There have been quite a few ongoing dialogues lately regarding feminist relationships, marriage, and name changing – and these are great (and important) conversations for us to be having.

I think that the ultimate thing to keep in mind as feminists is that feminism is about choice.  It’s about every person having the right, ability, and power to decide for themselves.  We often think of choice only in terms of reproductive health (or more specifically abortion), but choice is imperative to every aspect of feminism, including fashion, work, marriage, and yes, name changing.  But here’s the thing that’s been bothering me lately *steps up on soapbox*:

A lot of acquaintances of mine have been getting married lately.  Mostly I am aware of this via Facebook since I moved more than 1,000 miles away from my hometown.  Sometimes I get that lovey-dovey little relationship status update – Mindy Morris is married to Joe Joseph – but most of the time I find out because there is suddenly a name I don’t recognize in my feed.  Then I click on my mystery acquaintance only to discover that it was the girl that sat behind me in AP History or the woman who lived across the hall in the dorms.

Now, I recognize that if these were my close friends rather than just acquaintances I would (hopefully) be in the loop enough to know that a marriage was impending and my ladyfriend was potentially changing her name, so I suppose you could argue that it’s none of my business that people that I’m not close to are becoming unrecognizable to me by their titles. But this is only a problem when it comes to the women that I used to know.  The dudes that I knew in high school are also getting married, and I have no problem recognizing them.  They’re still Chad Chadwick and Mike Michelson or whatever.

So what’s been bugging me is that a woman who gets married and changes her name is in some ways erased from the record.  If my good friend Carly M. from college, who eschewed Facebook and never joined (to my knowledge) has married her long-term boyfriend Dan whose last name I can’t remember, I can’t look her up.  Nor could I look her up if I returned to our college town and hit the phone book.  Because Carly M. could well be Carly XYZ now, and that makes her much more difficult to find.  But if my friend Charles H. in the same town got married, he’s just as easy to find as ever.  And that freaks me out.

Just like the Miss/Mrs/Ms vs. Mr situation, women are managed by their marital status while men are men are misters, no name changes, no identification by title.  This is not equitable.  So while it remains a woman’s choice whether or not to change her name, there is something going on in the system that is not right.

What if things could be different?  I mean, why is it that a woman changes her name anyway?  To match her spouse, to be united in some way, to share a name with future offspring?  Sounds great, but why is it the woman who must change her name (lets just skip over the whole historical exchange of property thing and the fact that most men have to pay exorbitant fees to attempt to change their last names while it’s pretty much a freebie for women)?

Check this out: at that folks festival last week I met the most amazing couple.  They had just gotten married and were honeymooning at the festival.  I saw the license plate on their minivan and had to take a picture it was so awesome – “HERLAND.”  I asked why they had chosen that license plate (being an avid fan of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her Utopian story of Herland) and one of the women informed me that that was their last name, and that they had chosen it themselves.  They had combined their two last names to create a new one and both had their names changed.  Which is not only an awesome way to thumb your nose at a system that says married women must change their names in a state that will refuse to acknowledge this couples (same sex) marriage, but is really a much more beautiful tradition in my opinion.  This name belongs to both of them and will carry so much meaning when it is passed on.

Anyone else having a rough body image week/month/year?  It’s funny (in the sad and ironic sense) how much thought we can put into body image, how conceptually we can understand media pressure and unrealistic expectations and photoshopping, and yet these messages still affect us on deeply personal levels.  That even when we “get it,” we still feel badly that we don’t look perfect.  Because even if we’re doing it all, it would be better if we were doing it all while maintaining the perfect body.

Here are some powerful readings on the topic, which might also be useful to pass on to friends/partners/spouses/parents that can’t understand why you have to change your clothes six times before leaving the house.

on language, and body, and fear [feministe]

Let’s talk about: letting herself go. Watching your weight. Language of being on guard, of control, of threat, of shame. Constant vigilance. If you are not reigning yourself in, you should be ashamed. If you are fat, you will be subject to ridicule and shame, you will be unworthy of love and affection, you will not be deserving of basic respect unless, maybe, you are trying with all your energy to change it. Never mind spending energy having fun, being a good friend, discovering your passion. You can do those things when you’re thin.

Body Image and How We Haven’t Progressed as Much as We Think [gender across borders]

The same woman who pities the corseted girls of the past may very well go to the gym five times a week to do a hundred sit-ups on a Swiss ball and an hour of aerobics.  Most likely she is exacting about her diet, eats foods that have been stripped of various life-sustaining elements and thus keeps her body fat to a minimum.

Women and body image: a man’s perspective [telegraph]

For men the holy grail is within reach – you just need to get fit, and then you’ll be fine; then you can think about something else. But the messages aimed at women are much more complex and confusing. As the American social commentator Warren Farrell has pointed out, women’s magazines often contain articles about being Superwoman, which are next to adverts about being Cinderella.  In other words, the words tell women how to be independent and in control. But the adverts, where the money is, tell them they have to be beautiful.

A lot of quotes this week, folks.  People seem to be saying some cool things, and I have taken it upon myself to highlight them for you.

Rush Limbaugh was recently married (for the fourth time after three divorces – this is the sacred tradition of marriage between a man and a woman that he believes he is protecting from the gays, remember?) and he invited the very out and proud Sir Elton John to perform at the wedding.  Perplexing, no?  Apparently the gays make for great entertainment, even if they don’t deserve equal rights.  Classy.  Here’s what Elton had to say about it:

“Life is about building bridges, not walls. [It was a chance] to go where people wouldn’t expect me to go. And maybe if I can make a great impression, people might change their perspectives on life.”

