Can we relinquish the self-flagellation whip?
Carol Hanisch’s 2006 introduction to her famous 1969 essay titled “The Personal Is Political” is being passed around feminist blogging circles, and it’s always a good time to revisit this essay, which was the origin of the famous, and widely misinterpreted, phrase. The phrase is often used as a bludgeon to guilt-trip women about everything from dieting to getting married to staying at home with the children, but as Hanisch clarifies in her introduction, it’s about realizing the political origins of your personal struggles.
But [liberal male activists] belittled us no end for trying to bring our so-called “personal problems” into the public arena - especially “all those body issues” like sex, appearance, and abortion. Our demands that men share the housework and childcare were likewise deemed a personal problem between a woman and her individual man. The opposition claimed if women would just “stand up for themselves” and take more responsibility for their own lives, they wouldn’t need to have an independent movement for women’s liberation. What personal initiative wouldn’t solve, they said, “the revolution” would take care of if we would just shut up and do our part. Heaven forbid that we should point out that men benefit from oppressing women.
Unfortunately, since she coined the phrase, Hanisch has seen it used in what appears to be the exact opposite of how it was intended—by demanding that political change will only come if individual women take personal action and that the best way for feminists to get anything done is forever run around guilt-tripping each other about the compromises we make to get by in the patriarchy. Most flamewars that flare up in the feminist blogs come from someone basically trying to revoke someone else’s feminist card because she doesn’t individually resist male domination in the way the complainer feels she should.
Which doesn’t mean that there’s no usefulness in taking an individual stand—there’s value in “being the change you want to see”. Just that we should respect that it’s often smart for women to play along with the patriarchy and if we want to stop that, we have to stop the patriarchy. Hanisch clarifies this point in her intro:
Women are sometimes smart not to struggle alone when they can’t win and the repercussions are worse than the oppression. However, individual struggle does sometimes get us some things, and when the WLM is at low tide or invisible, it may be the best we can do. We need to always be pushing the envelope. Even when the WLM is at high tide, because our oppression often takes place in isolated circumstances like the home, it still takes individual action to put into practice what the Movement is fighting for. But individual struggle is always limited; it’s going to takes an ongoing Movement stronger than any we’ve seen so far to put an end to male supremacy.
My recent rereading of this essay along with the introduction came to mind when I read this post by tigtog about the endless discussion over caving into patriarchal pressure to change your name. She references this highly snarky column by Catherine Deveny, who points out what should be evident if you welcome even a smidgen of intellectual honesty into the discussion, that the excuses women make for why they changed their names upon marriage are just silly. Warning: It’s not for the highly sensitive, but it’s very funny.
The defences were, well, defensive. “Well it’s just your father’s surname anyway.” No, it’s not. It’s mine. I was born with it. And if you follow that argument through, then you are not changing your surname to your husband’s but to your father in-law’s.
“You are only a real family if you have the same surname.” Wrong. If a family wants the same surname, why don’t half of these families have the mother’s surname? It seems only women have names that are hard to spell, they aren’t attached to or they don’t like. Not men. Odd. And convenient.
Women told me their husbands would have been happy to change their surnames. But they didn’t. I asked some of these blokes who, according to their wives, would have been happy to. They either said. “No, I wouldn’t have but don’t tell her” or just shuffled their feet and muttered, “I dunno, probably.” You can say what you like now the deal is done.
Tigtog points out another quote from the original column:
I ask women why they change their last name. They tell me “it’s just easier”. It’s not. How easy is it changing the name on everything from your driver’s licence to your library card? It’s not.
Obviously, what people mean but won’t spell out when they say, “It’s easier,” is that it’s easier to give into patriarchal pressure than not. It’s the same reason that a lot of women find it “easier” to do all the housework, though it seems at first blush that it would be easier to share the housework. I’ve called it the “Nagging Differential” in the past, which is that women have to do more work around the house no matter what—either they have to do all the work or all the nagging, and sometimes all the work is easier than all the nagging. Which is what Hanisch meant when she said that it’s often smart for an individual woman to go along with the patriarchy. At the end of the day, resistance will cost you more than compliance, which is how oppression, you know, works. And no one can be faulted for saving themselves.
Everyone is probably hollering what a meanie that Deveny is at this point, but it’s worth noting that she understands “the personal is political” very well in this essay. She doesn’t fault women for changing their names, really.
The stories I have heard of a backlash towards some women who kept their names were jaw-dropping. More women than you would think have confronted extremely angry reactions, with people telling them it is “illegal”, “unethical” and “selfish” not to change their names. Others just ignore the woman’s wishes and address her as Mrs He.
She accepts that the pressure is immense and individual women are not islands and that women changes their names because society won’t let them keep their names, not in a realistic sense anyway.
Where she faults them is for being full of shit, which is why I get so frustrated by this debate. Women change their names, but don’t want to admit that they caved into patriarchal pressure, so they deny that the name change is political and reassert that it was just a personal choice. Which it is not; it’s clearly a political statement, albeit one that’s often not strictly voluntary. Saying, “Well his name sounded better,” is trying to depoliticize and deny the existence of male domination, which is why it frustrates so many of us. The truth about the name change is, “Because we live in a patriarchal society that retains a strong sense that marriage is about male domination, and the name change reflects that. I, as a member of this society, am under a lot of pressure to name myself in a way that reflects my subordinate status to my mate, and for reasons X, Y, and Z, I found it better for myself to give into this pressure than fight it. What feminists need to do is to create massive resistance to this tradition and remake society so that women aren’t pressured to change their names when they marry.”
The problem is that a lot of holier-than-thou types will jump in and demand that you buck pressures you feel you can’t buck. I’ve done it, but I’m trying to get better, because all that does is discourage people from being honest about the political pressures on them that create their behaviors and then nothing gets done. Again, none of this means that you shouldn’t be the change you seek if you can—one way to lessen the abuse of women that causes the name change is for more women to model that it’s not the end of the world if women don’t change their names upon marriage. But it’s no excuse to go on a holier-than-thou trip, but to embrace some humility about it. You’re not keeping your name upon marriage to feel superior to others, but in part to help them out. That you have an ability to keep your name is something to be grateful for, not self-righteous about.
All this is why I went straight to incentives to lower the birth rate instead of suggesting guilt trips and social pressure. It’s pointless to point fingers at people who’ve had 2 or 3 children—all it does is create a plethora of self-aggrandizing but useless dialogue of people justifying why they have kids, from fuel efficient vehicles to “my kids are superior liberals so the world needs them”. All these reasons might be true, but the overwhelming reason is the political pressure to have kids. It’s just what you do. People throw shit fits if you don’t. The assumption of mandatory child-bearing (especially for white women) is so pervasive that women don’t even have the space to ask if they want to, much less come to conclusion that they don’t. Your specifics are interesting, but when talking about the broad political implications, if we want to reduce the birth rate, we’re going to have to attack the structural reasons it remains too high. The original post was something of an exercise for me in trying to write about a problem without faulting the individuals trapped in a system for it.
To improve the discussions of issues that hit close to home in the Hanisch style is to take on two objectives: Don’t lie about why you do stuff to preserve a self-image of yourself as an island impervious to political pressures and don’t guilt trip people who aren’t impervious to political pressures. An example: Do I diet to keep myself thin? Yes, and it’s no use pretending that it’s not to fit a patriarchal beauty ideal. Because my life is easier if I fit that ideal. If you try to take away my small advantage in the world and just leave me in a worse, more oppressed situation than before, I’ll probably resist you through dodginess or outright rejection of your self-righteous political trip. Try to revoke my feminist card, and I’ll have the urge to point out all the ways that I’m personally a icon of individual resistance (what with the rejection of marriage, children, and other bourgeois sexual phoniness). What we can do together is fight for a world where women’s opportunities are expanded so that their waistlines don’t have so much power to dictate their path in life, a world where life is improved for all of us.
200 Responses to “Feminism Friday, a day late, on the personal is political”
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“All these reasons might be true, but the overwhelming reason is the political pressure to have kids. It’s just what you do. People throw shit fits if you don’t.”
Having kids is an issue with a few more dimensions than a name change. If somebody says “I wanted to raise a child, maybe two”, do you really want to automatically assume their reasons are not honest?
sort of off point, but sort of not, I think it’s also worth recommending Michael Warner’s essay “Public and Private” (it’s available in his book Publics and Counterpublics) which explores the ways in which the seemingly private is always saturated with public politics.
No. But it’s also quite ridiculous to assume that the social (and political) has nothing to do with their decision.
Ever since I was a little girl the idea of changing my name upon marriage really bothered me. About a year ago I finally gave myself perimission to imagine getting married and keeping my own name. I felt a lot better. But the reasons I want to keep my own name are partially feminist, but I also have a strong cultural tie to my name. If I met a man from the same culture, I think it would be a lot more difficult to keep my name under those circumstances.
For example, people can rationalize - oh, she’s keeping her name to respect her heritage. How nice for her family. Instead of - she’s keeping her name because she’s a ball busting feminist. Her poor husband.
Kylroy:
What does honesty have do with it?
Honestly caving into the social pressures to [change your name/have kids/be thin/stay at home/<insert personal-political issue here>] doesn’t mean you’re not caving into the social pressures to do it.
“The personal is political” is also about recognizing that ‘personal’ problems are part of a wider social problem–e.g., it’s not just YOUR husband, but your sister’s husband, your friend’s husband, etc. who doesn’t do housework, and it’s not because he’s just an asshole, it’s because we live in a culture where certain tasks are Women’s Work and men are not only freed from doing them, but are condemned if they do.
Amanda, I pretty much agree with you, except that “ZOMG you are trying to revoke my feminist card!” is also a pretty common defensive, silencing reaction meant to deflect discussion about one’s own choices. Sure, there are people who pull the self righteous I’m-a-better-feminist-than-you routine, but there are also plenty of people who argue that only other people’s choices are influenced by the patriarchy.
(The problem with the ‘having kids = name change’ argument is that having kids is not always a choice–you don’t have sex and then find out that your name is going to be changed in nine months if you don’t get a pharmacist to prescribe Plan B–and while the pressures on men and women are very different and are certainly patriarchal, it’s not something only women do. A man who fathers children is not called pussywhipped or a fag, unlike a husband who takes his wife’s name or who does most of the housework.)
If somebody says “I wanted to raise a child, maybe two”, do you really want to automatically assume their reasons are not honest?
If they argue that their desires are free-floating and completely uninspired by society, yes. I understand the desire to present yourself as a unique individual unshaped by society, but it’s self-aggrandizing nonsense. Do I think that if they lived in a society where having children was truly, completely optional, they wouldn’t do it? Not necessarily. But I do think a lot of people who have kids wouldn’t have if they’d lived in an ideal world where there’s no pressure.
Wow, I’d hadn’t realized Personal is Political theme was being deployed in admonishments to women to individually resist patriarchy, though I guess some of it could originate from that, depending on who’s doing the interpretation. But I’ve always understood Hanisch’s phrase as a refutation of the personal responsibility/bootstraps mentality. It’s saying that what looks like the personal situation or choice of an individual woman has been created, or at least heavily influenced, by forces much more powerful than her, who have a vested interest in maintaining the situation. They must also maintain the illusion that it is personal and a choice. Which is pretty much what your whole post is about.
I agree that the best, and probably most effective, way for women to take ownership of ending our oppression is to stop feeding the lies. It’s refreshing to see a woman admit, as you did, why she really diets. I’ve noticed when I tell people that I’m trying to lose weight to be more socially acceptable as a woman, they get uncomfortable and defensive.
Amanda, I pretty much agree with you, except that “ZOMG you are trying to revoke my feminist card!” is also a pretty common defensive, silencing reaction meant to deflect discussion about one’s own choices.
Except that people do actually try to revoke the feminist card. Look at the fat activists actually saying you can’t be a fat positive person while actively dieting. Or the folks who tried to revoke Jessica’s feminist card for having a breeder puppy. Or the people who dogpiled Jill for wearing make-up. The last was particularly noxious, since Jill does do the hard work of showing how her personal choices are made under oppression. Whenever you make demands upon someone else’s personal choices, whether they’re examined or not, you’re more likely encouraging lying and resistance than actually pushing for change.
I didn’t equate having kids with changing your name. For one thing, I do think a lot of people, in a truly free system, would probably have kids. Whereas I don’t think anyone would even consider changing their name if it wasn’t a patriarchal tradition. I mean, they’d change their name for the hell of it, to what they’d want it to be, but the automatic name change upon marriage would evaporate under a truly free system.
I quarrel with the idea that the name change can be considered a “choice” in a meaningful way if a baby is not. Birth control is far more ubiquitious than name changing, and the idea that you could go without children occurs to as many, if not more, women than the idea that you can refrain from changing your name does.
Sexual Liberation Saturday
Which it is not; it’s clearly a political statement, albeit one that’s often not strictly voluntary. Saying, “Well his name sounded better,” is trying to depoliticize and deny the existence of male domination, which is why it frustrates so many of us.
There’s an extra dimension to trying to depoliticize it: you’re trying not to make your husband look like an asshole. There are some guys who absolutely insist that their wives change their names, but I think that most honestly don’t care one way or the other. If you say, “Honey, I’m not going to change my name,” most men will say, “Whatever you want to do” (at least in blue states).
So if you start talking about the social and/or political pressure to change your name, people immediately take that political talk and turn it back into personal talk with the assumption that your husband is a controlling jerk who “made” you do it.
I didn’t change my name, which annoys my parents, so they address everything to us as “Mr. and Mrs.,” including checks. Luckily, I foresaw this and signed the card for our joint account with both my legal signature and my “Mrs.” signature so I don’t have to confront them over something that frankly isn’t worth fighting about with them. I’ve made my statement, it’s not up for discussion, and it’s not worth a stupid fight over something I’m not going to change just to make them happy.
I’m skeptical that there’s wholesale “husband doesn’t care”-ness going on. I think if men, as a rule, didn’t care, the tradition would evaporate. But one nice thing about being a man in the patriarchy is that your wishes get enforced for you without you having to lift a finger. But if men really, truly didn’t care, they’d wield their greater power to shut people up about it. If a man says, “My wife doesn’t want to change her name, and I don’t want her to, either, so leave her alone,” that would be way more powerful than a woman saying it. That it doesn’t happen speaks volumes.
I can see parental pressure, but it’s fascinating to me that women and only women are tasked with resisting parental pressure. If men joined us, that would help significantly. I’m sure, mnem, that yours could be a situation where your parents overrule both your wishes and his, but there’s situations where that male pressure could be brought to bear and it’s not being brought to bear. Again, it’s tough. And I think that the “easier” rule comes into play—it’s easier for men to resist on more levels than it is on women, and it never occurs to a lot of men to make this their problem.
/oh no, another personal anecdote!
I did change my name, and it was for aesthetic reasons, but what the hell…maybe it doesn’t matter if it looks like it was patriarchal pressure.
In a way, maybe it was; my husband is as different from my father as it’s possible to be, and part of my reason for taking his name was also to reject my dad, who was in many ways a true patriarchal asshole, and sometimes abusive. Actually, I switched from my first to my middle name too, in college, because I liked it better, and got some flack, but wasn’t disowned. Had I kept my dad’s surname, there would have been rolled eyes, but no screaming or anything too awful.
Looking back, a more acceptable choice might have been to pick a totally new name; but I just wasn’t that attached to any particular surname and actually liked my husband’s, so there you go. Make of that what you like.
I’m trying to figure out what I think of this debate, and I suppose in the end, I agree; what a woman does or doesn’t do with her surname should be of only minor interest, and no censure. Then perhaps my particular choice would become less suspect, and no one would be expected to do one or the other.
Oh and Rob Rummel-Hudson of http://www.schuylersmonsterblog.com/
My Beloved Monster and Me
did change his surname, along with his wife, and actually wanted to take hers, rather than hyphenate, originally.
Oh what a woman does with her surname is extremely important. I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying that it’s understandable that women cave to the immense pressure, and it’s not useful to blame the victims. But don’t deny that women change their name for a specific, political reason.
It’s so hard with these issues not to aim at individual women making individual choices, and blame them for their choices. Both my sister and my (now) sister-in-law changed their names when they got married, and I’m still kind of disappointed in them both, but it doesn’t do any good for me to attack them over it. And no, I haven’t said a word about it to either of them.
In my fantasy world, all we have to do is work to reduce the pressures that drive people to make patriarchally-constrained choices. And Amanda’s right that we need to find ways to do that that don’t put individual women on the defensive and alienate people who would otherwise be our allies.
After all, if the personal is political, then the political is personal, too — that is, politics affect our lives. (How’s that for pithy?) We need to take the steps to create the world where patriarchal traditions aren’t natural and accepted offhand.
Not that griping about other people’s choices isn’t fun, mind you…
I have said that since 1990. It happens. There are liberated men in this world.
Way back in 1969 in college when I said something to the effect that I wouldn’t change my last name on marriage, a (male) professor called me a “Lucy Stoner.”
Lucy Stone was a Suffragette (in)famous for refusing to take her husband’s last name, which is how far back that particular professor had to go for the reference.
I don’t remember if I’d read about the feminist resistance to husband’s last name at that point, and it was back in the day before Women’s Studies were in the curriculum, but my father was a patriarchal asshole, my mother had died from trying to live up to the Feminine Mystique, and I knew one thing: I didn’t want to live her life.
And yes, I had qualms about keeping my father’s last name, but my grandfather had been even more of a patriarchial asshole, and even tho my name is pretty boring vanilla, at least it was mine.
And still is. Almost every woman I know has kept her “maiden” name, but I live in Los Angeles and most would be reluctant to give up what has become their professional name, if for no other reason. Before this I lived in New York City, and in large liberal cities there doesn’t seem to be as much pressure to do the husband name change thing — if anything, the reverse.
