"

What might be next ? If we pay more attention to our needs ? Well, let's make a start and forego caring for the sick, elderly and vulnerable. That'll free up valuable leisure time.

And from there anything is possible.