Building on something I wrote last week, here’s today’s post at the Good Men Project on wedding rings. Excerpt:
…weddings are still social events; few of us get hitched without at least some family or friends in attendance. Marriage has both a private and a public dimension. Many religious traditions implore the congregation to pledge to support the couple whose wedding they are witnessing. As former First Lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once wrote, it takes a village to raise a child. She might have added that it sometimes takes a village to help sustain a marriage. Just maybe, the village has a right to expect married men to act differently than single men. And one of the most obvious ways that married men can mark themselves out as “off the market” is with a wedding ring.
Since my wife and I were married six years ago, I only take my ring off to sleep, bathe, and work out. I travel a lot by myself, and often notice women (and, much less often, men) giving a quick glance at my left hand. I don’t flatter myself that all of those people would be interested if my hand were bare. Rather, many of them are looking to size me up quickly, sometimes as much to assess potential threat level as to determine whether I’m available. Though men with wedding rings still do hit on women, there’s at least a perception that a guy with a band on his finger is less likely to be on the prowl. (In my own purely personal experience, the stereotype that women are more likely to pursue a man who is wearing a ring has turned out to be a myth.)
Social shaming of those who defy patriarchal convention … just the sort of thing I come to ostensibly feminist websites for. Wait, what?
For what it’s worth, I’m going to get and wear a wedding ring after I’m married (though the use of engagement ring(s) has been asymmetric, and I don’t sweat that too much.) But the only reason it symbolises anything in a wide sense (and really, not all that wide sense, if we’re not too ethnocentric) is tradition; tradition is just as good a reason not to wear it in William’s case.
I think it’s great advice to tell people what wearing a wedding ring can signal, and I think you’re right that many women view a married man as safer, less likely to have a hidden sexual agenda towards them. But I don’t like the ‘should’ in your article.
I don’t want to change from a Miss to a Mrs., or in my case, from a frøken to a frue, just because I get married. I support French feminists who want to get rid of mademoiselle as an official title, because they don’t want their marital status declared every time they’re introduced to someone. Granted, the change of titles is sexist mainly because of the double standard and what it signals, and extra problematic because it’s mandatory, but I think people should be free to keep their relationship status to themselves.
Most of my friends don’t know I’m dating a guy in the same social circle, because we’ve decided to leave them out of it. If they knew, several of them would probably start just contacting him whenever they wanted to know something about me or needed to invite me to something (it has happened before), feel obligated to invite both of us to everything even when we want to do something separately, and otherwise relate to us as a couple (with him in the lead) instead of as individuals. None of us want that, least of all me.
If I want not just the legal right, but also the social permission, to not make my relationship any more obvious than I want it to be, I have to be willing to extend the same courtesy to men. I can see the social benefits of wedding rings (though they’re not that common here) and the reason you would recommend wearing them, but I really wish you’d leave out the ‘should’.
This heterosexual custom might work in a larger social context, but I certainly wouldn’t make any assumptions about men’s public behavior based on whether they wear rings or not. Going home from a club or party, I’ll always choose a woman to drive me home– a man wearing a ring or not wearing a ring doesn’t prevent rape. And like wearing a seat belt for safety, I just avoid any rape potential situation with men.
Lesbians of course are far more socially complex, impossible for 98% of the straight people out there to get, so my partner and my wearing a ring doesn’t signal much of anything really other than our commitment to each other. Incidently, biological family and parents did not come to our commitment ceremony… that’s a het thing. We did not commit out of any desire to immitate heterosexuality and all its corrupt social “customs.”
Double standards stink! And I try to watch it with the “shoulds”… well, sometimes anyway.
When my current set of parents got hitched 46 years back, they had no fanfare at all, just a civil ceremony which I didn’t find out about till next morn–I recall being really ticked off bec/ there was no cake. The rings came along in a year or so, after Mom made them in her jewelry class. I read about how much people spend on their weddings nowadays, I think they are nuts! Seems to me if you use your brain you can have a nice party w/o going broke.
I myself decided to not use jewelry for a public announcement of my various commitments, though I have been known to wear a smartasstic button for this or that cause. Said commitments not including a formal partnership with another person, so I don’t know how I would be about what they would wear. I supppose I would not be a tyrant about what they should or shouldn’t wear, but it is all moot since I don’t trust anyone that much in the 1st place.
I was at a job-hunting workshop a couple years back and the lady running it said that potential employers like to see a wedding ring or what looks like one. I didn’t quite have the nerve to get up and point out that machinists don’t wear rings. You don’t want to know what happens when they do. I suppose one could wear one on a neck chain, but that could get caught in something too. I’ve got enough disabilities already.
Wear what you like, folks, after having thought it over, and display one of your other fingers to those who try to tell you what you should wear based on their ideas.
But do be careful around machinery.