However, I have one younger friend who has taken it one step further. She kept her name, and husband agreed that their children should also have her last name, because his was a stage name. At least hers, had a basis of being a “real” name.
But if men really, truly didn’t care, they’d wield their greater power to shut people up about it. If a man says, “My wife doesn’t want to change her name, and I don’t want her to, either, so leave her alone,” that would be way more powerful than a woman saying it. That it doesn’t happen speaks volumes.
The one place where I’ve seen this issue turned around is academia, where it’s practically assumed that women are going to keep their names once they’re married. Of all the married professor couples I’ve ever known, I think there’s been one who both had his name, and they were both in their 60s. Of the people I work with now, there’s only one female colleague who has adopted her husband’s name, albeit with a hyphen, and he’s not an academic. But it’s almost as though the expectation in academia is that the female will keep her name–one of the things I like about being in that line of work.
As for my partner and me, we’re trying to have kids, and we’re already planning on hyphenating their last names–over the objections of one of our closest friends.
I have to add my anecdote, for the betterment of the reputation of liberal men: My hsband was very strongly opposed to my changing my legal name when we married. He is still baffled that I did.
My reasons for doing so are rooted in my experience as a child with not one, not two, but THREE stepfathers. If was a nightmare having a different name than my parents. A constantly changing one, at that. When my mother divorced, she always changed back to the name my brother and I had (McCarty) the name of my somewhat sociopathic father.
At the time I married my husband, we planned to have children, and I just wanted us to all have the same name. I didn’t want to put my kids through the whole mess; it was a constant problem for me. ALso, because I am a performer, I could keep my own name professionally (and do). I can still cash check made out to Kathy McCarty, because it is my established stage name. So, I get to have two names, have my cake and eat it too.
If I had it to do over, I think I would suggest that we both think up a new name and both change, because that is funnier! But there are indeed men who really REALLY don’t want their wives to change their name, and the wives do it anyway for reasons of their own.
My friends have what I thought was the classiest solution: they both adopted the hyphenated combination of their names, and that’s what their son uses. They created a brand new family from both of their names, and I don’t know if anyone gave them grief over it.
In a way, maybe it was; my husband is as different from my father as it’s possible to be, and part of my reason for taking his name was also to reject my dad, who was in many ways a true patriarchal asshole, and sometimes abusive.
I had a similar problem, but with my whole family. I actively chose to be part of my husband’s family (because they weren’t dysfunctional!), so changing my name felt right. Interestingly, my husband and in-laws honestly didn’t care: my parents were most likely to give me flack about not changing my name. (My husband was surprised and a bit upset the first time he saw a letter–from my mother, no less!–addressed to “Mrs. His-first His-last” instead of Ms. Her-first His-last”–he thought it was so dehumanizing.)
“Don’t lie about why you do stuff to preserve a self-image of yourself as an island impervious to political pressures and don’t guilt trip people who aren’t impervious to political pressures.”
I am continually flabbergasted to realize that this still needs to be said. It is so fucking obvious that blogging on this topic should be as absurd as blogging about how 2 + 2 equals 4.
I read this kind of post, I start thinking about Homer’s Oddessey, and all of the zones of comfort and discomfort mapped inside.
This name thing really isn’t an issue just for women. Latin surnames drive government and multicultural businesses crazy at times because the antiquidated computer systems aren’t really capable of handling surnames that have paternal and maternal names together. It’s not just the whole length thing. It’s also about the same struggles latinos have with the anglo system. Some latinos give in and just identify with the paternal surname. Other latinos keep the entire name, which can be very long. Still other latinos will do some variant of truciated or mashed together names. And *still* other latinos *change* their minds about how they want their names in the system. Then there are all the newbies fresh from Mexico and points south and northeast who come into the system and tries to figure out how to deal with their names in the system. Arabic names have somewhat similar issues, but arabs are a pretty small part of our population. We’ve managed to deal with Chinese, Viet, Native American, and some black names with mostly no issues. We can deal with first name only. We just can’t deal with names that violate Anglo norms of patronyms. I mean, Quality Control fights *every* year on this stupid topic. I just mutter to myself, just make an empty field for matrinymic names…
Oooooh, I can just see the picture if large numbers of women start handling names like latinos do, which frankly, more and more women, professionallywise, have to do. Amanda, if women ever acted in genuine agenthood in names, you should be very prepared for a system retaliation. Hyphenated names, okay, keeping maiden names, okay, but choosing among a number of systems of naming…NOT OKAY. ?:~)
As far as the latter part of your post, all I have ask is why should the government incentivize bearing fewer children? Why not figure out ways to reduce social pressures one way or another on children. It’s not the same sort of system like affirmative action. It’s the same system of crop subsidies. I don’t think children are a *crop*.
As I’m sure I’ve said before here, it’s only when we all compare our personal oppressions that we realize it’s not just coincidence, we don’t deserve it because we’re bad wives/mothers/girls/women, and our pain is shared by many others.
There are no “good girls” who escape the lash of the patriarchy because they behave properly, as we are led to believe. We are all punished for being women. But we won’t know that we’re being put in a no-win situation until we see that everyone else is in the same situation and can’t get out of it, either.
Women are told that they could be good, happy, well-treated, if only they acted right. Without evidence to the contrary, many think the fact that they’re not treated right is evidence that they are not good people. Until you see that everyone else gets it in the neck, too, you don’t know for sure that you’re not to blame.
Labor unions work on the same solidarity principle.
Just as labor unions can’t fight management without the hard facts of working conditions, benefits and pay, we can’t fight patriarchal oppression without talking with each other about personal relationships. There’s huge pressure from the oppressors to keep these things private and undisclosed, because you can’t fight the problem if you don’t know it exists.
Judy Brown: My husband had heard the term “Lucy Stoner” to refer to women who do not change their names at marriage. He heard it in that same general era, late 60s or early 70s. I hadn’t, but the first time he used it, I understood its meaning in context because I did a lot of feminist reading when I was a teenager and knew who Lucy Stone was.
I never even considered changing my name. A few people asked, but even among those, most know me well enough to assume I probably would keep my name.
We took my last name mainly to make my wife’s parents happy. I’m not sure if I regret the decision or not.
There might be another side to the name-change thing, the pressure on men NOT to change their names. I’m never going to marry a man, but I’d love to change my name, because there is a particular way it is mispronounced, especially by English people who apparently don’t hear Irish vowel sounds right, that sounds utterly hideous in my ears and drives me UP THE WALL. I’d quite like a chance to change the name for something more elegant, or to have an alternate name for non-professional use.Maybe lots of men have names that annoy them but they don’t have a socially sanctioned opportunity to change them.
I’m honestly not doing that “what about the menz” thing; I don’t actually think having this “choice” works out as a net benefit to women, for many reasons.
We all live in society and we all have to conform to it to some degree in order to survive within it. Everyone has conflicts and hypocrisies. We need to recognize that and support people so that they can overcome the conflicts and hypocrisies. Shaming and condemning are not support and do not help.
People lie because they are shamed and condemned for making choices that conflict with their principles. By lying (saying that it is completely a personal choice because “it is easier,” etc) they are excusing social pressure from it’s role in their choice. It is another way of blaming the victim to take the blame off of the culprit.
Emjaybee’s reasons also reflect mine: I did NOT want to keep my father’s name as he was remarkably emotionally abusive. I like my husband’s name and think my “new” name sounds very nice, even after 15 years.
Charlie considered switching to my maiden name, but I balked at the idea. Changing my last name to his solidified, for me, that HE was now my family. Screw “society and the patriarch” stuff- it was for ME.
BTW, at first glance I thought the photo was of a plant holder and wondered why Amanda was bent about macrame… I made a similar device years ago for a spider plant.
That’s very cool, tpx. But it also occurs to me that I wasn’t following my own suggestions, vis a vis men. I think a lot of men don’t do that out of fear (of being called names) or because it’s never been presented as an option. That you can and do stand up is a great thing and might help create a space where more people can stand up and fight.
The one place where I’ve seen this issue turned around is academia, where it’s practically assumed that women are going to keep their names once they’re married.
I’ve noticed that, too, which speaks volumes about how to really fight this tradition: It appears that the tradition fades away when women are defined as something other than by men, say by their work.
The govt already incentivizes having more children with tax breaks. There is social programming to have children everywhere in our culture. We should change the direction of that programming because the planet cannot sustain all of the humans.
As for changing your name being easier (personal anecdote ahead), I recieved a marriage certificate with the wrong names on the envelope. I specifically did not change my name on the application (we both changed to something new later), and I still got mail addresses to Mr. & Mrs. never been my name. The license inside was correct! Can you freakin’ imagine? They wanted me to conform so badly that they sent an envelope that did not match the legal document inside. I wrote to them, but never heard back. In that way, it might be easier - sorta.
Interestingly, often only by admitting that rebellion is difficult do we have a choice to rebel. Nothip’s point really drives it home—a woman who was not cognizant of the fact that this was conformist pressure would probably not greet this “mistake” with rebellion but would be puzzled or quite possibly roll over, especially if she had been confronted repeatedly by well-meaning people. In the post above, I drag out a really interesting example—men who abuse women have an easier time of it as long as the women won’t name the situation. And women don’t name it “abuse” because they don’t want to admit they’ve been suckered like this. But if you won’t admit that you’re being abused, it’s unlikely you’re going to start taking steps to escape safely.
We could all change our names to numbers. That way, we could prove to ourselves that we in no way scummed to patriarchal, social, or family pressures that inhibit our authenticity.
Sincerely
12-14-7-9-7-14
The naming thing is tough with kids. I honestly didn’t care about my wife changing her name when we got married and always figured she’d keep it anyway. But now that we’ve got a kid on the way, the issue of last names came up. She wanted to hyphenate, but I didn’t. I hate those hyphenated names. But at the same time, I wasn’t willing to give up my last name in exchange for hers, either.
So we’re mashing our last names together, providing us with the rather tidy “Salter” for our kid’s last name. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out throughout the kid’s life.
Just to be clear, my wife and I are still keeping our names, we’re not switching to the new one.
Now, 16 years after the fact, I rather wish I hadn’t changed my name. I could revert now (my husband wouldn’t object at all), but now there’s a book with my married name on the cover, so it seems foolish from a career standpoint to change it now. Or! Or I could change my name back legally, but use my married name for professional purposes, in a twist on the usual. But then there’s my credit record from pretty much my entire adult life, and oy, it’d be messy to change now. But then again, maybe it’s not so messy. Will have to continue pondering. (It’d be fun to hear what the relatives would think if I ditched my husband’s surname.)
I’ll spare you the enumeration of “it wasn’t just bowing to patriarchy” reasons I changed my name, but will mention one. I’m six kinds of white (ancestry from six European countries), and my husband isn’t white. I kinda liked the idea of taking a somewhat more “ethnic” name—doesn’t it seem like some white women who marry non-white men keep their own name so as to avoid hitting preconceived notions of what a “Mrs. Huang” or “Mrs. Velasquez” looks like?
I think one important question is not whether one wants to give up one’s surname when one makes a life-commitment, but why one took up the name of your husband.
I think that’s an important difference. Why couldn’t a whole new name be forged that both of you took? Why is it assumed that if you give up your name that it is the name of your male partner that you are taking? And the argument of needing it to be a family is just weak to me, since if that is what it took to be a family, there would be a lot more solid families out there than there is.
And to anyone that ever thinks their decision to do so wasn’t at leas tin part socially and culturally motivated … start thinking about how this operates as hegemonic heterosexuality; is as heterosexism.
Even when people are accepting of same-sex marriage (as they should be, of course) one MAJOR question I have always heard is about names. It’s like a fundamental rule of society has been dissolved, and they are desperately trying to find some island of solidity on which to put their foot.
To deny that the patriarchy, including heterosexism, hasn’t played a part in your decision making is just denial, a fantasy.
When my partner and I get married, we are both keeping our names. However, his name constantly gets misspelled and mispronounced (and it’s only five letters), so I’m trying to convince him that he should take mine! But so far, no dice.
As far as kids - if we do have them, I’m tempted to enforce the logic of a good friend of mine, who stated “When they come out of his vagina, they can have his name.” We would likely try to adopt, though, but even then I feel like we should either flip a coin or do the name mash-up. My immediate family has two (shortly three) last names, and that’s never been a problem, or ever made us feel like less of a family, so I don’t get this whole “oh, we can’t be a real family if we can’t all be called “The Whatstheirnames”".
Awesome, awesome post, by the way.
When I got engaged, I encouraged my fiancee to keep her name. She reacted in a way that I found odd, which was to question whether I was trying to keep her at a distance, a ways away from being fully integrated into my family. In the end, she ended up hyphenating (I didn’t, which I sometimes think reflects at least a bit poorly on my own feminist street cred). But now with some of the comments on this thread, I had a bit of a Eureka! moment — my wife was born from a short-lived marriage and, when her mother remarried, ended up with her stepfather’s last name. Consciously or not, that set of childhood circumstances probably has something to do with why the idea of feeling like belonging in a family was so important to her. Thanks, Pandagonians!
The govt already incentivizes having more children with tax breaks. There is social programming to have children everywhere in our culture. We should change the direction of that programming because the planet cannot sustain all of the humans.
Nothip, I’m guessing you don’t have kids.
The social programming to have kids comes part and parcel with a profound pressure to erase the identities of mothers as humans. For a woman who wants people to think of her as a person, the programming goes the other way. I have encountered far, far more emotional pressure *not* to have kids, which I dearly wanted to have, than I have ever encountered to encourage me to have kids. Oh, my family supported my decision to have children, but the feeling I got from our entire culture was “Once you have kids, you as a person cease to exist. All that remains is your children.” Like kids devour you and crawl out of your remains. It took me a long time of actively seeking positive role models who were mothers to have the courage to do what I’d wanted to do all along.
As for tax “incentives” to have children, these are actually tax incentives to take *care* of children. You get them if you adopt, and you do not get them if you are a non-custodial parent. And they aren’t actually incentives at all, not like the incentive to own instead of renting, because they don’t begin to compensate for the *cost* of caring for a child. They are really more equalizers, designed to make the burden of caring for kids slightly more bearable.
I’m for opening up this tax break to people who care for dependent parents and any other person taking care of another, BTW, but I do get kind of sick of people acting as if it’s some sort of incentive to have kids or a special privilege people with children get. I have done my own taxes for 20 years — 12 without kids and 8 with — and I may have kept more of my money out of the hands of the taxman without the kids, but I definitely kept more of my own money out of the hands of landlords, mortgage companies, utility companies, day cares, clothing stores, grocery stores, and damn near everywhere else that wasn’t a book, CD, or computer store, when I didn’t have kids. To put it another way, when I made $40K without kids in 1998, that was pretty good money. When I made $60K with two kids and a mostly unemployed boyfriend (later husband) to support in 2002, that was damn near poverty.
In other words, right now all the financial incentives actually support having no children. You want to combat social pressure to have children, that’s great; I’m all for it. Let’s pass laws immunizing doctors from legal harm should they sterilize a woman who, while not pregnant, came to them requesting sterilization and signed all the paperwork in good health and their right mind; that might free doctors to feel safe sterilizing 20-something childfree women. Remind friends and family that unless they’re going to be up for the 2 am feedings, they really should shut up about “you should have kids.” But you cannot go the other way and penalize people *for* having children, which is what removing the meager tax breaks parents get would do; instead you should push to have them made into caretaker breaks, not tied to being a parent so much as tied to being a person who takes care of another person without pay.
As for the planet not sustaining all the humans, I’ve argued this in the other related threads. The problem with the American humans is not that they overreproduce but that they overconsume, and you’re going to have better luck working on that because it’s not a fundamental human drive. The overpopulation in the world is caused by women in much more coercive societies than ours being forced into childbearing or pressured into it, and we can help that by pushing for what we’re already working for as feminists, worldwide rights for women and access to birth control.
Personally, I don’t understand all this name/family entanglement, but then I’m a geek with no desire to reproduce. (I also didn’t understand why people got freaked out when Pluto was changed to a minor planet, for what it’s worth.) The whole idea of sleeping with someone with the same last name really icks me out, so having the same name as my husband would be Extremely Weird.
Amanda, I really like your idea of speaking out when you are conforming more to the patriarchy. I know I feel all smug when I don’t - same name all my life, no makeup or hair color, etc. - but I shut the hell up when I do conform - let my husband deal with the mechanics and clean up dead animals, take on a disproportionate amount of household cleaning - and reap the benefits available. And I know when I am just knuckling under because it’s easier and I should be woman enough to admit it to myself and others. It would sure be a greater blow against patriarchy to name how it changes my behavior than to flaunt the ways I defy it.
Okay, I just wanted to pull this out … having kids is not a bloody fundamental human drive. Period.
How do I know? Because there are a whole bunch of us around here that have absolutely no drive to do so. None. So much for being fundamental. Either that or we are somehow not human for not wanting such.
In fact, we are sick and tired of being expected that we will, or that if we ever express that we don’t want kids we are told “you never know’. The idea that there is more pressure to not have kids than there is to have kids is just nuts.
In the post above, I drag out a really interesting example—men who abuse women have an easier time of it as long as the women won’t name the situation. And women don’t name it “abuse” because they don’t want to admit they’ve been suckered like this. But if you won’t admit that you’re being abused, it’s unlikely you’re going to start taking steps to escape safely.
So how do you persuade someone young and insecure to recognise a relationship as abuse and resolve to get herself out and stay the hell out?
Not a theoretical, BTW.
