In a related analysis, queer theorists (the ranks of whom may be feminist-identified, too) regard the institution of marriage as a governing relation by which the state transforms docile liberal subjects into self- regulating domestic citizenry (Bronski 1998; Brook 2002; Butler 2002; Duggan 2002; Phelan 2001; Valverde 2006; Warner 1999). Not only is marriage a site of sexual regulation and social control for both males and females, it is, more importantly, an institution of normalization wherein the married are rendered “normal,” healthy, and moral, and the unmarried “abnormal,” unhealthy, and deviant.10 In this sense, not unlike feminists before them, queer theorists envision an emancipatory project rooted in resistance to normalization through practices that defy normative intimate life — including the domain of marriage and the nuclear family. |