 While many feminists have focused on the reform of marriage, others have argued for its abolition as a legal status (Metz 2010, Chambers 2013, 2017). It is sometimes claimed that marriage is inherently structured by sexist social norms, precluding the possibility of feminist reform — and that marriage also reinforces stigma against the unmarried (Chambers 2017). On such views, abolishing marriage is necessary to reshape social expectations and change patterns of choice accompanying it. For example, legal marriage may encourage women’s economic dependence by enabling and providing incentives for it. Thus, the legal structure of marriage, in combination with social norms, is taken to encourage choices which disempower women relative to men. Moreover, legal recognition of marriage itself endorses an ideal of a central, exclusive love relationship which, on the views of some feminists, encourages women to make disadvantageous choices by inculcating an exaggerated valuation of such relationships—at the expense of women’s other aspirations. Thus, in The Second Sex, feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) identified the expectations surrounding marriage as one of the primary means by which women are socialized into a femininity which, in her view, was limiting: marriage “is the destiny traditionally offered to women by society” (de Beauvoir 1949 [1989], 425; see also Okin 1989), leading women to focus on their attractiveness as mates—and not on study, career, or other ambitions. For this reason, some feminists have rejected ideals of romantic, exclusive love relationships, arguing that women should choose non-monogamy or lesbian separatism (Firestone 1970; see also Card 1996). The idea that marriage is essentially tied to such an ideal of romantic love will require further examination in the next section.