檳榔嶼

- Marriage was not primarily about the individual needs and desires of a man and woman and the children they produced. Marriage had as much to do with getting good in-laws and increasing one's family labor force as it did with finding a lifetime companion and raising a beloved child.
- Two widespread about how marriage came into existence among our Stone Age ancestors :
  1. marriage was invented so men would protect women
  2. marriage was invented so men could exploit women
- Instead, marriage spoke to the needs of the larger group. Basically, marriage was an economic and political transaction.
- Traditionally, marriage also organized the division of labor and power by gender and age, confirming metn' authority over women and deteriming if a child had any claim on the property of the parents.
- Marriage was not fundamentally about love. It was too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love.
- If marriage was about love and lifelong intimacy, why would people marry at all if they couldn't find true love? What would hold a marriage together if love and intimacy disappeared?
- For thousands of years, husbands had the right to beat their wives. The law upheld the authority of husbands to punish their wives physically and to exercise forcibly their "martial right" to sex, and that structured the relations between men and women in all marriages, even loving ones.
- A husband owned his wife's property, earnings and sexuality and had the final word on all family decisions.