First things first, I just want to clarify that I am indeed, a feminist. I am a staunch advocate of women’s’ rights, and I believe in absolute equality between men, women, and everyone between. I feel the need to state that because what I’m going to admit to now might call everything I just said into question. It shouldn’t, of course; it is perfectly possible to hold two opposing opinions at once.
In fact, it’s necessary to when you exist in a world as contradictory and maddening as our own. Žižek would say that the very existence of conflicting opinions serves as proof that our society is ruled by ideology. It took me a while to wrap my head around that, but it makes sense when you think about it hard enough. Our ideas about the world are constantly butting up against lived reality. This creates a contradiction of terms. Anyhow, I digress.
So now we’ve got the legal bit out of the way. Every day that passes, the prospect of marrying for money becomes more appealing to me. With every whiff of office politics, every promotion that lies just out of reach, and the ever-increasing likelihood that I will be stuck in the 9 to 5 loop until I’m nearly seventy (exc. weekends, annual leave allowances and bank holidays), the idea of *just so* happening to fall in love with a man who *just so* happens to have enough money for us both to live comfortably on, calls ever closer.
I’m not suggesting that my future husband must be a multi-millionaire or anything. I’m not suggesting I would marry a man that I do not love. I know myself; I would be racked with guilt at the thought. But bloody hell, wouldn’t it just be amazing if the man I did fall in love with happened to be a doctor or a lawyer, or anything that means I don’t have to be chained to the endless flux of late-stage capitalism for the rest of my adult life?
Doesn’t my secret gold-digging fantasy just make me like a communist or something? Okay, that might be a stretch. But I think it’s worth examining this hustle culture we’ve all been indoctrinated into. Somewhere, there exists the idea that a strong work ethic is an inherently good thing. And this is where Žižek comes into play. Because the “work hard, play hard” mentality that we’ve been taught to believe is so virtuous, is just the product of our socio-economic system. It’s an ideology, albeit one that has become so ubiquitous in our society that no one notices there’s an opt-out clause.
And it doesn’t benefit us in the end, not really. What do I gain by having a good working knowledge of the Abode suite? I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t give a tiny rats’ arse about the Abode suite. All the hoops we must jump through, the people we must be nice to, the curriculum vitae’s that need constantly updating, and the taxes we’re continuously paying; it very quickly becomes a complete waste of time when you realise that we humans have created the entire system from nothing. Yet, if you don’t comply, you’re considered “unfeminist” or get done for tax fraud. It seems frightfully unfair.
The current system of constant wage slavery for both the working and middle classes is butting up against my lived experience of wanting to sit on my arse and not worry about whether it was worth getting a master’s degree. Likely, it wasn’t. But if I could just find someone with enough money for the both of us, I could finally put that master’s degree in mid-twentieth century literature to good use and pursue the PhD in pre-1939 George Orwell that I’ve been dreaming of since I was nineteen.
The scales have fallen from my eyes, but instead of having a religious experience, I’ve discovered Hinge and promptly decided it would be best to filter by career prospects. Yes, you could argue that marrying a man with money doesn’t really extricate me from the socio-economic conditions in which we toil. In fact, one could argue that I would only be more heavily reliant on late-stage capitalism if I were to marry for money, because my wellbeing would be at the whim of my husbands’ job security. I can’t really find a good rebuttal to that argument. But don’t you see, that’s not the point. I know I’m wrong, but I don’t care. I’m just bitter I’ve been born into a world where I’m not an heiress. Marrying a Clifford Chance lawyer is my next best option.
Of course, this is all a matter of conjecture. If I were to marry a Clifford Chance lawyer, we probably wouldn’t have very much in common. Reality is, I have far more in common with a struggling sculptor than I do a Clifford Chance lawyer. Was I to marry a Clifford Chance lawyer, I would be miserable by the time we got back from our honeymoon in the hills of Tuscany. It’s safe to say I’m not really a gold digger. Just a girl who has considered the next fifty years of her life and realised it would be much easier if I didn’t have to work for a living.
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