Sexual Dialectic

Historically, marriage started out as a political act for it was the opportunity for the accession of power through new alliances. In conjunction with marriage, the function of monogamy was to keep wealth exclusive to blood lines. If a woman is placed in “the man's absolute power,” her fidelity will ensure the paternity of the children.¹ Thus, monogamy becomes feminized because it is essential for the woman, but not for the man. According to Friedrich Engels, this was the first class oppression, where the first division of labor, child-breeding, was for the sole purpose of keeping wealth centralized to male heirs. By virtue of monogamous marriage, Engels asserts that it is only clear who the mother is, but without monogamy, it would be close to impossible to determine with certainty, who the father is.² Systematically imposed fidelity was entered into by two principle parties based on a system of hierarchy, dominance, and submission. Therefore, the social function of monogamous marriage was to keep women oppressed by relegating them to domestic laborers, child-breeders, and to keep them alienated from their sexuality.

Under this patriarchal tradition, in ancient Greece, female slaves were chattel of the man, which justified sexual exploitation, while wives were viewed as the “chief housemaid, a thing for housekeeping”.³ Prostitution came out of male interactions with female slaves, eventually giving rise to the Athenian courtesean: hetaera. As we can see, monogamy again, is characterized only for women, but not for men. This double standard kept wives (women) asexual, and from experiencing satisfying sexual relationships, while men were able to be promiscuous and satiate their sexual desires. Depriving women of their sexual freedom denies that women were capable of giving and receiving pleasure. Even though wives were viewed as asexual by their husbands, it is undeniable that they in fact were aware of their own sexuality. Women found ways to rebel against the domination of the husband because adultery became an “unavoidable social institution alongside monogamy and hetaerism.”⁴

Engels compares wives to prostitutes. As absurd or offensive as it may seem, if we strip away our prejudices and beliefs about prostitution, “marriage of convenience” often turned into the “crassest form of sexual service.”⁵ Essentially, both are a trade of services that turns women into a mode of production that sustains capitalism. A wife does not hire out her body, but sells it into slavery once and for all.⁶ In this unequal arrangement, she fulfills her duties in the private service of her family. In Engels' analysis, the man in the family represents the bourgeois and in marrying, the wife represents the proletariat.⁷ Even though prostitutes get paid money outright, while wives get paid in terms of security, capitalism is primarily a system of exploitative power relations: being a wife and prostitute underlies the exchange of inequality between males and females.

Nelli Wong, a contemporary, agrees with Engels' analysis. She says that it is true today for the profit seeking status quo that makes monogamous marriage compulsory for the development of private property that turns women into service workers.⁸ Since domestic labor is free labor, therefore it is not a valued product, and the double shift is almost exclusive to women, the role of marriage can only ascertain the importance of housework as a social relation that lies in its crucial role in perpetuating capitalist male dominance. If housework is performing labor for men. Who benefits from women's labor? Mariarosa Dalla Costa says, “surely capitalists, but also surely men, who as husbands and fathers receive personalized services at home.”⁹ In addition, Rosemarie Tong says, that wives provide current and future workers not only with food and clothes, but also with emotional and domestic comfort. Therefore, women keep the “cogs of the capitalist machine running.”¹⁰

Domestic labor is socially important because it is necessary to capital: free services that would be otherwise be costly if purchased outside of the home. Although monogamous marriage is not solely for the purpose of keeping wealth centralized to male heirs, it has become a compulsory tradition, where under capitalism, a woman's sexuality becomes a commodity, where her value as a person is reduced to her market value of production: child-breeding and domestic labor.¹¹