My father likes to get under my skin by calling me Mrs. Douglas X when he sends me mail. This means that I now address his email to Mr. Carolyn Y. I think he gets the point but we’re both stubborn and won’t concede a point. It’s become a joke by now.
Ah, family.
What bugs me more is seeing (I’ve seen this in nonprofit public-health activism, which draws in everyone with e.g. cancer) women whose e-mail addresses efface them, as in kierasmom or gregorysgirl (supply the rest yourself, usually aol.com). Don’t you have an identity of your own? Unless your name is Jane Smith, of course. . .
Heh - I changed my name because of social pressure - but not because I wanted to keep my original name. I’m not very fond of my maiden name, but changing it in any other circumstances than getting married would have been entirely unacceptable to my family. So now I have my husband’s name, which is okay, though not thrilling.
Maybe someday when I’m an old widow and don’t give a shit what anybody thinks I’ll change my name to something I actually like.
I’ve been in this situation. And one thing I do is keep repeating, “he’s not going to stop beating you.” I also repeat, “If he loved you he wouldn’t beat you,” and “sometimes love isn’t enough to make it work.”
It’s not easy. And I have to repeat those things with care, and leave my own exasperation at the door.
I also make sure s/he knows what resources are available (I include men not only because of the minority of cases in which women might abuse, but also because of the cases of DV in gay relationships).
It’s hard as hell. You do what you can, though.
It’s tough, PR. The best advice I’ve heard is to quietly tell the victim that you don’t judge her at all and if she ever needs to get out, she can always come to you for help and you will not judge her. An attitude of non-judgement is critical—few things shut down a victim more than feeling she’s being blamed for her situation.
If you say, “Honey, I’m not going to change my name,” most men will say, “Whatever you want to do” (at least in blue states).
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that ‘most’ liberal men are free of sexism, blue state or no. And don’t think that most of those “Whatever you want to do” men a) would consider changing THEIR names or b) would be so feminist-cool if their partner said “Honey, I’m not going to automatically give all of our children your last name.” It’s comforting to think that if a man is progressive in general, or even on most issues that affect women, he must therefore be perfectly willing to let go of his male privilege.
Amanda–I know there are people who think they are members of the Feminist Card Certification Committee and act accordingly. But it’s also true, as we see over and over again on these threads, “you’re trying to revoke my feminist card!” is also a defensive attempt to shut down discussion by people who are angry that you would dare suggest they aren’t being totally honest about the reasons for their decisions.
1. I agree most of the name-changing justifications are hollow. But it’s still a personal choice that doesn’t really hurt other people, so go ahead and take your husband’s name. I don’t give a shit. Just don’t tell me I did the wrong thing by keeping my last name. I’m really, very glad I kept my name. It’s one the few things I’ve done right.
2. I don’t agree with you that a) there is an overpopulation crisis and b) if there is, I don’t think it’s a feminist issue. All the other normal feminist issues take care of it: more choices and opportunities for women, particularly the ones with the fewest choices and opportunities.
3. I think you seriously underestimate many people’s desire to have children and you overestimate the pressure on women to reproduce. But since I want to have children, maybe I don’t feel it as strongly as someone who doesn’t want to kids.
I will grant that the pressure to have biological children, as opposed to adopted children, is strong. But still, I don’t feel much of it or see much of it in my own life. The women I know who had unplanned pregnancies received pressure and support from both sides.
You seem to assume that none of us really want children or that we all really like birth control. And that’s just wrong, as well as insulting.
4. I like your ideas about honesty and transparency.
5. I think many of us are super-sensitive to criticism we perceive as shaming/guilt-tripping. I think a lot of us interpret, perhaps incorrectly, criticisms of what we do as personal judgment.
Argh, English really needs multiple words for “you”.
1 The “you” does not refer to Amanda
2-4 you refers to Amanda
5. Refers to all feminists
I never said anything close to “no one really wants children”. I said that I think, if people were really free, a lot of people would still want children. Which I do believe is the exact opposite of what you’re accusing me of saying. My point is that there’s so much pressure to have kids that a lot of people do it without thinking about it, and that truly free women would refrain in larger numbers than they do now. I know people who had kids because they really wanted to. I know people who had kids to secure a marriage, because you’re supposed to, or because they got pregnant and thought, “What the hell.” How many of them would have kids if they really felt free not to? Some, but not all by any stretch.
I do hope that people really like birth control. Even if you want kids, it’s best to have them when you’re best able, instead of randomly. And it’s good to limit your family size so you can care for the ones you have. Having 18 kids is insanely hard on the family finances and on your body. I also think smoking is bad for your health and wallet, but you should be free to do it. I also hope that people find it in their heart to have a random, inconsequential love of birth control that keeps them from randomly deciding not to use condoms and spreading disease all over the place. Of course, condom or not is 100% irrelevant. Spread HIV or don’t, not my place to judge.*
Criticisms of what you do are personal judgment. You may not be saying, “You are a horrible person who should be thrown in jail,” but don’t pretend you’re not judging because you think judging is “bad”. It’s not always bad. For instance, I’ll judge someone who treats condoms as a personal matter of no great consequence. You’re being irresponsible and quite possibly spreading disease. I feel no obligation to go judgment free on people who want barebacking to be a kink that’s beyond judgment, since they’re contributing to a serious social problem.
OK, in the spirit of honesty, let me explain my perspective:
I personally do not like birth control. I’ve tried the pill, the patch, two types of injections, condoms (my favorite), and the method. They’ve all had issues and a few years ago, I decided to go au naturel. I don’t want to be on hormones my whole life: birth control age 15-50 to post-menopausal drugs age 50-death… my whole life spent on drugs.
When I chose that, I explained to prospective partners my decision and said the onerous of birth control was on them. I refuse to be gatekeeper any longer, especially since I want kids. So if they didn’t want to be a father or pay child support, get a condom. (Most guys weren’t prospects, so no convo for them. And some guys just plain got the condom talk “no party hat, no party” without the potential baby talk since I deemed them fuckable, but unworthy of father-of-my-child-hood).
And now that I’m with a spectacular partner who also wants kids, we do it however we want…
So… when I hear you going all gung-ho pro-birth control it gives me an icky feeling that you’re just another voice for Big Pharma rather than someone promoting that women make their own, informed choices. I mean, that’s basically what you were doing with the HPV vaccine, too. Sometimes you sound more like a marketer using a feminist voice rather than a feminist. I don’t say that to try to take away your Feminist Card. I know you’re a feminist. You absolutely are. I say that because I crave a deeper analysis.
I mean, I think you do it because (I think) you think it’s more important to promote certain messages that some people don’t hear than to foster a critical analysis. I think you’d rather sacrifice critical thought in order to save some lives, and I totally agree. It’s better to promote birth control use for everyone than chance it with some people by confusing the issue with other issues, like how our whole society is medicated. But it’s not like Panda readers are stupid. It’s not like they need to be spoon-fed. They’re not junior high school students (I think) and this isn’t a sex-ed class.
And well, there’s no such thing as true freedom. Even the most privileged women who have all the choices and resources available, and even if there wasn’t social pressure, we’d still have to exchange some things for other things. We’d still have to choose to modify our bodies with drugs or surgery or use barriers or risk pregnancy until or unless we’re infertile, in which case we’d have other choices and sacrifices. It’s still all on us. Men still don’t have a pill or a shot or a patch. Men aren’t getting vasectomies all that often. And many have to be nagged into using condoms. Because the issue is larger: the patriarchy exists because we’re oppressed both by powerful men and also by our own bodies. True freedom, the way you describe, would be the option of turning off our fertility without consequences or negotiations.
Also, I don’t think judging is bad. I am very judgmental and I don’t claim not to be. What I mean by “personal” is the leap from: ‘I think what you did was wrong and I’ll say so’ to ‘I think you are a bad person and need to be punished.’ I mean the difference between the argument and ad hominem attack of character. I know you’ve heard this before, “I’m not attacking you, I’m attacking what you do” from insincere fundies and whatnot. But I’m not them. And it really, truly is possible to criticize what someone does without attacking them, even if sometimes it’s hard to do and even if I don’t do it very well myself.
My last comment went into the moderation queue. Please pull it out if you’re so inclined.
Anecdote for your amusement: a fair number of people have mentioned name-changing as a result of family dynamics; even within the same family, this can work both ways. One of my sisters, whose relationship with my parents can most politely be described as difficult, kept her name for professional and personal reasons, but was pressured by our parents to change it (to the point of addressing letters to her supposed “married” name for 10 years or so). Other sister, the “good daughter” decided to change to her husband’s name, and was similarly pressured to keep her original name. Not that our parents had any feminist awakening between the two marriages.
(Fast-forward through one unpleasant divorce, and guess who has changed her name back…)
The plural of anecdote is not data, but my husband does actually make the point that he didn’t want me to take his name when we got married. He also makes the point that he’s happy with our reasoning behind all our children having my surname, not his. My daughter from a previous relationship didn’t want to change her name (mine, not her father’s), and we wanted all the kids to have the same name. He didn’t want to change his name due to professional recognition (that’s not an issue for me as I don’t have any). He doesn’t mind being the odd one out, and he’s not hung up on the idea that his kids have to have his name. His parents are livid, but that’s their problem, not ours.
After the above, I was filling up the rest of this comment with a justification for why I can have very-nearly-three kids and be a SAHM and still be a feminist dammit… Even an attempt to be as structurally-focused as possible and not let’s-damn-the-woman-whatever-she-decides can come unglued when it pushes the same buttons as the patriarchal bullshit . I personally feel much more harshly judged by other feminists for not having a career than I felt pushed to have children.
having kids is not a bloody fundamental human drive. Period.
How do I know? Because there are a whole bunch of us around here that have absolutely no drive to do so. None. So much for being fundamental. Either that or we are somehow not human for not wanting such.
Well, do you consider the need for sex to be a fundamental human drive? Because asexuals don’t have it.
I’m not arguing that all humans have the need to have kids — I’m well aware that many people have no such need. But make no mistake, it is a *need*. You may not have it, but for those that do, it is no less a need.
Consider this. Many people feel that they *need* to have sex with a member of the opposite sex. They can go without if they have to, but they will be deeply unhappy if they must go without their whole lives. Gays and lesbians do not have this need. They have a similar need, the need to have sex with a member of the *same* sex, but they simply do not have the need for sex with an opposite-sex person, and none of the social pressure in the universe can actually give them that need, though it can convince them they need to pretend they do.
The need to have children is, in fact, a fundamental human need. But some people don’t have it, just as some people don’t have the need to copulate with members of the opposite sex, and a smaller number of people feel no need to have sex with humans at all. Some people *need* to have a large circle of friends and/or to spend time with others constantly, or they will feel lonely and empty. Others do not have this need and might even be horrified at the thought of having to spend every minute with another human. This doesn’t make the need for companionship not a need.
And when you tell people who have a need that they are bad people for trying to fulfill it, Very Bad Things happen. Come on, we’re liberals, don’t we *know* this shit?
Me personally, I would have *more* kids if we didn’t live in a patriarchy, so I’m glad Amanda backpedaled on what originally sounded like a statement that people universally have kids because of social pressure. Maybe the only pressure any of you have ever experienced is the family-and-friends bugging you to have kids… but if you had wanted your whole life to have kids, *and* you were still a committed feminist (as you are, I presume, if you’re a regular here), you would have picked up what I did — mothers aren’t human. Mothers aren’t people. Mothers exist solely for the benefit of their children. The only good mother is a dead mother, because every other mother, being human, has human flaws, and human flaws cannot be allowed in a mother. Becoming a mother makes a woman cease to exist.
The conservatives don’t think we’re human anyway, so the fact that they pressure us to become mothers is kind of meaningless to me. But *the entire culture*, conservatives and liberals alike, agrees that mothers aren’t actually people, even if they think that non-mother-women are.
There are probably people out there without a strong sense of self who are moms because that’s just the thing you do. There are also people out there who swam upstream against a *very* hostile anti-mother culture (remember, conservatives are all about the lip service, so just because they say they honor motherhood doesn’t mean they think mothers are people) to become mothers and demand an identity as a human anyway. Those people had a need to have babies, because nothing could possibly compel a person to risk the loss of their fundamental self other than a *need* to do so. And the fact that you don’t have that need doesn’t make their need any less.
In the end, she ended up hyphenating (I didn’t, which I sometimes think reflects at least a bit poorly on my own feminist street cred).
If you really believed that, you could start hyphenating, oh, right now. It’s not like you had one chance to change your name to match hers, and now it’s gone forever.
Elaine, I’m sorry if you feel that way, but I’ve never supported the idea that women should use hormonal methods if they don’t work out for them. But birth control is more than hormonal methods; condoms are a super common method that lots of people use with no problem. Moreover, I think best practice is to use condoms all the time, except in those cases where you have a monogamous relationship where you’re both clean and agree to go without. I’d add that I’m loudly supportive of treating abortion like any other kind of birth control and that there’s nothing wrong with women who get abortions just because the condom broke. I don’t think you need a “good” reason to have an abortion. I don’t have a moral qualm, for instance, with women who use abortion as their primary method of birth control, as they do in Japan. It seems unhealthy to me, but if it’s working for you, good on you.
Big Pharma has never given me a dime. If I’m going to sell out, I’d at least like to see the money from it. I defend hormonal birth control precisely because there’s so much social animosity towards it, which I believe comes from the fact that it’s a female-controlled contraceptive device that can be used without male knowledge. Condoms, while great, always have that big if attached to them, which is that men can and do whine and cajole to go without.
I think what’s happened is you’ve taken your own discomfort about not being able to take the pill and projected it onto me, which is understandable but unfair. I’ve got serious allergies, and that sucks, but it would be unfair of me to accuse someone of being a spokesperson for the evil fertilizer industry because they enjoyed mowing the lawn, which I can’t do without being medicated.
Or it’s like being infertile—it sucks, people feel sorry for you, but it’s inappropriate to joy kill and take potshots at people who do have children.
I didn’t backpedal, Alara. I have consistently said that I think that there are a lot more children than there would be if society were neutral instead of natalist. Kids are a huge headache. Much like working non-profit, I think that it’s only a good vocation for those who truly love it. Natalism is cruel; unless children are 100% wanted and people go in fully aware and in control of their choice to have them, the stress that children put on parents and marriages sucks for the parents and sucks for the children. It’s the same thing with marriage—imagine how much lower our divorce rate would be if people weren’t rushed into marriage because it’s just what you do and the wedding is so romantic, etc.
Texas voters still can’t quite remember that Carole Keeton Strayhorn is Carole Keeton Rylander. People have a hard time tracking name changes of people they’ve never met; that’s why shady business always change theirs, and actresses never do. It’s a natural prestige check. That’s why I’m keeping my name intact; I don’t want to suddenly become dissociated from everything I’ve done in life up to the point I put on a ring.
I’d also point out, in the interest of accuracy, that vasectomies are actually pretty common—one in six men over 35 has had the surgery done. Considering how birth control is still primarily considered a woman’s duty (even as we are suspicious of and seek to legislate against two forms of birth control that are completely under female control, abortion and hormonal methods), this vasectomy rate is pretty high.
Amanda,
I’m well aware of condoms. In fact, I mentioned them like three or four times in my comment. Please don’t patronize me.
I know you don’t get paid by Merck or the others. I didn’t say you did. I said sometimes you sound like them.
I’m not projecting. Stop trying to analyze me.
I hear you pushing one option as if it’s the only option. You are beating the overpopulation drum like there’s no tomorrow, and I just don’t buy it. Stop worrying so much about other people’s bodies. Your readers are well aware of the fact that condoms prevent disease, they don’t need slut-shaming, breeder-shaming, or bareback-shaming. So get off it.
If you want to promote condom use, go for it. But don’t pretend that condoms are going to save the world, they aren’t.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0730/p9s1.html?s=widep and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942 make a good point that you can change as many laws as you like but if society and culture haven’t caught up to match there are still a lot of problems - and trying to buck them can cause cause even worse problems for you.
I admit i became a “Mrs.” - but i was under a lot of pressure not just from him but from my mother and grandmother and his parents. My mother and grandmother guilted and manipulated me into a big fancy girly wedding that i didn’t even want and growing up i was always made to feel that the one me didn’t even equal my brothers and male cousins. People like me need support and love not condemmnation andd hate.
My fiance assumed I would keep my name. I had never really considered whether I would or not, and when I did, I came to the conclusion that I’d really like for us to have the same name (yes, partly because of societal pressures). I wanted us to pick a new name together, possibly from somewhere far back in both our family trees, since we come from fairly similar backgrounds.
He didn’t want to change his name; he’s published under it and is (surprise!) very attached to it. So despite the guilt for caving, I’m probably changing to his, against his occasional objections.
The worst part of this decision is that no one will be surprised.
Elaine, you only hear one option because that’s what you want to hear. The idea that I put down alternate options to the pill or that I berate women who aren’t happy with the pill is just ridiculous. If I dwell on hormonal contraception more than others, it’s because hormonal contraception is, like abortion, under a real threat that other kinds of birth control options that have more male input are not. The idea that I slut shame is beyond ridiculous, as is the notion that I am trying to interfere with what you do. If you feel defensive about your preferred method of birth control, then I suspect that’s your issue and you’d be better off examining why you feel threatened by pro-pill discourse that doesn’t in any way, shape, or form deny that you do better with another form of birth control. Men aren’t currently being told by store clerks that they can’t have the condoms unless they prove that they’re married. When that happens, you can rest assured that I’ll write about that, too.
