An insightful study of family diversity worldwide
Book Review: Unhitched by Judith Stacey
BY: STEPHANIE S.
For those of whom “ethnography” is a scary word (as a former student of anthropology myself, it at once is and isn’t), consider Judith Stacey’s new Unhitched instead, a series of poignant, insightful, funny and sometimes instructive stories.
I have longed for a reference book that can help me confidently answer the ubiquitous claim that monogamous marriage between one man and one woman is, always has been, and always will be the bedrock of society. Unhitched is that book.
Stacey guides us through family structures largely unfamiliar to mainstream America (gay parenting arrangements in LA, or “El Gay” as she dubs it), as well as through structures in faraway lands about which Westerners purport to know much. She then transports us to remote territory in southwest China, where we find a poignant refutation of the “bedrock of society” claim among Mosuo people who, as Stacey puts it:
Directly contradict the three basic contemporary convictions about marriage, parenting and family life that I identified in the introduction to this book: (1) marriage is a universal institution; (2) the ideal family structure for raising children is an “intact” family consisting of a married heterosexual couple and their biological children; (3) children generally, and boys especially, need and yearn to know their biological fathers.
Before venturing to China, she looks to South Africa for an example that may have more immediate resonance with a Western audience. She uses the simultaneously acceptable practice of polygamy and the constitutionally legal, but socially scorned gay partnerships in South Africa to reject the “slippery slope” argument often espoused by the Global Religious Right. This is the idea that conferring legal recognition on gay partnerships will lead to a host of (other) social ills . . . polygamy, bestiality, the end of the world via violent, global earthquakes on a certain date, what have you.
However, she fails to elucidate why the slippery slope argument is a problem. Is it a problem? Is she perhaps nudging us to come to our own conclusions here? She can’t do ALL the work for us, after all. I found myself wondering: Just what is wrong with the legal acceptance of one non-normative practice leading to acceptance of another practice? In not fully teasing this out, she tries to distance herself and us from the slippery slope argument.
Something that is slippery, however, is the language used throughout Unhitched. From using “feminine” in quotes to describe a preference for sexual exclusivity (using it in quotes doesn’t get you off the hook for unpacking loaded terms), to drawing an unusual distinction between “predestined” and “situational” gay male parents in LA, to pinning polygamy as a “sexual behavior” (I am not making the argument that polygamy is anything more or less than a behavior, instead, I am illuminating that Stacey uses this term without recognizing the implications and parallels between her terminology and how homophobic leaders have denigrated queer sexuality by rendering it as nothing more than a “behavior),” a careful read of Stacey’s work will leave the reader questioning just whose definition of terms are being employed and the extent to which we can successfully reclaim, rebrand and reinvent words to our own, progressive ends.
One of the charming aspects of this ethnography is that at times it reads like a relationship guidebook. For example, as she unearths the ways in which the people she investigates negotiate complex familial decisions, she explains “the two . . . spent the next two years carefully discussing their familial visions, values, expectations, anxieties, and limits” (Stacey 75). That sounds like a good starting point for any decision made in the context of a relationship!
Unhitched is punctuated by statistics (albeit sometimes flimsy ones, such as a survey of just 94 gay men in LA on their views on parenting that is used to support the claim that “most gay men seem to be able to forego parenthood without serious regrets” [Stacey 80]). Despite this limitation, she has a well grounded historical perspective and much insight to offer from her extensive field work.
Unhitched reflects a deep understanding of and appreciation for the complexities of parenting, partnering, and living on the margins of society. I hope that you pick up a copy of Unhitched and feel as challenged, inspired and satisfied as I did!
Happy Pride!
Stephanie S. is a volunteer with AtMP and works in the reproductive rights movement in the mid-Atlantic.
