Women in their place, unfortunately

This weekend I went to a wedding.  It was a perfectly normal wedding in most ways, and most people wouldn't think anything of it.  I couldn't help but be frustrated by so much of it though because of the unrelenting sexism.

Giving the bride away is a tradition that needs to die in a fire.  I just don't know how people today can sit there and watch a woman handed off from one man to another like a hunk of meat and not twitch at the injustice of it all.  If you want to be handed off by your parents, fine, there are ways to do that.  I have seen weddings where both people being married were walked in on the arms of both of their parents and this is fine!  Not my style, but it does not bother me at all.

But the thing where much ceremony is made of which man is going to hand over the bride to the groom?  YUCK.

Lots of little things got to me too.  I don't like the pageantry and expense of weddings in general, but that is an aesthetic thing rather than a real moral objection.  But the bridesmaids and groomsmen all being gender coded, and the explicit gender rules for everyone involved in the party really bother me.  I also struggle with the expectation that the women in the wedding party must spend extensive time doing hair and makeup while the men put in a far lesser amount of effort.  The women have to pay for new dresses to match the colour of the wedding, while the men just wear their normal suit.  The men are clearly just fine on their own, but women have to show themselves off to get full value.

Marriage is fine and all, once you strip away all the sexist garbage.  I just can't be comfortable with the way marriage happens to most people though, particularly the way it so ruthlessly polices gender roles and comformity to gender norms.

And this is all to ignore all the objections I have to all the religious stuff associated with weddings, which is another whole rant entirely.

Someday I am going to finally swear off all of this.  I feel stuck when I get invited to weddings that I know are going to be a barrage of religion and sexist crap.  I don't want to alienate friends, but sitting through more of these ceremonies that fly in the face of deeply held values of mine is becoming more and more unpalatable as the years go by.