I’m sorry the pill doesn’t work for you, but that doesn’t obligate me to even feel sorry that I feel the need to write in order to protect the right to use it. And trying to shame me for being antagonistic against those who would deprive a lot of women of a form of contraception that works for us is weird, almost as if you resent them for their preferred contraceptive methods. Busting out the Leslee Unruh BIG PHARMA swipe is the real shaming mechanism. I dare you to find a single swipe against women who don’t find that hormonal contraception works for them and need to use condoms instead on this blog, especially one where I bust out a shaming term like BIG PHARMA. Boy, talk about nosing around in someone’s drawers, with your BIG PHARMA accusations about my fondness for my preferred method of birth control which has never once translated into telling other women that they should use my exact same kind.
Hell, I’d probably sign onto the idea that lesbianism is the best form of birth control, but I’m not going to accuse lesbians of triumphalism because it works out better for them than me.
I share your feelings. And I’ve heard that from other women, too.
However, I have one alternative hypothesis: I value the feminists’ criticisms more than the average baby-pusher/ husband’s-name-pusher, so that may be why it feels like that.
Condoms work well for most men, though not all.
And be aware that some men will sabotage their use. They scratch or nick it with a fingernail before or during application, so that it disintegrates during use, or even remove it just before penetration.
I totally agree, there can be benefits to name change. I begrudge no one their choices here- I chose to hyphenate the first time I was married, because the pressure was so great. However, whenever I see these stories of bad childhood associations with birth names, or displeasing birthnames, I have to ask:
1. If your dad was so awful, why not just change your name anyway?
2. If your name is so bad sounding, why not change it anyway?
3. Why don’t men with asshole fathers or ugly names seem to mind?
Of course, I know the answer- it is the same answer that made me hyphenate the first time, even though the thought of doing so was not satisfying, and I hated my husband’s name- social pressure.
Women are tought to define themselves through relationships, so defining yourself by an asshole parent is unfomfortable. Women are also judged much more by aesthetics, so “pretty” names are more important. Why do you think there are so many more female names than male names? Why are female names much more about sound or visual appeal than male names?
It all makes sense, and is very real to the individual, but it is ALL just another shadow of the patriarchy at the end of the day. I think it is liberating to admit that, and move on.
Oh goody, another name change discussion!
My usual wedding present is a substantial check, but I’m always faced with the problem of how to write it out, and I hate to put people on the spot by asking “are you (or she) going to change your (her) name” beforehand. I think I either make it out to the niece or nephew directly or to both partners using their given names. So far the women have always changed their names.
The latest to undergo the matrimonial ordeal was a niece whose middle name was my and my sister’s family name. She took her husband’s last name and retained her middle name. Her initials didn’t change.
I didn’t get a good explanation for why she dropped her father’s name. Perhaps “Smith” was too boring; perhaps she liked the idea that now all three names had doubled letters.
My brother just remarried, and his wife, who was using her first husband’s name, and had a professional career, took his name. I asked her why she didn’t keep her maiden name: it’s Spanish and people had trouble with it. Now she’s saddled with an Irish name that people can’t spell (and which the Spanish can’t pronounce).
My sister reverted to her maiden name after her divorce and maintained it after remarriage, so she and her kids had three surnames, which is probably not that unusual in California. (Now, with everyone married, the five of them have five surnames among them. Not bad.)
There’s a set of interlocking families in my town where the parents traded partners back in the sixties, the kids (friends of my brothers) shared households, and one’s expected to know that the X’s, Y’s and Z’s are all family. It would be simpler if they all went by the same name, but some history would be lost.
You are a better woman than me, Amanda. When I see those lesbians having their worry-free sex that centers around THEIR orgasms, I just feel…grrrr. If “Big Pharma” ever comes up with a drug that can turn off my hetero drive, I’ll be mainlining the stuff daily, and I don’t even CARE if my pee pollutes the water supply with it and make the whole WORLD gay!
At least we’ll all die happy!
The fact that mothers are forced to give up their identities is part of the SAME PROBLEM that pushes women to have children. Women in our culture are “for” having babies (and maybe some sexual gratification when they are young). Thus, their identity before children is questioned after after children becomes said children. They are two sides to the exact same attitude. My female colleagues with children say the men in our company never ask about work issues, but only about their kids. The same men do not deign to speak to me - same issue, different side of the coin.
I’ve never heard a white middle-class reproducing woman questioned for having children or told they would “change their mind” (heh, I kinda like that), but maybe it happens.
Try being a young single mother sometime. Even a young, white, university-educated single mother from a comfortably middle class family.
I got a check once for Mrs. his-first, his-last from the husband’s Uncle early into our marriage. I sent it back with a note telling him I didn’t know who this was. Didn’t have a problem after that. He suddenly remembered my name and the whole family eventually started addressing everything with my name first and his second. We laughed about it for years.
The personal is political. Definitely. Otherwise I wouldn’t be feeling like the lone person out here in fundie world/small town Michigan pissing everyone off and being called a “political activist” for simply being straight up about the obvious bullshit. How is it not bullshit to also lose your FIRST name?
Elaine, listen. Amanda is correct — overpopulation is a worldwide epidemic. We have about 7 billion people worldwide, meaning our resources can’t be sustainable for much longer. Which is why we need to eliminate all incentives for having children and redirect that money to giving incentives to women who have abortions.
Just a side note on the vascetomies. Vasectomies are not funded by the government and hasn’t been funded since the Global Gag Rule was re-instated.
And name change. Judges need to stop being sheep and allow men to change their last names to that of their wives.
We need to smash the patriarchy and replace it with matriarchy if we are to treat women as equals. The patriarchy would be in its final days if Valerie Solanas was still alive.
Amanda: I’m sure, mnem, that yours could be a situation where your parents overrule both your wishes and his, but there’s situations where that male pressure could be brought to bear and it’s not being brought to bear.
So my husband should get into a huge fight with the in-laws that he sees twice a year over them passive-aggressively addressing things to me with the wrong name? Because, trust me, it would be a huge fight that would never, ever end. My dad still needles me about things I did when I was a teenager, and I’m 38 now.
And, see, you did it right there — you judged my husband for not “standing up for me” without knowing the circumstances or why we decided to do it that way. We decided that it’s easier to ignore their petty little games and keep doing what we want. Sorry if that doesn’t fit your politics or your idea of the way parents and children should interact, but that’s life for some of us. Ironic that I did what you say I should — I kept my name — but if I didn’t do it the exact right way, it’s still up for criticism.
mythago: Don’t make the mistake of assuming that ‘most’ liberal men are free of sexism, blue state or no.
Trust me, I’ve never made that mistake. Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that my husband must be secretly seething with resentment that I didn’t change my name. He’s not. He genuinely doesn’t care.
It’s true that it doesn’t have a huge amount to do with the guy’s “progressiveness.” A college friend who is definitely not a liberal (Army ROTC) hyphenated his name when he got married. Another friend (Alaska libertarian) is planning to change his name if he and his girlfriend ever get around to getting married for reasons very similar to the ones some people have talked about here: he had a very difficult relationship with his asshole father and isn’t attached to the man’s name at all. “Progressive” =/= willing to be equal to women.
Neko-Onna: 1. If your dad was so awful, why not just change your name anyway?
2. If your name is so bad sounding, why not change it anyway?
Because the only free way to change your name is to get married. Well, there’s the cost of the marriage license, but that’s better than the $1,000+ it will cost you to get the four forms that are required by the state of California filed in the proper order and processed correctly.
I made up a last name for myself when I was 18 because I wanted to reject my father. Perhaps it was childish, but there you are. My mother was enraged, in spite of the fact that she was already divorced from him. When I was preparing to marry she was very pleased because I would finally be dropping the name she hated… the name I had chosen for myself. When I let her know that my name would not be changing she was enraged all over again. She couldn’t understand why I would do something like that… embrace a name that meant nothing to anyone but me.
She was a feminist too. She just couldn’t get past this issue. She couldn’t see choosing my own name as a political act and always read it as a rejection of all of the choices she had made: the choice to marry my father, the choice to take his name, and the choice to keep it for the sake of her children even after a particularly awful divorce.
It’s worth reminding people that their personal choices are affected by societal pressure that they might not even be aware of. When I asked my mother if she ever considered this to be a feminist issue she definitely thought I was trying to take away her card.
Do feminist cards get little stamps on them–like at the coffee shop–and when there are ten you get a cookie? I’m just asking.
BTW, my eyes are more than forty years old, and most of the time I can’t read the fucking anti-spam number thingie. I’m just saying.
I’m sorry, Elaine, but when you mentioned bareback shaming you set off my triggers. We’re seeing an increase in this among gay men (can’t tell you how many times I’ve said no to sex for exactly that reason.) Spreading HIV ain’t cool, and it ain’t merely a personal decision.
Except that most fat activists don’t say that. What we do say is that advocating for dieting is at odds with fat acceptance. Dieting has a 98% failure rate, often leads to unhealthy eating and weight gain further down the line, and is pushed by a multi billion dollar industry founded on making people hate their own bodies. We don’t tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, we just ask them to stow the “I did it, so you can too!” when they enter fat positive spaces. We ask that people don’t talk about dieting and fat acceptance as being linked, that when they do talk about their own personal choices they are speaking about themselves and not the movement in general.
Mnem, I came back and noted that I probably shouldn’t judge. I apologize. But I do think one reason men don’t stand up is because it’s seen as a woman’s issue, not theirs. Which is something we should question. I accept that men live under similar pressures some times as women, and a lot of men are basically called pussies for having feminist wives, and I can see not fussing in those circumstances.
One of the most frustrating thing about balking tradition is that so many tradition enforcers are utterly shameless about dictating your choices and nosing into your business. Imagine if people who think you should change your name had half the shame of those who are right on this issue! You’d never get pestered.
I realized it came off like judging, so I corrected myself. I do think there’s not enough messages out there about what men can do to help women’s rights. There’s some stuff happening in the anti-violence movement with Men Can Stop Rape, but it would be interesting to see the principles espoused by them pushed out further so that men get more ideas about how to wield their privilege in order to help women.
Jennifer Baumgardner has a book called Looking Both Ways that I have on order from Amazon, and apparently she talks in it about reassessing privilege in just the way that I’m suggesting. A lot of activists get to the point where they feel privilege is bad, so they start to pressure privileged people to “give up” privileges. Which you can’t do, since they’re bestowed on you. You can’t, for instance, make people give you the stink eye in public when you’re straight. Nor should you give up privileges, really. I’m not abandoning birth control in solidarity with people who don’t have access, you know? The idea is spreading benefits, not restricting them. Anyway, in her book she argues for what seems a more productive way of looking at privilege, which is asking how it can be wielded as a tool. Which is what I think Men Can Stop Rape does. Yes, in an ideal world, people would listen to women as much as men on these issues, but we wouldn’t need activism if we lived in that world. So the idea is that men speaking to each other about not raping is a good way to help stop rape. But since we consider things like rape (or even name-changing) to be “women’s” issues, it doesn’t even occur to men to start speaking up. So I wasn’t trying to shame your husband, mnem. I was more trying to point out that there’s an opportunity some, not all, men have that might be taken and isn’t because they aren’t thinking about it.
Godless, you should see how people went after Hanne Blank. Kate Harding, who I generally think is awesome, straight up said you can’t support dieting and be a fat activist. It’s not like Blank is anti-fat people, like ifeminists or Feminists For Life, who are trying a sleeper agent manuever. She’s on board with the basic goals, so card-revoking is seriously problematic.
Amanda, we seem to have some misunderstandings. When I said “one option” I wasn’t referring to the pill. I meant that your one preferred option to solving the overpopulation “crisis” is to tell women to stop reproducing and how. The better options, if you think overpopulation is a problem, is to
educate,
provide free or cheap services,
give women opportunities and rights,
encourage male birth control, etc.
When you said that reproducing is cruel, that bringing children into this world is like getting married when you know you’ll cheat, you were shaming breeders and laying the responsibility of children solely on women. You were implicitly justifying our society’s poor treatment of mothers and acting like children are an individual responsibility, not a social responsibility… like non-breeders have a right to live in a bubble without children and anyone else who bothers them.
My point is in bold below.
Nothip,
The current line is usually about overpopulation. Check out the comments here:
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/about_my_family.html
For the record, this family is like mine. My husband and I live in NYC, have plenty of money to support future kids, married, hetero, low-impact, blah, blah.
My sister’s best friend got pregnant in high school. Lots of people, including me, pressured her to get an abortion. She decided not to. My best friend in high school got pregnant from a rape. We pressured her to abort too. She ended up having a miscarriage. Her mother got pregnant four times. She kept two, gave one away for adoption, and aborted the third. You can bet she was pressure - by finances mostly - to abort. Someone else close to me has been pregnant three times. she kept the first and the second two she was pressure to abort by the father, because he didn’t want to be a dad.
My experience, and yours may differ, is that women are often pressured to not get pregnant or to terminate pregnancies.
The old premise that women are pressured to reproduce simply doesn’t exist in our society in the same was as it did 50 years ago. Even then, it’s only the married, hetero women who are expected to pump out the kids. And I’ll admit there is some pressure for that, but it’s not all that strong.
Denying healthcare, with withholding condoms and PlanB and abortions, is not the same as encouraging women to have kids. Denying healthcare is about control of women, period. They don’t give a shit if women reproduce or not, they just want to control their options.
Jovan,
I disagree. I think we could sustain a larger population if we consumed less. And even if our population isn’t sustainable, you’re asking people to weigh their current needs and desires with that of future generations who don’t even exist. It’s one thing when you say drive less and eat locally. It’s another thing when you say, turn off your fertility. Regardless of how some of you feel, fertility is an essential component of some of our identities.
The few incentives that exist are really not relevant to most people. The tax credit certainly didn’t enter into the decision making of any of the women above.
And I don’t think we should incentivize abortions. But I think we should offer all reproductive services for free, everywhere.
It pisses me off that many insurance plans will cover the cost of a birth but not an abortion, when it’s clearly in their financial interest to encourage abortions. The reason they won’t cover them is because women who want abortions will figure out how to pay for them without insurance, so the insurance companies get off even cheaper.
Women are used to taking responsibility for all reproduction. The burden ALWAYS falls on us and I’m fucking sick of it. Feminism’s job isn’t just to give women more options for how to deal with this responsibility, but also to shift and share that responsibility. We need to get the hell out of women’s uteruses!
Well, if you think shaming is effective, go ahead. I’m just tired of hearing it and I think there are better methods, particularly when you’re talking about HIV and STIs. Because you can frame that as a selfish act -wear a condom to protect yourself. There’s no need for shaming there. And if there is, it’s certainly not the type of shaming Amanda’s doing.
Lastly, about naming:
I kept my last name and I’m very thankful that I did. It was never really not an option, though. My husband never asked or suggested that I take his name, which is one of the many reasons I married him.
And about naming our kids:
I’d really like to adopt, so if we do, we probably won’t even have to think about names since the kid will come with his or her own name.
If we conceive, we’re going to give our kids individual last names. Each kid gets their own last name. We’re going to recycle last names from our family tree that never got passed on, like our grandmother’s maiden names… I think it’s a cool, fun idea and I’m excited to resurrect names.
If people think it’s cool to put others’ lives at risk, they should be ashamed.
blockquote>Because the only free way to change your name is to get married. Well, there’s the cost of the marriage license, but that’s better than the $1,000+ it will cost you to get the four forms that are required by the state of California filed in the proper order and processed correctly.
It may be “free” in a monetary sense, but there are costs there that go beyond the monetary in name change world. I think the kind of “free” that motivates moost women (I’m not trying to speak for you, BTW) to change their names to their husbands’ name is the societal “get out of jail free” card it gives them. It is easier to go with the flow, AND it gives you instant justification for doing what you always wanted to in the first place- get rid of the name you associate with an awful father. Women’s names, while inherently more transient than men’s names in our society, are much more loaded and intrinsic to a woman’s sense of self. She has less control over her name, but her name has more control over her. I don’t begrudge anyone tring to gain maximum control there, but I think being honest about it is probably a superior way of framing the issue. That is what I think this whole post is all about- recognizing that deeper level, and not being apologetic about it.
Elaine, find where I said shame women into not reproducing. Hell, in this very post, I pointed out that I feel that using incentives is a better strategy than social shaming precisely because I don’t see the point of shaming.
In other words, I said (surprise surprise) the opposite of what you’re accusing me.
And the idea that anti-choicers deny access to birth control options and don’t intend to encourage white women to have more children defies all reality. Sorry, we’re about reality-based thinking. Good lord, in my next podcast I have a great clip of Leslee Unruh screaming, “MORE BABIES!” If I were you, I’d get a little bit out of my direct experience some and start researching the relationship between the anti-birth control movement, the adoption industry, and the eugenics movement. I’d suggest some books by Rickie Solinger—very eye-opening.
Your hostility to the pro-health advocacy of thoughtful contraception use sounds shockingly like the people who whine that the anti-AIDS movement is all judgy and shit. They sound about as mature as people who whine that anti-drunk driving campaigns are a bummer, man. Those tedious folks out there saying wrap-it-up-every-time are why HIV isn’t the problem here in the U.S. that it is in Africa. Sorry if that little bit of reality impedes on your bizarre notion that non-coercive advocacy for a productive behavior is wrong. (How you reconcile that with going after someone for a far less harmful pet purchase, I have no idea.)
You do realise that you just strung two mutually contradictory sentences together? If something is a need, but isn’t held by all people, then by definition it isn’t a fundamental human need.
I think these words don’t mean what you think they mean. Or maybe you feel you need these words to justify your need to have more progeny. I don’t know.
