the continued legal sanctioning of rape underlines the coercive
character and purpose of marriage. Marriage law is irrefutable
proof that women are not equal to men. No person can enter into
an agreement in which her body is given to another and remain or
become or act as or effectually be his equal.
The law takes the form it does with divine sanction: civil law
reiterates religious dogma. The law enforces a relationship between
men and women that has its origins in so-called divine law; the law
enforces the divinely ordained subordination of women through its
regulation of sex in marriage. The law is an instrument of religion,
and it is precisely as an instrument of religion that law regulating
marriage gets its special character: laws against assault and battery
pale in importance when compared with the divine law giving a
man authority over his wife’s body. The man’s authority over his
wife’s body is willed by God—even if the same relationship outside of marriage and without reference to gender would be described as slavery or torture. The laws of God are upheld by the laws of this republic, this proud secular democracy. The marriage
laws fundamentally violate the civil rights of women as a class by
forcing all married women to conform to a religious view of
women’s sexual function. These same laws violate the civil rights
of women by compelling women to serve their husbands sexually
whether they will it or not and by defining women as a class in
terms of a sexual function that must be fulfilled. *
Women feel the pressure to submit in a m yriad of w ays, none of
which have to do with marital law as such. The woman is likely to
encounter marital law when she has been abused and seeks to act in
her own behalf as if she had a right to the disposition of her own
body. The point is that the law sets the standard for the disposition
of her body: it belongs to her husband, not to her.
The good wife submits; the bad wife can be forced to submit.
All women are supposed to submit.
One of the consequences of submission, whether conforming or
forced, is pregnancy.
Women are required to submit to intercourse, and women may
then be required to submit to the pregnancy.
Women are required to submit to the man, and women may
then be required to submit to the fetus.
Since the law sets the standard for the control, use of, function
of, purpose of, the wife’s body, and since the law supports the
right of the man to use force against his wife in order to have sex,
women live in a context of forced sex. This is true outside the
realm of subjective interpretation. If it were not true, the law
would not be formulated to sanction the husband’s forced penetra
*The American Civil Liberties Union has a handbook on women’s rights.
In that handbook, laws against prostitution are discussed in terms of the
right o f women to have sex: “the central focus of all these laws is to punish
issue of paramount importance and laws against prostitution are simply a
