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.
“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