I’d add that Elaine’s extreme defensiveness does demonstrate a problem in “the personal is political” as a slogan for approaching “personal” problems as structural issues. The anti-HIV movement took on condom advocacy in the right way—they noted that condoms were not being encouraged properly and changed that fact. To use or not to use wasn’t a “personal” decision anymore, but people were encouraged to view themselves and their interactions as social interactions. They remade sexual etiquette so that resisting condom use was now rude. They found the reasons that people didn’t use condoms and addressed them. It was top-down, society-focused. But to some people, even that very non-judgmental, political focus on the crisis was too judgy, because it put them in a position where they had to get past certain benefits of pretending that their social customs had no larger impact, especially if they felt they benefited from those oppressive social customs.
It wasn’t top-down. It was community-based. We can thank Michael Callen and similar folks in the SF gay community for starting to do this work.
But yes, it became a community issue, it became about the survival of the community.
It still is.
The examples about single mothers are almost convincing, except that those women are not encouraged NEVER to have children, just to change the circumstances of their reproduction. Women who choose not to reproduce are encouraged to change their overall decision about having children, even when they are still single.
The point about women being responsible for reproduction and CARE is well taken. If we could change that, these conversations would be moot.
It is definitely easier to give in to certain rules of the patriarchy. Not only that, but being thin will let you get away with being powerful. Being pretty lets you get away with being promiscuous, being quiet with being successful, etc.
I don’t get the whole birth-rate thing though. Overpopulation is about products, not people. The people who have eight children in impoverished parts of the world consume WAY less than any childless, environment-conscious, carbon-footprint-erasing feminist in any city in the US. The more money and power women have, the less kids they seem to have, so the answer is not to tell women to have less children, but empower them to decide how many kids the want, and make sure that they are allowed to adere to that number, no more, no less.
Also, putting a cap on the number of children people can have only limits the females reproductive rights. Men never have to compromise, because no one can prove that men have children or how many they have.
In countries where women have all the reproductive advantages, birth rate is down. Countries in Europe advertise resident visas in South America to try to get more young working people to move to their countries and help support the aging population.
So, I think the solution to the rapid growth population is education and wealth.
I also really like the bareback shaming campaign being put forward by Trojan Condoms. How can people be mad at this? At last someone is using their advertising dollars to embarrass the assholes who think they can ask for sex without a condom! We should be celebrating!
I don’t want to minimize the personal attacks on individual women’s decisions (above). It sucks that people (especially partners and family members) feel the need to question your reproductive decisions. My only point was that as a whole women are encouraged to reproduce more than they are encouraged not to reproduce.
“The old premise that women are pressured to reproduce simply doesn’t exist in our society in the same was as it did 50 years ago. Even then, it’s only the married, hetero women who are expected to pump out the kids. And I’ll admit there is some pressure for that, but it’s not all that strong.”
You’re kidding, right? Or perhaps you’ve just never really bothered to listen to the experiences of childfree women. Not only have I been told I would eventually change my mind, both before and after I married, I’ve been informed that I am merely rebelling against my true nature, and that I should perhaps consider therapy. And I’m fairly certain I am not the only one to have this type of experience. Somehow, being told one is basically crazy does not come across as mild pressure.
I also fail to see what is so subtle about the repeated occurrence of women who seek permanent sterilization being told by their doctors that they need to wait until they are much older to consider the procedure, or their future husband might want children and they need to keep the option open, or the doctor won’t perform the procedure on any woman who hasn’t given birth at least one baby. Would you care to explain how these attitudes contribute to a reduction in the pressure to pump out the kids?
I do not deny the denigration and insults mothers face in this society, not do I see any point in getting into a who’s-got-it-worse contest. The negative experiences of both childfree women and mothers stem from the same source: the patriarchal need to control women. Not only are women all expected to birth (multiple) babies, we’re all supposed to do it in a narrowly defined, proper way. Any woman who steps outside these bounds and attempts to define her reproductive life on her own terms gets slapped down hard. Focusing on who is getting slapped down harder misses the point. The natalist pressure negatively impacts all of us, albeit in different ways, and resisting it however we can benefits all of us.
Amanda,
Anti-AIDS and anti-drunk driving campaigns are very different than anti-reproduction campaigns. Please don’t compare my rejection of you anti-reproduction campaign with those campaigns.
I am not advocating that people go out and cause other, currently living beings harm. If you fuck strangers, you should use barriers. If you drink, don’t drive. And I am not saying other campaigns that use shaming are wrong.
I am saying your use of shaming and your promotion of birth control for this particular campaign is dangerous because it undermines essential feminist premises.
You said that women are encouraged to reproduce so we ought to counter that message by encouraging women not to reproduce. How about a totally different message? The message that women own their bodies and can do whatever the hell they want with them?
How about a message about sexual autonomy? Like promoting masturbation just as much as you promote birth control? How about un-shaming, and un-stigmatizing masturbation? Women who own their own sexuality are probably less likely to have unplanned pregnancies.
Example of your breeder shaming:
http://feministe.powweb.com/blog/2007/09/12/cutting-back-on-babies-to-save-the-earth/#comment-125941
where you said having kids was “extraordinarily cruel.”
My analysis:
http://www.elainevigneault.com/get-the-fuck-out-of-my-uterus.html
Ugirl, I don’t see that as encouraging reproduction. I see that as control over your body. Those doctors are controlling you and your body by denying you healthcare. And you’re right that your experience is shared by many other women in your same position, but it’s not shared by other, often poorer and less white, women who are encouraged to be sterilized. Both are more about a denial of women’s bodily autonomy than they are about reproduction.
I think these are very important points Amanda.
Re-framing the way in which people view their actions as connected to, constructing, as well as constructed by, the social spaces and cultures in which they inhabit is really important. Choices are never merely about th individual, but rather are a product of the interaction that individual has with their socio-structural environment, something those very individuals are themselves constructed out of.
Hence, we have a considerable amount of investment, so to speak, in our socio-cultural milieu, and particularly so when we experience privileges and benefits therefrom, despite the fact that such privileges diminish others and said benefits are back-handed.
In the same way as many whites don’t want to investigate their participation in, and collusion with, a system that dehumanises and disempowers non-white ethnicities (and I say such as a white person myself), people don’t want to think of how their actions and choices are both constructed by a patriarchal arrangement, and contribute to it. Similarly with over-population and over-consumption.
This is not to say that the structural arrangements of our society are solely productive of those choices. To argue a singular cause like that is just as ridiculous as arguing that one’s choices are solely the product of the individual. However, multiple causality allows us to see that one’s choices ARE located in a social-cultural space, and have consequences far beyond what we may see in our immediacy.
Of course, this is not to say that we should have choices taken away, and I am very adamant about this not happening, as I am VERY pro-choice. However, this does not preclude an investigation of the coercions and locations involved in those choices. The anti-HIV activism was exactly the kind of thing where this was overt, and the act of having unsafe-sex was reframed as community action, as not just about being about the individual.
Course, there are those that don’t want to see such.
The point is that your whining that other people bringing up reasonable, health-related points that make you, for personal and bizarre reasons feel less than super-validated in your desires, resembles nothing less than the guys who whine that pro-condom campaigns have done damage to their ability to talk other dudes into dangerous sex, Elaine. Something to consider before you continue projecting your weird issues onto others. I mean, seriously, you’re comparing a handful of liberals in a liberal enclave exerting mild pressure to women who have real access issues like abortion bans and having your pharmacist refuse you your pills. Get a grip.
The fact of the matter is that not using birth control is a health problem. Women who have children too young or have too many suffer severe consequences to their health. The children suffer poorer health if women don’t time and space properly. Your hostility towards the promotion of responsible contraception use is not markedly different than hostility towards anti-AIDS campaigns.
You’re right, Jeff. Not top-down. I meant more like seeing it as a social problem, not a matter of society-free individual “choices”.
For some of us, these decisions are not just about our bodies and control but about the rights of other creatures in our ecosystem. I chose not to have children partially because for me to reproduce (regardless of level of consumption - every human consumes) would takes space and resources away from living things that have even less say over their environment than women. If you want to call such ideas “breeder shaming” I’ll stand by them.
I think the reason I responded so was because the “top” was continually ignoring it. It was absolutely up to us as gay men to save our own lives, since the government’s response was, at it’s core, “let the faggots die.”
But yes, it did become about a communal activity…and survival. (Read Kramer’s “1112 and Counting” folks.) One of the biggest changes in the late twentieth century among gay men has been the shift in sexual practices toward using condoms. And we did it ourselves. We built a culture of safer sex and communal responsibility. Indeed, the safer sex messages that spread throughout the 90s about using condoms flowed out of gay communities and our successful efforts.
Amen to that, Nothip. Just thinking about all the animal lives that aren’t sacrificed to feed any offspring I have alone is humbling.
Yeah, I meant “top” as in “the social structures that create our behavior”, not “the people at the top”. But I should have phrased it better. The safe sex movement in the gay community is absolutely a fascinating case study in trying to untangle privilege, custom, community, etc. pressures that create behaviors and overturn them. Same with birth control and straight people. On one hand, simply protecting yourself seems like such an obvious move, and yet it never is treated that way.
safer sex movement. It’s about risk reduction, because risk elimination is nearly impossible. sorry to be pedantic. (Yeah, I used to work in the field…I keep saying this about different topics, but my life has been really circuitous.)
A couple weeks ago, a freind was visiting and told me he tested positive the week prior. I knew he’d been barebacking, but that night I held my tongue. The next night he called to say it had been a false positive. While expressing my relief, I also ripped him a new asshole. The night he told me he was poz he said, “I plan on being around for a long time.” The next night I said to him, “If you keep living your life this way you absolutely will not be around for a long time.” I even threatened to fly to Minneapolis to teach him how to correctly use condoms, which another friend of his had actually done earlier in the day.
I’m sick and tired of seeing members of my community, people I care about, coming down with this goddamned disease. And I’m sick of men thinking that their individual sexual choices have no greater consequences. Spreading the virus leads to more and more mutations and makes it difficult to keep treating the thing. Barebackers are making it worse for all of us. They’re helping the virus. If a bit of shaming works to teach them to use a fucking condom, so be it.
Anyone have any thoughts on critical discussion over the doing or not doing feminist things with people you are close with as opposed to those you are not? Like, say, having it out with a person on teh intarwebs for doing something or not doing something = bad, because you don’t actually know them and what they’re trying to get through and what kind of backlash they have to put up with in their daily lives. But for someone you know personally, can there be more criticism about backtracking on their own feminist morals because you DO know their situation?
Hell ya!, Nothip.
I think shaming is a very powerfult tool. If they can shame sluts, single mothers, and crunchy liberals, we should be able to shame rapists, bareback enthusiasts and abusive husbands, in the least. The problem is when we fuck up and end up shaming the victim instead.
Elaine, just accept that you made a mistake. Your whining is tiresome. Nobody who writes in this blog is trying to tell you to spend more money on more drugs. And no one says you shoud be a gate keeper. If you are having sex with father-of-your-child-hood deserving men, how come you still feel like you are the gate keeper? The only men who deserve to have children would never let the family planning task rest solely on your shoulders, and would make sure that you are not getting pregnant until you want to. If you feel like you have to be double-checking condoms, please don’t pass this guys genes onto the next generation.
I had an immediate, gut-level “fuck you” reaction to this post, and for the last half-hour, I’ve been trying to decide why.
Here’s the thing. She faults women for their being full of shit about their defenses on why they changed their names, but maybe they gave her bullshit answers because it’s None of Her God-damned Business why they changed their names.
Why do we make women justify personal decisions like changing their names? Why do we make women justify wanting to have children? Or not wanting to have children? Why do women have to justify the decision to marry? Or the decision not to marry? Why do women have to justify Every Single Fucking Thing They Do With Their Lives?
I firmly believe that people are better off analyzing their own decisions and the ways in which the surrounding culture influences those decisions, and I would encourage everyone to do so. That does not mean that any individual should have to share that analysis and allow it to be judged by the rest of the world. No one should have to spend their life constantly justifying their private decisions.
As for the issue of name changing, I kept my name when I married before, and I think that if I ever marry again, I will change my name. Anyone who wants me to justify either decision is welcome to fuck right off.
Pheobe,
Humans are notoriously piss-poor at analyzing all of the conditions in which they are embedded and acting. One of the ideas behind CR groups was that in conversation with others, women would be able to discover forces impacting their lives that they might not have otherwise seen. Your solution leaves people on their own, and really isn’t a solution. You want to erase the social and make everything completely individual. Your approach makes no room for collective action to challenge such structures because it is purely individual.
Get off it, Amanda. If you were talking about condom use in a discussion about disease prevention I’d be all for it and supporting you. But you’re talking about condom use to prevent overpopulation. Which is basically saying, “stop having babies so I can keep driving my SUV and eating meat.”
I know you don’t eat meat, but that’s basically the overpopulation argument. They seem far more willing to tell women to turn off their fertility than make other, more significant changes in resource consumption.
If you spent half the energy you’ve spent on telling me I shouldn’t reproduce on telling your readers to go vegetarian or sell their cars and use mass transport, you’d have a bigger impact on preserving natural resources for future generations.
I’m not projecting and I don’t need validation. Stop your personal accusations. Don’t play therapist, it’s offensive.
Regarding “real issues”: Yes, people are denied healthcare and that’s a real issue. I’ve written about my own experiences:
http://www.elainevigneault.com/my-plan-b-story.html
But that doesn’t mean you can’t be in the trenches and still do critical thinking. In fact, we ought to be thinking critically in all that we do in the feminist movement. Your suggestion that there’s no need for criticism within a liberal enclave is dangerous.
If you think changing resource use* without ending overpopulation will save the planet, you are deluded. People eat and they take up space, even when they do the right thing. Both approaches are important.
I know an older couple who had nine children and those children had many children and now grandchildren (I have no idea how many there are anymore). It doesn’t matter how frugal and environmentally on-the-ball those people are, they have negatively impacted the planet by reproducing. End Stop!
We are lucky that feminist issues here intersect with environmental ones. By giving women the choice not to reproduce or not to have as many children, we also encourage good ecological behavior.
*For street cred I hang my clothes instead of using an electric dryer, do not own a tv, take public transport walk cycle or drive the 4-yr-old hybrid, eat mostly local and vegetarian, and buy used stuff whenever possible. I’m trying :0
Being part of a consciousness raising group is a voluntary action, a laudable one at that. That’s not my point.
My point goes back to that original “the personal is political” and how it has been twisted, as Amanda said, to create an environment where intra-feminist guilt-tripping and flaming is accepted. That twisting causes far too many discussions about issues like name changing or having children to digress into individual justifications and condemnations which cease to be useful.
We need to be able to talk about these issues in a broad sense, and it is often useful to use personal stories as illustration. However, it does not follow that there’s any right to require any individual woman to justify their personal choices.
And yet, that happens far too often, from all sides. Society - feminists included - will sit in judgment of every decision a woman makes in her life, from her choice of birth control to her choice of pets to her choice of food. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t from morning to night.
We all have opinions on marriage, sex, animals and food. There are times when it’s very useful to share those opinions. We each have a right to those opinions. But we don’t have a right to demand others defend themselves against our opinions, and we ought never to presume we know all the dynamics that operate in a person’s life that would cause them to choose a different option.
I am sorry for the combative tone of my earlier post. I’d been nursing a migraine all morning, and it had me downright cranky.
OK, Let’s just get a beginning with this…
Any pre-marital surnamed ‘Fart’ or ‘Slug’ MUST
replace that with their partner’s-to-be.
Kinda clean up the phone-book too, y’see?
And we’ll move on from there.
[Actually if it were important to any partner
I might future with…I would switch without any qualm.
But then I’m old.]
I’d been nursing a migraine all morning, and it had me downright cranky.
the fact you could go online with a migraine earns my respect. I usually want to tear out my eyeballs and shut out all light.
However, it’s also worthwhile to remember that certain personal decisions do have the impact of reinforcing and supporting the larger patriarchal structure and culture. Names are part of it. It may be frustrating as hell, but it’s true.
And it also reflects how the opportunity structures are tilted against women. No question there. Men aren’t expected to change their names; indeed it’s usually not even a question, as others have mentioned. But, saying it’s completely personal erases those social conditions, which is itself highly problematic.
I’m not saying there’s an easy answer. I’m not saying it doesn’t suck. I am saying that the pesonal is always saturated with the public and political. That’s unavoidable.
Perfect example of what I’m talking about. Nothip’s argument stands on its own. It stands whether she drives a Hummer or rides a bicycle. It stands whether she eats beef at every meal or only the product of her own garden. But, she preemptively points out these things about her own environmental choices, probably because the odds are very good that someone is going to attack her argument with a demand that she justify her own existence.
By constantly requiring individuals to justify their choices, we’re silencing voices, telling people they can’t speak because they don’t fit the right mold.
Re name changing in academia: doing so will kill your career, because anyone doing a literature search will miss half your articles, among other things. It’s similar to the reason movie stars never change their names.
Academia is not some super-egalatarian island. It is still very difficult for women to succeed, for all of the usual reasons. But because academics *believe* they are super-enlightened, they don’t see the very real barriers that still exist for women. It’s sort of like racism in the US Northeast.
One of the things I love to point out to my oh so provincial New England students is that Little Rock rioted over school deseg in the 1950s. Boston rioted in the 1970s.
In the same way, they love to refer to “flyover” country as unenlightened, but Wisconsin beat MA by 8 or 9 years in adding sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination laws, and Minnesota was the first state to add gender identity.
Civilization does not end at Rte 128.
I’m finding it endlessly amusing to see Elaine calling out Amanda on breeder-shaming. Wasn’t that what Elaine herself was doing last week?
/me ponders…
Look, I’m perfectly well aware that this…breeder or overpopulation…thing is a hobbyhorse of Amanda and some other people here. I’m also aware that it’s not as harmless as the ones Brad Delong has about Marxism, for example. However as much as Amanda et al prefers to think of Human Earth as a dinghy riding low on the waves rather than the Titanic with a hole and insufficient ability to contain the leaking plus the lack of sufficient lifeboats, it is besides the point. Since this sort of think is from the same place that other people’s racism comes from, only a full-on, public, verbal, and logical beatdown is ever going to show them the error of their ways. They would hate anyone who did that as well. So let’s not fight about that.
The real point is that we should be trying to make a society that gives everyone the maximum ability to enjoy free will, and prevent the ability of people or groups of people to externalize the expense of their decisions. It really is none of mine, or Amanda’s business, as individuals, whether someone changed their name and why, or whether someone has a child and why.
I talked a bit about the problems that latin names gives to people who I work for. I also mentioned that they spent a lot more time fighting about which perspective was the correct one rather than make the system more able to accomodate a culture that traditionally had paternal and maternal names in one last name. This is stupid. We have the computing power, even with an outdated computer network, to be able to truly handle latin americans. It is the same with choosing women’s names.
And it is the same with the choices to have or not to have children. We can do much more to make the system neutral with respect to both childless and couples with children. Not only that, we can translate the expense of bearing children on the society to couples with children in entirely neutral terms of the cost of resource needed to bring up a child. If the society, democratic and lawful as a whole, decides to limit the burden of society on the resource matrix it is embedded in, then it can directly handle it by price and conservation mechanisms which translates scarcity to both couples with no children and couples with children. It allows people to choose to conserve, or substitute, or find other creative ways to allow themselves to be as they dream, within the realm of long term possibility. That is as it should be.
So many of you are talking about grabbing the social microphone and saying women are forced to have more babies, or women are forced to have fewer babies, when that is besides the point. Women have less autonomy of choice about fertility than they should. We should change this directly. If that meant that women start having too many or too few children, well then, find out exactly why there are too many or too few children, and address *that* topic specifically.
It’s not a matter of whose opinions are right, and so they are right. It’s a matter of understanding how to translate an abstract concept to closer thought, or reality, and *this* is right.
This is actually a perfect example of the very thing the post speaks about, not intracommunity shaming hurting people. Owning the fact that our choices are driven by considerations other than pure feminist (or environmentalist) theory actually puts LESS burden on people to constantly justify themselves. I drive a Honda CRV 30 miles each way every day alone to commute. I don’t do this because I love fossil fuels or hate carpooling or because I eschew public transportation, I do it because the society I live in makes it very inconvenient for me to do otherwise. It’s a personal choice, sure, but it is motivated largely by societal pressure. I don’t need to justify my existence or my “cred” as an environmentalist. I do the best I can with what I’ve got.
Now, let’s see how the outside pressure is making us compromise our values, and try to find ways around that, instead of pretending we aren’t compromised alll ready.
Speaking of racism in the Northeast
Hmmm…I seem to remember a Republican MA Governor from North Adams.
Trust me, I’ve never made that mistake.
You did, in your post, where you said that most men, at least in ‘blue states’, wouldn’t care if you kept your own name. Apparently this is because your husband didn’t care and neither did some guys you know, and so you assume Democratic politics = feminist male.
It really is none of mine, or Amanda’s business, as individuals, whether someone changed their name and why, or whether someone has a child and why.
It really is Amanda’s business what external pressures are put on people to make their choices. If a woman has a child because her ex-boyfriend kidnapper her and kept her a prisoner for six months so she couldn’t get an abortion, is that something you’d merrily dismiss as nobody’s bidness? How about if a woman changes her last name because she lives in a conservative area and would probably lose her job if she was thought to be oneathem feminazis? Hey, individual choice, right?
Really well put Neko, really well put.
I just don’t get those people that seem to think that feminism means we can’t say anything about the influences that impact the choices and actions that people make, and have those influences acknowledged.
Mythago. You are laboring under the presumption that anyone can figure out the precise circumstances of pressure. Sure a kidnapper can force a woman to give birth, and sure, a woman can lose a job if her name does not fit her circumstances.
The thing is, we actually do have laws against kidnapping, and we do have laws against sexual harrasment and discrimination. The problem is that the laws are not enforced on a society neutral basis. We can address this simply by appealing to blind justice, and develope more tactics to get laws enforced.
What *isn’t* helpful is talking about women’s choices in ostensibly nonmalvolent circumstances. We can’t really stop subtle pressures. We can’t even be sure if the women herself knows that she was pressured into making decisions not beneficial to her. There will always be a work to rule attitude by the people who we want to change the behavior of. Pro or con just doesn’t work. We just have to do our best to make the social machinery work as well as possible, with the eye towards helping people make their own choices.
Umm, unless I read the post completely wrong, I think this is what Amanda IS advocating. From my perspective, the core of the post is this, “… Just that we should respect that it’s often smart for women to play along with the patriarchy and if we want to stop that, we have to stop the patriarchy.” Amanda is NOT saying she wants to go around castigating individuals for their choices, she’s saying we need to see that the problem is the system, not the people who do what they must in order to get by in that system.
On another note, I don’t get what all of the sturm and drang over Amanda’s bit about overpopulation stems from. Again, I don’t see her running around advocating that the US adopt China’s One Child policy, or anything like that. She constantly goes over and over the part about coercion being bad, but also notes that we ARE in fact looking at what she deems to be a crisis, and that at the very least we need to be balancing out the overtly natalist messages our society sends out with anti-natalist messages. Call me a kooky anti-breeder with a hobbyhorse, but I don’t see how she is trying to dismantle free choice for women.
Neko-Onna
As to the first part, allow me to say word to Phoebe Fay, and that I am near total agreement with her.
As to the second part…hmmmm, I think the fastest way to do that would be for you to go around and ask your black friends about Amanda’s plan for noncoercive population reduction. Native American, Latinos, and historically conscious chinese or Japanese would suffice if you don’t have any.
I mean, for real, if Amanda went to Dorothy Roberts with this obsession over population control, Dr Roberts would probably hit Amanda on the head and open the book to a random page and squint at it, all the while muttering “she told me she read this book…”
fins et moyens, moyens et fins. Amanda is not a student at Hogswart. She does not get to handwave the serious normative and practical obsticals that are present in the course of her aims.
“Ugirl, I don’t see that as encouraging reproduction. I see that as control over your body. Those doctors are controlling you and your body by denying you healthcare. And you’re right that your experience is shared by many other women in your same position, but it’s not shared by other, often poorer and less white, women who are encouraged to be sterilized. Both are more about a denial of women’s bodily autonomy than they are about reproduction.”
I’m not sure how you separate issues of women’s bodily autonomy and reproduction so easily, seeing as so many (possibly most) instances of women being denied their bodily autonomy directly involve their reproductive lives. And, yeah, I get that it’s about control of women bodies, seeing as I also referred to the attacks on both mothers and childfree women as coming from the same patriarchal need to control women. Controlling women’s reproductive lives IS controlling their bodies. Do not try to tell me, or anyone else, that a doctor denying a woman a wanted sterilization procedure for no better reason than the societal expectation that womanhood=motherhood has nothing to do with reproduction or reproductive rights. (And, for the record, I strenuously oppose the forced or coerced sterilization of any woman, and consider such actions another form of violation of women’s reproductive rights/bodily autonomy.)
Just stop denying that many women who don’t want children face serious pressure and obstacles in this society. Please.
Shah8, your comment would make sense if it even remotely answered mine.
First, what are you giving Phoebe props for? If it is for the idea that no one should dogpile someone for the choices she has made in the face of the patriarchy, you are really agreeing with the post. Phoebe is really agreeing with the post. I think the post has been misconstrued, that’s all.
Secondly, I don’t think anyone here ever said that brown women don’t have historical reasons to fear coercive reproduction control. Heck, brown women have contemporary reasons to fear coercive reproduction control. The truth is all women have reason to fear coercive reproduction control, whether that control be in the form of denying women the ability to have children, or denying them the ability to not have children. In saying this, however, I don’t think anyone here, including Amanda, is even ADVOCATING coercive reproduction control. Unless I have been seriously misreading this thread, Amanda is arguing for balancing out the natalist messages out there with anti-natalist messages.
If you think brown women don’t get natalist messages in this society too, you must not be listening. Actually, brown women get caught in the double-bind even worse than white women- every day they are bombarded with messages that say motherhood= womanhood, and at the same time, that they are not fit to reproduce. Society needs to dump the whole motherhood=womanhood message. Period. Motherhood is one choice, a valid choice, but it should be undertaken with eyes open as to the impacts of motherhood on the individual, the society, and the planet as a whole. Honestly, the same messages should apply to fatherhood, too.
1) The thread devolved at one point into arguing whether women faced more oppression by people who want them to have more babies, or by people who wanted them to have fewer babies. I’m all for consciousness raising, but it should be about bringing things into the open and putting all the stories into a greater context, and it should be done with comfort and respect in mind. I’m not sure you understood what Phoebe was talking about. Like I said at the top, the original post got twisted into an argument over who suffered the most, or twisted as she might say.
When Neko sez
Phoebe is really agreeing with the post. I think the post has been misconstrued, that’s all.”
I would say that she is being disingenious. Ms Fay was complaining about how often and how likely the thread would devolve into chest-thumping, and how that, in the end, silences voices. That is what I was agreeing with, and I was thinking that an open forum on a topic should do its best to be nonjudgmental.
2) Neko, I really don’t care that Amanda wasn’t advocating any kind of coercive measures. I care about the fact that she’s talking about population control at all. I care about the fact that she apparently refuses to recognize the severe priciple agent problems inherent in such an agenda. I care about the fact that there is no possible positive outcome of such a policy (you couldn’t even get to steady-state population without mass sterilization in the US). If there is no posibility of success using noble methods, other people would hold on to the ends, and introduce, to put it mildly, morally suspect means to reduce population, say, by using subtle pressues to induce consent.
I give no succor to people who genuinely believe abortion is wrong, because they loan respectibility to thugs who want to punish women. I give no succor to the likes of Joe Lieberman, who gives so many bad notions the veneer of liberalness. I am not about to give Amanda any possible notion that she would ever be in the right. And this isn’t a topic where I have my thing and she has her thing, we talk about it, and we go home, respecting the other’s viewpoint. I know enough about the topic that I, and people like me, had better win. We’re just lucky that it’s such a small part of the overal environmental scene…
Kudos to Phoebe Fay. No need to apologize for showing basic common sense.
I am relatively new to reading this blog regularly. I am puzzled as to whether “choice” here means anything other than a euphemism for opposition to criminalizing abortion, or whether being “pro-choice” applies in the larger sense of being pro-personal autonomy in general.
Is the number of children another woman has, or elects not to have, the business of the pope? The president and Congress? The governor and the state legislature? If not, then why is it any business of Ms. Marcotte?
The same can be said of individual decisions to use, or not to use, particular methods of birth control. How is Ms. Marcotte better qualified to pass on other women’s (and men’s) private decisions than is Pope Benedict or Rick Santorum?
As to an individual’s decision to change her name or not, one ordinarily has the ability to change one’s name (or not) independent of marriage, subject to a court’s oversight in order to ensure that no fraud is involved. Beyond showing that a change is non-fraudulent, why should anyone, male or female, be called upon to give a reason, in this forum or any other?
In regard to marital name change, I am happy that my daughter, if she chooses to marry, will have the ability to choose whether to retain her surname. If (and only if) she asks for my opinion, I will likely tell her that a man whose name is not worth taking is a man not worthy of marrying.
As to my own prerogative as a recent widower, I am happy that I can choose to run, not walk, away from any woman who would reject my name.
John in Nashville: If (and only if) she asks for my opinion, I will likely tell her that a man whose name is not worth taking is a man not worthy of marrying.
I hope she doesn’t ask your opinion: it would be horrible to be told by your own father that he thinks of you as a nameless creature who does not truly deserve her own surname. But, she probably knows you well enough that she won’t give you the opportunity for you to tell her openly how little you respect her. I hope.
As to my own prerogative as a recent widower, I am happy that I can choose to run, not walk, away from any woman who would reject my name.
I would say that any man who believes a woman ought to change her surname to his is not worthy of marrying: I hope that the moment you made it clear you wouldn’t marry a woman unless she was willing to change her surname to yours, any woman with any self-respect would dump you. You could then run as far and as fast as you liked away from the terrifying prospect of marrying a woman with self-respect.
shorter John in Nashville: Patriarchy rocks!
Neko -
Ignore shah8, as it is obvious that they are not here for debate, and rather just wants to pound anyone that so dares express concern for the over-population of the planet that not only is this is a Bad Thing to talk about, it should Never Ever be mentioned … Ever.
I’m with the pragmatics on this one. I know there are huge obstacles to be overcome, not least the huge history of victimisation, colonisation, and racism in previous systems of large scale population re-sizing. However, the interesting thing is that none of us are advocating such here. We’re advocating putting in place cultural changes that, amongst other things, will help curb large family sizes. I don’t always agree with Amanda on everything, but on this issue I am 100% behind her in investigating the wider structural forces constructing people’s choices.
But shah8 doesn’t want to see this, and isn’t interested in having rationality or reason brought to bear. All they want is to slam down any dissension from their black-white world. So, I’d say, don’t waste your breath hon, as it’s really not worth it.
Oh, and Jesurgislac, ditto on your 7.28am post hon, well put.
What kills me about a lot of the denying that overpopulation of humans is a problem is that people who deny it would probably agree a) that overpopulation of cats and dogs is a problem and b) that we are animals as fully capable of overpopulating as cats and dogs. Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that if some folks really just wanted to breed kittens, they’d rather deny that animal overpopulation is a problem rather than own up to the fact that they want to do something that’s contributing, however small, to a problem.
This compulsive need to feel superior and deny that you are ever complicit is exactly what I’m protesting against in this post. Turning politics into a holier-than-thou campaign is exactly what stymies discussion. We’re all complicit because it’s impossible not to be—these are political, not personal, issues. Whether or not I personally refrain from childbirth doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, which is why I suggested we look at global solutions instead of personal potshots.
The defences were, well, defensive. “Well it’s just your father’s surname anyway.” No, it’s not. It’s mine. I was born with it. And if you follow that argument through, then you are not changing your surname to your husband’s but to your father in-law’s.
Even more to the point, why shouldn’t I change my name to the name of a man I love, rather than keep the name of a man I despise?
The real taboo subject: why we hate our fathers.
What kills me about a lot of the denying that overpopulation of humans is a problem is that people who deny it would probably agree a) that overpopulation of cats and dogs is a problem and b) that we are animals as fully capable of overpopulating as cats and dogs.
You don’t often hear the Humane Society saying “it’s OK if you let your cat just have one litter,” or “People really do want to have their own kittens or puppies, so it’s not realistic to advocate spaying and neutering their pets.” Yet ‘ZPG’ advocates will say that it’s fine to have one, or maybe two, biological children, and that it’s unrealistic to adopt the Human Society slogan “Until there are none, adopt one.”
If (and only if) she asks for my opinion, I will likely tell her that a man whose name is not worth taking is a man not worthy of marrying.
Your name is good enough for a wife, but not good enough for a daughter?
My dad and I were just talking about overpopulation; specifically, the decisions this particular generation has to make about reproduction and family size. And he said a beautifully simple thing: “If you have one or two kids, that’s one or two families making their own reproduction decisions down the line. If you have four or five kids, that’s four or five families. Who could argue that an exponential growth in people won’t lead to exponential consumption in resources ?”
Because as much as we talk about sustainable recycling families and hybrid cars and whatever, most people are consuming resources at huge rates- most people are not driving hybrids and composting. I live in Philly, one of the largest cities in the country, a progressive and Democratic city; and we don’t have plastic bottle recycling because people decided they don’t want to pay five goddam cents deposit. That blows my mind. But I realize it’s not an isolated example.
Sure, the planet can accomodate many more of us, all living at substandard levels of poverty, with wars fought for rice and water rights. I agree with what shah8 loves to point out over and over again: the planet will survive. Yes, the planet will survive. But how about the animals we eat for food ? How about the trees we burn for farmland and the soil we overuse ? The rock we hurtle through space on will outlast us. But we will not last at the rate we’re going.
Also, unrelated to that rant is another rant: Elaine, when people tell you to take antibiotics to clear up an infection, do you scream BIG PHARMA at them ? Female birth control pills are a miracle for many women. Not for you ? Super. Fine. Why can we accept all the advances in modern medicine without blinking an eye, except for the ones that specifically relate to women’s bodily autonomy ?
Zero Population Growth means zero growth, not “kill everyone off and stop breeding altogether.” It means, taking into account the replacement rate, having only as many children as will replace the previous generation.
And, the Humane Society, by the way, does not make you neuter or spay pureblooded dogs. It’s unfair. But it lets you know that they are not anti-animal reproduction, just trying to limit the exponential growth of the only population they have any control over.
Putting pressure on you to use condoms when having sex with people who are not me reduces the spread of AIDS, and thus is both for your own good and for the good of society, saith the liberal gay.
Putting pressure on you to not have kids protects the earth and reduces stress on our resources, and thus is both for your own good and for the good of society, saith our population control advocates.
Putting pressure on you to marry, have kids, and take your husband’s name helps knit your family together, and knit society closer together, and thus is both for your own good and for the good of society, saith many of the commenter’s parents.
Putting pressure on you not to have abortions or sex out of wedlock assists your salvation and the maintenance of an upright community, and thus is both for your own good and the good of society, saith the religious right.
Putting pressure on people for actions which are really none of your business encourages the real enemy - authoritarians among all of these groups who would use formal and informal power to get their way - to do what they do, and so you not applying the pressure is both for your good, and the good of society, saith the civil libertarian.
So, increasing the spread of AIDS, along with its drug-resistant mutations is good for society. Intersting perspective.
Well, I suppose if we’re going to make room for all the babies, people got to die and AIDS is a good way to kill them.
Must be from the Pat “AIDS is God’s way of weeding his garden” Robertson school of thought.
Like, don’t tread on me, man ! I mean, we should all be free to like, do whatever and stuff. I didn’t sign no stinking social contract ! Except I demand the protection of the police and fire departments and the law and medicine and a good education.
/libertarian
Daisy: Even more to the point, why shouldn’t I change my name to the name of a man I love, rather than keep the name of a man I despise?
Still missing the point, Daisy: your surname is yours. You may hate your father, with whom you probably share your surname, and want a different surname from his: but in that case, why did you wait until you married to do so, when you were free to change your surname any time after your 18th birthday?
And if you adopt the same surname as your husband’s, it will still be your name.
You’re still clinging to the idea - shared by John of Nashville - that women don’t have surnames. Well, yes, we do.
Daisy:
“Even more to the point, why shouldn’t I change my name to the name of a man I love, rather than keep the name of a man I despise?”
Well, there’s another option, as I pointed out about 100 posts ago… I changed my name when I was 18 to a name I chose for myself. I didn’t change it when I got married. It’s my name. I love it.
John in Nashville:
“I am happy that my daughter, if she chooses to marry, will have the ability to choose whether to retain her surname. If (and only if) she asks for my opinion, I will likely tell her that a man whose name is not worth taking is a man not worthy of marrying.
As to my own prerogative as a recent widower, I am happy that I can choose to run, not walk, away from any woman who would reject my name.”
Do you know how creepy that sounded? It did. Really creepy.
I wonder what you would say to a woman who wanted you to change your name to hers? Why is it less true that a woman whose name is not worth taking is not worth marrying? What would be so wrong with picking a name together that would be meaningful to you both? When people insist on women taking their names I can only think that it’s a desire to brand something as property. ‘This woman is mine!’ Ugh. As I said, creepy.
I was living in Montreal when I got married, and I discovered that in Quebec you are actually not allowed to change your name. Well, you can, but you have to shell out the $$$ same as you would for any full legal name change. They can’t stop you from using your husband’s name socially, of course, but none of your ID changes. Children can take either spouse’s name - that still seemed to be mostly the father’s name, but I had coworkers who had given the girls their mother’s name and the boys their father’s.
Funny thing is that this rule has not been around for all that long - sometime in the 80s, I think - and it seems to have pretty much become part of the culture. I worked with one woman who was kind of annoyed by it, because she had wanted to assume her husband’s name, but most women I talked to seemed sort of baffled by the idea - “why would you want to do that?”
Now that I’m back in Ontario I could change my name if I wanted, but I’m used to it by this point. And, well, it’s just easier. It’s interesting to see that turned the other way, but frankly I think it’s a peculiar thing to legislate in either direction. Whose business is it what you call yourself?
How do I know? Because there are a whole bunch of us around here that have absolutely no drive to do so. None. So much for being fundamental. Either that or we are somehow not human for not wanting such.
Breeding is fundamental to all species, but not necessarily fundamental to individuals within that species. There is room for variability of trait and expression and behavior, and a given species will continue if not all individuals desire to or successfully reproduce. It will not continue if all organisms stop reproducing. Reproduction, or at least the ability to reproduce and continue the species, must be present apriori in any life form - not on an individual basis, but on a collective basis. A classic multilevel analysis problem paradigm.
In other words, breeding is fundamental to humans, but not fundamental to INDIVIDUAL humans. Wanting to breed will be more prevalent than not, or is likely to be more prevalen as we are here. It is therefore foolish to extrapolate the individual experience of wanting or not wanting children to all other people. To further universalize either point of view and demean someone as “selfishly childless” or “disqualified as a feminist” is utter rubbish.
A good example of “not everybody breeds” or even “just a few breed” being beneficial: naked mole rats! http://nationalzoo.si.edu/publications/zoogoer/2002/3/nakedmolerats.cfm
Sarah, Amanda…I’m this agressive because I’m not ever going to be wrong about this. Population reduction is the sociology version of the Hydrogen Economy (that Big Oil and Big Auto loves so much) with the comcommitant wishful thinking. Go out and actually inform yourselves, geez! Talk to people and estimate how they would react to any government and/or movement’s noncoercive pressure. Heck, I wonder what Pam Spaulding’s opinion would be like! Talk to the sociologists and economic historians available to you at UT Austin!
If you don’t want to go out and talk to people not in your social circle, then come up with a *positive* attempt!
Overpopulation is an *old* hobbyhorse, and there have been many attempts at noncoercive *moral* restraint on reproductive, from the various Manichean/Gnosist type sects that believe that bringing children into an cyptically evil and horrible world is morally wrong to groups like ?Knockers? who kinda think children gets in the way of loving God. But they all withered in the end, despite the fact that many of these societies were pretty decent, those that didn’t face rather murderous oppression from neighboring groups.
Many nation-states have had some kind of attempt to control population, but all of them were coercive, and the large majority of them placed the burden of that control on women. Of this latter pool, coutries like China, Australia, Russsia, US, Europe in some areas and some times, and many stateless ethnic groups are present. It is rare that lower population is coerced, as in China and in areas of NW Europe, but it usually resulted in common brutalities for the women who bear children outside of wedlock and other social conventions.
And don’t you dare point Japan at me. Like just about any country that is actually losing population, Japan is decreasing in population due to rather severe social problems, and most of them have to do with the leadership’s conservative assholes who have utterly no respect for or concern for women. Japan is one of the worst places to have children in terms of the financial security available to women. I would point to Sweden. Although they are *explicitly* trying to increase their population, they do it almost entirely by choice (financial incentives aside), and they do it by paying attention to the concerns of women, AND making men involved in the discussion unlike almost any other country that have focused on this topic. Men get real parental leave and are expected to use it. Women get help with medical and day care. I’d rather live in Sweden, even though it’s on the wrong side of overpopulation!
Like I said before, I’m bringing in facts, numbers, knowledge and specific objections. Amanda and Sarah are shouting slogans. Who and what tactics would *you* trust on a technical policy question? The Wiki on overpopulation isn’t great, due to the kind of mess one gets when one simply googles it, but at least it might start as a primer…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
Wanting to breed will be more prevalent than not, or is likely to be more prevalen as we are here.
GARG and blast that stuoopoid spamy thingy for forcing multiple cut pastes!
That should read “Wanting to breed will be more prevalent than not,as we are here.”
John in Nashville, thanks for the kudos, but…
I’m really happy that women can choose to run, not walk, away from guys who consider a woman giving up her name to be a prerequisite for marriage.
I’m not taking a position on the marriage name question. There are plenty of reasons pro and con, and everybody’s situation is different.
But I feel pretty safe in saying that any man who insists a woman take his name is a creepy control freak.
I’m really happy that women can choose to run, not walk, away from guys who consider a woman giving up her name to be a prerequisite for marriage.
Perhaps the more interesting question is which surname the kids should take.
Assuming my hypothetical wife’s family were better than my father (which would not be difficult, assuming they hung around until after she turned 5), I’d have no problem with letting my surname die a natural death.
Is there anyone here who thinks that it is reasonable for the wife to keep her own name, and yet believes the husband’s surname should be automatically passed down to offspring?
I love how shah8 presumes niether Amanda nor I have actually read on the topic, nor have any idea about what we are talking, nor have any depth bar slogans, nor have any academic background.
Lovely and open to discussion there.
You don’t often hear the Humane Society saying “it’s OK if you let your cat just have one litter,” or “People really do want to have their own kittens or puppies, so it’s not realistic to advocate spaying and neutering their pets.” Yet ‘ZPG’ advocates will say that it’s fine to have one, or maybe two, biological children, and that it’s unrealistic to adopt the Human Society slogan “Until there are none, adopt one.”
That’s because they have different goals, and of course the ethical issues wrt spaying and neutering pets is quite different.
Humane Society: wants to reduce the population of unwanted pets; advocates spaying and neutering, and not getting your dogs from puppy mills, which have no incentive not to stop pumping out puppies until they get caught or until the demand for that breed-of-the-moment dries up.
ZPG: wants Zero Population Growth via reproducing at or below replacement rate, and no more. Deals with a whole fuckload more complex ethical issues wrt who gets to reproduce and when and why and how.
Through the power of Magical Thinking, there are no limits to our resources, or any way in which plans created around the wishes of the President could possibly fail!
A little homework assignment in patriarchy: (note, heterosexual marriage is presumed in this example)
IF you married in your state, would the male portion of your union be able to change his name? What obstacles would appertain? Would they be the same or similar to the obstacles faced by the female mate?
Would male and female be allowed to select a common surname different from either current surname? What legal hurdles would exist?
Would the female be required to take the male name or required to official decline to do so under state law?
Why do I ask? I ask because the legal traditions involved can be very backward. There have been successful challenges to “MUST take man’s last name” situations, but the reality can still be very backward and reinforce the bias with hassles to anybody attempting a different system. Ditto for those who have attempted to give their joint children a “merged” name.
Sarah, bring in facts, then! How about some progress metrics for success? Or you could bring up an example that has worked out well. Or make a judgement on how other people would react to a mobilization on this topic. Actually contest what I’m saying! ‘Cause I do know enough to know that you all don’t seem to know very much about this topic and don’t seem to care very much about not knowing. “This Time It’s Different” is not valid either.
You *could* go all Peter Beinert on me or anyone else who opposes this. You could say that I’m the crazy uncle in the attic who’s being *hysterical*, and that the audience should listen to these sage people nodding about the obvious goodness of the Plan. Impeachment works when you’re impeaching with logic, passion, and empathy all rolled in one. You’re mostly impeaching me as if I’m just saying all the wrong stuff, or that I’m slandering you for saying what you want to say, regardless of what’s reality. That isn’t effective argumentation.
I’m treating this as I would any racist spouting stupid slogans. Like I said before, this sort of topic comes from the same place, usually. I would take you or Amanda more seriously if you all had argued like Jerome Guilliet or Allan Drake/BruceMF about gas taxes and rail respectively. They aknowleged difficulties, and addressed people’s concern in explaining why some point was or wasn’t valid. They added more data, and explained their positions more thoroughly as time went on. That isn’t happening here.
shah8 -
I’m not debating this with you … you’ve made it obvious that your stance is not to discuss things, but merely to browbeat and stomp people into your way of thinking. Not the kind of mindset I’m in the mood to discuss things with.
I have more civil people to interact with when I debate issues. You, not so much. Maybe you need to look to yourself when you ask yourself why people don’t want to debate you.
Look, I like to use literature and science fiction as a kind of shorthand for many topics. For example, one can read Kim Stanley Robinson for a shorthand on many environmental topics, including population, even though it’s usually about another planet.
On different scale…I think about this…
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,” Nick realizes at the end, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
More than anything else, it’s the idea that these two were worth emulating. The idea that conspicuous consumption is an indicator of wealth and power. The idea that people who are above petty problems like sexually transmitted diseases are cool. The people who aspire to or believe in these ideas are the ones wrecking the earth and eath other.
We have to stop these people. We have to end the era of consumerist mentality. We have to increase our productivity even more, and redirect the profits of that productivity into maintaining our environment. It’s a huge collection of issues that more or less have to be operated on individually. There aren’t any silver bullets like reducing population available to us.
I hyphenated my name. I simply did not like the idea of giving up who I am–and much of who I am is tied up in where I came from which is denoted by my name–in order to get married. I have nothing else to bring to a marriage except me. So it made no logical sense to then turn around and deny me. I added my husband’s name to that because otherwise the hassles of conducting business would be overwhelmingly annoying with utility companies and loan companies and the children’s schools and so on. It is made very difficult for a woman who dares to have a different name than her husband to conduct business as part of the couple. Even with the hyphenation, I’ve been asked to fax a copy of our marriage certificate because our names don’t match. People have simply ignored the hyphenation and called me “Mrs. Farmer”. (I use “Ms.”) Members of my own family simply ignore it. At the bank, I am invariably asked, “Do you want ‘Smith-Farmer’ on that or just ‘Farmer’?” Well, my legal name is ‘Smith-Farmer’ so….(that not being my real name, but you get the idea.) The strange thing is that I work with people from various cultures that are much more patriarchal than ours and yet they don’t question it. In their culture, the mother’s last name is just automatically kept and even given to the children as a middle name. Even in this culture not so long ago that was done–my grandfather’s middle name is his mother’s maiden name. When did that go out of fashion?
But to be honest, it never even occurred to me to question what my children’s last name would be. It just did not even occur to me to ask that my children’s name be hyphenated like mine, it was just automatic that they would be Farmer. I can’t say I believe that should be automatic; I just never even thought about it.
Sarah, debate requires an exchange of ideas. If you don’t *have* any ideas that would clarify your larger ones…then you claiming that I’m too rude to have a decent conversation is more akin to taking your ball and going home. Neither you or amanda engaged with rvman’s post at 134. Neither you or amanda made sound rebuttals of mythago or zuzu’s 131 and 149’s posts, respectively. I don’t see much of *anything* but slogans and weak allegories.
As I said before, and again, I consider it important to challenge sentiments like these very agressively. I have not been screaming slogans at you. I have not cursed you. I have at least allowed the potential that experts might support your position. I have not been saying stuff all that much different than the femeniste crowd along the normative and principle-agent axis’s of concern.
shah8
Yes, that’s _precisely_ what I am doing, I am taking my ball and going home. You have overwhelmed me with your logic and obvious superiority, and I cannot but shrink away in insecurity.
*sigh*
At least you’re predictable.
Oh and by the way, guys…My tactics? It usually works in stopping racists from feeling safe to pollute the chat rooms and newsboards that I post. In a way, you’re right, Sarah. I’m not talking as if I have any chance at convincing you or Amanda. It’s generally not possible to convince people to let go of an opinion that they hold in an atavistic sense.
What I’m doing is putting sustained pressure on your public image, your “internet face” so to speak. I just get enough of the “maybe she’s whacko” out there such that the regular custom knows this is a kind of hobbyhorse that perhaps one shouldn’t take seriously. And I’m not doing it by slandering you. I’m doing this by showing from as many vantage points as possible, your native illogic. It works wonders on overt racists as they get more and more challenged, by other people, whenever they let their thingie out again.
I already knew this wasn’t a debate in the real sense of the word, so I dropped any concillitory language. I also operate that what you guys would do would to simply ignore contrary information, unless you were specifically attacked on and forced to justify your ideas more fully.
And I fight so hard (courting the dislike of people I like very much) because, coercive, noncoercive, population reduction as a strategy has always been an evil one, even if people believed they were doing good. It is this way for very intristic reasons.
John in Nashville, a theoretical question: what if she were to ask YOU, as a compromise, to join her in hypenating your names? If you loved her enough and truly wanted to spend the rest of your life with her, could you do that?
My eldest cousin did this when he and his wife married years ago- the only one of the cousins to do so. That he was the “eldest male” and supposedly the one to carry on the family name didn’t matter to him, or his parents. My only female cousin retained her maiden name, which irritated her mother-in-law. I went with a more traditional choice for my own reasons; goodness knows little else about my marriage is conventional!! Yet for our 3 different choices, all 3 of us have been happily married for many years.
IMO, it really should come down to what each individual couple is comfortable doing, regardless of their family or friends’ opinions.
shah8, Gosh, thank goodness you came to Pandagon spoiling for a fight with racists.
I have to ask, do you know where you are ?
Shah8,
Here’s a fact. A person uses more resources than a non-person who was never conceived and born. How do you address that one?
I thought so
Oh, and “atavistic” — it doesn’t mean what you think it means. You cannot hold an opinion “in an atavistic sense.”
Nice try with the racism crap too, btw.
Horribly racist and eugenic to suggest that fewer children born to women in developing countries might mean that said children have health care, good sanitation, adequate food, educational prospects, etc. which raise the odds that they live to adulthood and have healthy children themselves.
Oh horrible. Can’t have that.
Nothip?
atavism AT-uh-viz-uhm, noun:
1. The reappearance in an organism of characteristics of some remote ancestor after several generations of absence.
2. One that exhibits atavism; a throwback.
3. Reversion to an earlier behavior, outlook, or approach.
Oh yes, it meant what I thought it meant (the third definition). And yes, you can hold an opinion in an atavistic sense. I was merely calling people on the use of the reptilian hindbrain.
Oh, and that fact? Nyet. Wrong. Lemme throw some H L Mencken at you…”There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong.” Want some backup for that opinion that I hold?
http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Population/Stress.asp
Oh my Disco Ball! I actually back up what I say with independent experts! What will the others say??!!
Other Orange, I know exactly where I am. It’s just a reminder that one should not always trust feminists. One should not always trust race activists, either! I did not say Amanda is racist. I said that her opinion came from the same place as racist’s opinion does. Hence the atavist comment.
Under what circumstances does it break into you guys that advocacy of population reduction has an evil (and racist) history? That Amanda and Sarah and all those who hold this opinion has a *very* high burden in detailing how to push through their policy conception as they see it? That just because they say it’s a noncoercive program, and that it’s different this time doesn’t cover it? Or that if you talked about something like this in a larger forum, many groups of Comanche raiders are going to have your scalp for a ton of different reasons?
And lastly, Ms Kate? You haven’t been reading what I have written. I care about family planning, and education and making sure women have the right to control their fertility. I just am adamantly against the umbrella reason that we should do these things because of overpopulation.
So, you’re pro-AIDS too?
Bunnies! More Bunnies! Bunnies! More Bunnies!
@ MAJeff and Ms Kate…
rvman’s post gets to heart at why I’m so vehement about this.
You’re not really doing anything but feeding authortarians reasons to hurt all minorities, racial, sexual, and otherwise. And they really will kill people like me when they have the chance. Have you not noticed how freaking scary some of these people in the good ole USA are getting? And they would definitly buy the whole we need to reduce population, and ignore what Amanda says about noncoercion.
so bunny me. I dare you to.
Just bunny Jill as well. Bunny all those people who would be even more unsparingly about calling this racist. Bunny everyone who doesn’t agree with you, and don’t feel that certain arguments are worthy of respect. It would fit in with the simple friend/enemy matrix eh?
But what I double, triple, quadruple DOG dare you to do is to *talk* to other people about this topic. Talk to people that you don’t necessarily know!
Shah8, how ’bout just one little quote from Amanda supporting what you’re accusing her of?
Because as far as third world countries go, her plan is to improve the status of women, which time and again results in more female control over reproduction and thus, fewer children.
She’s advocating removing the social pressures both to have children and to not have children, and leave everyone free to decide how many they really want and can support.
And you know? That almost always results in fewer children.
In any event, this post really had a fuckload more to do with North America than with the third world, so do pull that telephone pole out your ass.
Shah8,
If you’re position had ruled the day, if we gay men had basically said it’s all about individual choice, AIDS would be worse than it is today. You’re position that it’s only about individual choice, and that these choices have nothing to do with social responsibility is killing my community. You apparently think that to say to someone who says, “Using a condom is my choice so shut the fuck up” is “OK, no problem,” despite the fact they’re making the AIDS crisis worse.
You’re pro–genocide in your own way, except that you prefer it take place through a virus.
Zuzu, I have no problem with removing social pressures that force women to do whatever, whether for more children or not. I have no problems with increasing education for women, and increasing the availability of family planning to women in the third world. I have no freaking problem with *any* of that. I *advocate* all of that. I do NOT support the rationale! I want the world to become more environmentally healthy! I want people to more free to aspire to whatever they dream of! I want us all here over the long term, with granchildren we can forsee happy lives for!
Is there any way I can prove to you that the overarching rationale of overpopulation would *betray* all of these individual goals? That you have to actually sketch out the path from beginning to end. That third world women having greater ability to control the number of desired children does *not* necessarily follow from a big population campaign? That it’s much better to focus on all of these aims as important in and of themselves? That a constant population initiative is pretty much garunteed to devolve into something nightmarish?
And as for you MAJeff. I am not pro AIDS. I have enough concern as it is with a homophobic black community that refuses to recognize that the closet is killing huge numbers of their communities. What would be so much more important is a cohesive attempt at opening the (&^%$^ closet! That would help stop the virus more than anything else. As much as it hurts that your best friends will not seek to protect themselves in spite of all evidence, I don’t see how more ads would help, or more coercive laws. Sex is in the bedroom, who knows what goes on in their but the people in the bedroom?
Measure the possible good. Measure the possible bad. and decide!
in other words, shah8, we should shut the hell up about condoms, give up on safer sex messages. let hiv spread where it will. that’s pro-aids.
No we don’t shut the hell up about condoms! We don’t give up on safer sex! We don’t give up on informing people about the risks!
What I cannot see is how we can do much more if people refuse to aknowlege that they can hurt themselves and others despite everything they know about AIDS? How do we do more? Do we make it illegal to have bareback sex without a condom? Do we prosecute people who infect other people for manslaughter? Are there communities that we are missing (minorities and the poor) that could use the support of others informed about safe sex and disease control? What?
At the end of the day, a person still chooses to do what they will. What we have to do is do something about the specialness of bareback sex, the immortality of all the young hunks, and other things that are essentially about fashion and security. In this, opening up the closet would allow us to help much more.
absolutely not, we don’t criminalize. But you did basically say to not worry the fuck about it, to not try to continue to stress it as a community problem.
You want to localize it as an individual issue. that’s a failing approach from the start. What we gay men in the 1980s/90s were able to do is make it a community issue. Now you’re saying drop it–it’s up to the individual and the individual only. that’s surrenduring to the virus. And I fucking refuse to do that.
I’ll critique the fuck out of the fashoin obsessed, celebrity obsessed culture. And the closet is an amzingly destructive institution. You seem to want to accept that idiot’s idea that it’s only individuals, and i reject that totally. Responsibility to self is also responsitiblity to community.
In supporting rvman, you’re taking a pro-AIDS position. His position is basically a denial of any communal anything. I reject that wholly. This is a social problem which requires social solutions. RVMan shuts off such avenues. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let that happen.
Uh,
what?
/me rereads rvman’s comment at 134
/me throws up hands
I literally don’t know how to answer this. I’m not saying what you’re saying I’m saying. I don’t even think rvman is saying what you think he’s saying. He was trying to illustrate a slippery path to progressively more authoritarian ideas. I’m reasonably sure he supports condom awareness, but was trying to bring awareness to the elitist attitudes present sometimes. Liberals aren’t going to be the ones actualizing policies exclusively, therefore he says that we should be careful about how we put things.
He’s anti-liberal. He was saying that social pressures to use condoms are wrong. He was implicitly criticizing the community-based methods that saw AIDS prevention as communal vs. individual. He doesn’t recognize the communal as worthwhile and was saying it’s a purely individual choice, fuck how it affects others. He may deny it, but such an attitude is quite clearly pro-AIDS.
I.e. what he’s talking about is the imposition of the idea that you’re the community, instead of the community being made of a collective of individuals who share common ideas and behaviors.
You can’t just fiat actions. You actually have to consider what people will do, and find ways to get the people to decide as a community to do something about a problem. You can’t just say to a community/individuals that this is a problem and you know what’s right for them and they should do as you say. You kinda just have to gather a group of people together, get all of them to agree that something is important enough to be worth doing something about, and get them all to follow through. Bringing together collective consent is hard, but it’s the right way.
The individual and the community are not truly seperate concepts. There is a continuum, and everybody has to work in that medium to get the best outcome.
Okay, if you’re saying that rvman is a resident troll who’s anti gay, okay I guess he’s bad.
If that is not the case, you are deliberately misconstruing what he said. That brings my interest in the topic to an end.
fiat FEE-uht; -at; -aht; FY-uht; -at, noun:
1. An arbitrary or authoritative command or order.
2. Formal or official authorization or sanction.
maybe that will help, particularly the arbitrary part.
Oooh, he’s pulling out high school debate stuff. Seriously real, that.
Not.
Even the parliamentary debaters and international relations league general assembly wonks laughed at that! Even in high school!
we obviously disagree on our reading of him.
I’ve been involved in such collective action, in terms of HIV prevention and public policy on other issues. I don’t speak only as some outside authority.
He’s a radical individualist, and they generally have very little of value to add to such discussions. I somehow think his impression would be if someone contracts HIV they deserve it (individual choice and all), and if they can’t afford medical care, fuck ‘em. I reject that totally.
He completely discounts the face that humans are, first and foremost, a social species, embedded in social structures and cultures, and as far as I can tell he has nothing of value to say.
Thank you, Heinekens, for the question about hyphenation, and thank you for parsing my earlier post, which post was in fact a celebration of personal autonomy and individual choice about changing or retaining names. Other posters’ speculation about my relationship with my beloved, young adult daughter (who is brilliant, outspoken and quite capable of deciding for herself) is ill-informed and vile.
In my opinion, hyphenated names are cumbersome and awkward. I would eagerly add my future wife’s surname preceding mine, without a hyphen, if she asked me to do so.
And if you think I’m anti-liberal, then $(&*% you. My best friend in my entire life is gay, and he has multiple sexual contacts as well, and I worry the fuck about him, not just about AIDS, but his estrangement from much of the black community. The scarring is for life. I want him to do whatever is necessary to have safe sex, and I let him know that I would miss him if he died. I don’t have very many friends MAJeff. Even so, I wouldn’t ever go into his place and make sure that he had a condom on. I would support community mechanism like pro-condom ads and free condoms for the “on the go” stuff. And I would be very careful about going farther than that, not least because he would be angry at me for being intrusive, and with some justification.
I want to spread the riches of life for all to appreciate. Part of that is trying to get people to stop thinking hurting one another is such a great idea. Another part of that is distributing power to as many informed hands as possible. We *have* to think carefully of the long term implications of all that we do!
And if you think I’m anti-liberal, then $(&*% you.
You may not be, but rvman is, quite clearly.
Would you talk to your friend about condoms? If you knew he was acting unsafely would you confront him? If not, you’re not much of a friend.
I’m not saying go into his bedroom, but if he;s taking unnecessary risks, yeah, you do have a responsibility as someone who cares about him. That’s why I tore into my friend. I want him alive. If I sit back and say nothing, I increase the chances of him dying. I can’t live with that.
And, if he’s poz and spreading the virus, he needs to know he’s acting irresponsibly. He’s assisting the virus in killing other people. It may not be easy to say, but it’s the fucking truth.
I’m sick of tiptoeing around this. HOW MANY MORE PEOPLE NEED TO DIE?
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,” Nick realizes at the end, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
that’s the idol that has to be smashed, MAJeff…
and yes to your previous questions
You answered yes. that’s the opposite of what rvman would have had you answer. You’re butting into his life. And good on you for doing so. We are not islands.
You have no idea how much I hate this virus. The hardest I’ve cried in my life was when a friend told me he tested poz. he contintues to have unsafe sex, and we no longer speak (for a number of reasons). However, someone who willingly participates in “converstion parties” is a murderer. “Gift givers” are murderers. Yes, Larry Kramer can go overboard, but he’s right on that one.
Yes, there are multiple mechanisms and avenues for doing prevention work. Here in Boston there’s a movement among poz folks to say “HIV ends with me.” I support that move totally. It may surprise folks, but I’ve dated poz men. However, the only way I’d do so is if they also took my health seriously. This is a collective issue (and yes, the closet and self-hatred are HUGE issues). I’m not going to step back and say, “wanna spread the virus? no problem, that’s your choice.” No. Fucking. Way. rvman basically believes I should stay the fuck out of all of that. He’s wrong, however, when he says it doesn’t affect me. His is a morally bankrupt position, and your defense of it made me question you.
We’ve obviously got differences. I wish you and your friend the best. May you BOTH be safe and live long, healthy, happy lives.
Wait, wait, wait.
So, you agree with Amanda’s basic points, you just don’t like it that she’s tying in those points with overpopulation, even though her post was in response to another on … overpopulation?
zuzu, that is entirely correct.
Overpopulation is something that is inherently racially charged, and class charged. Any class of plans developed beneath it is going to be applied in a racially disparate manner, despite Amanda’s wishes and feelings. Think of the drug war, for example. A large number of people Amanda wishes to help have men who are going to think Black Helocopters coming to take away their women. Those self-same men would be completely eager to shame and apply the rules to minority women in a cruel way. Amanda doesn’t have the tools to stop this process (as it already is applied to minority women anyways–overpopulation would make it worse). Talking about the central mechanisms like family planning and female education and political/economic rights without the overarching premise is a much more safe way to go about this. In the end, we would be happy when we accomplish *this*, when it occurs, rather than being unhappy if all of these means *fail* to reduce population growth despite individual effectiveness. They are goods in and of themselves with fewer risks.
I don’t mind if we reduce population, gently, and assuring that rights are preserved. I just don’t think that a) It can be done properly at any kind of speed b) That it can be done while preserving rights, and c) That overpopulation is a critical aspect to our social and environmental problems.
comment stuck in moderation so a quick yes to zuzu.
John of Nashville: Other posters’ speculation about my relationship with my beloved, young adult daughter (who is brilliant, outspoken and quite capable of deciding for herself) is ill-informed and vile.
Ill-informed? All we knew about your relationship with your daughter is that you despise her so much you consider her unfit to retain her own surname on marriage, and you consider this despite so normal that you would be prepared to tell her that. We didn’t speculate about your relationship with your daughter: you made public that you disrespect her that much. To call it “vile” that your public disrespect for your own daughter did not go unnoticed in a thread discussing that topic is unreasonably egotistical.
I’m going to side with you on this one, MA Jeff, and not just because you’re my friend. When you love a friend enough, you DO step up and speak up- and who knows? Maybe something you said will reasonate. Don’t you dare back down (and I know you won’t).
My first patient with full-blown AIDS in 1989 was a 22 year old man, just 2 years younger than me. He was down to 80+/- pounds and begged ME to be careful for MYSELF as I drew his blood, dressed head-to-toe in full isolation gear because his immune system was shutting down. I have never forgotten him.
John in Nashville: “which post was in fact a celebration of personal autonomy and individual choice about changing or retaining names”
Your post was a celebration of your patriarchal privilege. Hooray for you.
My response was vile? Wah.
I am now choosing to run, not walk, away from further interaction from you.
I’ll take the ball on this one, because I have daughters, too…
John, would you be respectful of your DAUGHTER’S choice regarding her name, or would you voice your opposition if her choice went against your views?
Theoreticals on the internet are one thing- when it’s your OWN KID, it’s very personal indeed. I’m a very protective parent, but mine are still only 12 and 9. Yet there is no choice they could make in regards to a married name choice that I would have an opinion upon. They could call themselves “Axelgrease-Smythe” for all I care.
(With all apologies to all of the Axelgrease-Smythes in the world…)
They will be adults- and it will be their choice. In a real world scenario, wouldn’t you agree with supporting your daughter’s decision? Or would you really wish to risk hurting and alienating her over this?
Louise: John, would you be respectful of your DAUGHTER’S choice regarding her name, or would you voice your opposition if her choice went against your views?
To be fair to John, he did say he’d only voice his disrespect for his daughter’s right to her own name if she asked him. And to be fair to John’s daughter, she probably knows her father’s opinions on women with self-respect already and won’t ever give him the opportunity to voice them to her.
Supporting her decision - ah well, that’s another matter. IME, patriarchal fathers can go either way - “He’s a good man, how dare you not want to subsume your identity into his!” or “Hey, she’s my daughter, no wonder she’s headstrong and stubborn!” When adult children do things their parents don’t approve of - retaining their own surname, transmitting their own surname to their kids, adopting kids instead of bearing them - the best some parents seem to manage is tolerance rather than active support, and they seem to think that even tolerance is a big deal.
You can’t just say to a community/individuals that this is a problem and you know what’s right for them and they should do as you say.
Personally, I think the friends and loved ones and communities and all the people who have fucking died of AIDS already have come together and decided what’s right for them and what actions have been taken. How exactly can you pretend like there’s no social mandate for AIDS prevention ??
Okay, I see the inherant hilarity and inaccuracy of suggesting that dead people have come together to support anything. That sentence above should read something like, “those who’ve suffered with AIDS.”
But the point stands.
Jesurgislac, you’re right- I read John’s response then answered w/o retaining completely what he had said.
The point of my first post on this thread is that each person should make his/her own decision and that others should respect that person’s autonomy unless their opinions are asked.
My daughter and I enjoy profound respect for one another. Rank speculation otherwise says more about the speculator than it does about my family. While I appreciate a good non sequitur as well as anyone, how Jesurgislac inferred that I “despise her so much [I] consider her unfit to retain her own surname on marriage” goes beyond the pale. Indeed, that lack of logic is just pure-ass dumb.
Of course I will support my daughter’s decision to marry or not to marry. Likewise, I will support her decision to retain or to change her surname upon marriage, if she chooses to marry. My hope is that she will marry someone whose name she will wear proudly, and that he will be a good man who is worthy of her companionship. I am confident that she will make good decisions, whether she does or does not choose to seek my counsel.
My own opinion is that a wife’s refusal to change name may portend a less-than-complete committment to the marriage. On this topic, however, opinions are like assholes–everyone has (at least) one, and it is unwise to offer one’s opinion or one’s asshole casually.
I find the insistence on a woman changing her name anachronistic at best, and creepy to its very core. I wonder why men don’t have to give up essential parts of their individual identity in order to prove their commitment to their union?
No, no… wait. I don’t wonder at all. I already know. Patriarchal privilege all the way.
A man who wants to brand HIS wife is simply not as committed to an equal union as he might otherwise suggest.
John of Nashville: The point of my first post on this thread is that each person should make his/her own decision and that others should respect that person’s autonomy unless their opinions are asked.
Actually, the point you made was that you do not believe your daughter has a right to her own surname, and that you wouldn’t marry a woman who believed she had the right to her own surname, either.
My daughter and I enjoy profound respect for one another. Rank speculation otherwise says more about the speculator than it does about my family. While I appreciate a good non sequitur as well as anyone, how Jesurgislac inferred that I “despise her so much [I] consider her unfit to retain her own surname on marriage” goes beyond the pale. Indeed, that lack of logic is just pure-ass dumb.
Rubbish. You said you would, if asked, advise her against marrying a man unless she was prepared to change her surname to his. There are so many levels of disrespect involved in that, but you outline a couple of them below:
My hope is that she will marry someone whose name she will wear proudly
So you feel that her own surname isn’t one she can wear proudly. As you evidently feel the lack is not in the surname (as I suspect hers is the same as yours) that means you think the lack is in your daughter: she’s not able to wear her own surname proudly.
My own opinion is that a wife’s refusal to change name may portend a less-than-complete committment to the marriage.
So a woman is required to give complete committment to the marriage by changing her surname, but men need not commit themselves completely to the marriage by changing theirs? That again suggests that you don’t respect your daughter’s ability to commit to a marriage, or any woman’s ability to commit to a marriage - or else that you have the standard patriarchal double-thinking: men get to regard a marriage committment as something women make to them, rather than vice versa.
Jesurgislac, WELL done and WELL parsed. Still on first cup of coffee and have not a damn thing to add to your discussion, other than that. Last sentence sums all up nicely.