- Sir Elton John

Now that actually is classy.  From Daily Express via Jezebel.

A lot of interesting links floating around out there regarding Sarah Palin and what it means to be a feminist.  And if those two things are mutually exclusive.  I’ll let you make up your own minds about that business and recommend the following links in your investigation.  However, I was pretty astonished by the following quote from Ms. Palin and wanted to throw that out there as well:

“To be judged on or to be talked about on appearance, say chest size — it makes me wear layers. It makes me have to waste time figuring out, What am I going to wear so that nobody will look in a area that I don’t need them to look at? I want them to hear what it is that I’m saying. It ends up wasting time and that’s just very, very unfortunate.”

- Sarah Palin on her boob-job rumors (via jezebel)

Sarah Palin, False Prophet [jezebel]

This is what I think of whenever I hear people talk about conservative Christian women “reclaiming” feminism, or blaming those mean and nasty “traditional” (read: “actual”) feminists for keeping them out. You don’t even want [it]. But you’d rather turn it into a lump of mush that nobody wants than let anyone else have it.

When feminism and conservative women collide [feminocracy]

As someone who has considered myself a feminist for quite some time, it’s amusing to watch feminism declared “dead” or “irrelevant” for years – or, paradoxically, responsible for everything from the divorce rate to crime and Everything That Is Wrong With America – then have it be resurrected and trample the political landscape in a zombie-like fashion, with little thought put into the use of the term by its new appropriators and eating all our brains, as those of us who didn’t shy away from the label internally combust from its perversion.

Who You Callin’ A Feminist? [this ain't livin']

I still don’t think it’s my business to determine who is feminist or not, and I hold to that. I am not interested in stripping people of the identities they claim. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that we should have conversations about the co-option of feminism, and about whether people who identify as feminist bear that identity out in their actions. I think that, evaluating Palin’s life and work, it’s pretty evident that her actions are not feminist.

Feminist Does Not Mean “Strong Woman” [red vinyl shoes]

Feminist does not mean “strong woman”. Conservative feminists conflate the two entirely, which is why they feel they can get away with calling themselves feminists while holding beliefs and supporting causes antithetical to feminism. By labeling every female Republican primary candidate “feminist” when they mean “strong woman” they seek to redefine the word so that they can appropriate it for their own benefit.

Pat Robertson has made it into our archives of misogyny before, but this one is really something else.  Remember that time that Tina Fey hosted SNL and implied through her tear-down of “Bombshell” McGee that a husband’s cheating is more the fault of the mistress than the husband?  Pat Robertson takes it a step further and educates us all on how it’s the wife’s laziness that drives her husband to cheat.

E-mailed Question: “My husband has always been a flirt and loves to talk with other women he finds attractive.  He says he would never cheat on me, but his actions are starting to get to me.  What should I do?”

Robertson’s response: “First thing is you need to make yourself as attractive as possible and, uh, don’t hassle him about it.  And why is he doing this?  Well, he’s doing it because he wants affirmation that he is still a man, that he is attractive, and, uh, he gets an affirmation of himself.  That means he’s got an inferiority complex that’s coming out, and, uh, he’s not gonna cheat on you – he’s just playin.  But you need to not drive him away, start hassling and hamming on him, but make yourself as beautiful as you can, as fun as you can, and say ‘let’s go out here, let’s go there, let’s go do the other thing’ so…”

Co-host, laughing: “He has a lot more grace than I do.  Let me just say, we’d be having a serious conversation.”

Robertson: “Affirmation!  Affirmation, dearheart!”

Co-host: “Yeah, yeah. A little bit of affirmation goes a long way.”

Wow.  So much fail.  I need to take this apart, bit by bit. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll admit that I usually link to others when I’m too busy to generate my own posts, but I came across so many others making points better than I could this week, that I had to give some shoutouts around the blogosphere.  Check out the following posts:

Tina Fey: Esquire Fantasy Edition [bitch blogs]

Help me out here, folks. What do we make of the celebrity Tina Fey? She’s hilarious and smart as a whip, but she’s also been in a slew of sexy photo shoots lately that reinforce the notion that a funny woman can only be famous if she is also hot (a recurring theme in 30 Rock, but does making fun of something make it any less problematic?).

Pretty ugly: Can we please stop pretending that beautiful women aren’t beautiful? [feministing]

So, what does it mean when even the “ugly” women on our screens are conventionally beautiful? Firstly, it means that the bar for female beauty is being set higher than ever: if Tina Fey, Lea Michele and America Ferrera are “ugly,” what hope is there for the rest of us?

An Ode to Law and Order [femunity]

The conversation that I got to have would have never happened if it was not for Law and Order taking on such an epidemic. And I hope, I really hope, that my conversation was one of many that took place last night as women and men watched the show and simply asked–why?

To Speak Softly or Roar Loudly? That is the question. [gender across borders]

According to an article in the Jobs section of the NY Times, “Ultimately, women must be more mindful and use greater finesse when conveying their messages. We need to become better chameleon communicators and to carefully read our audience, adjusting our style to the circumstances.”My knee-jerk reaction is: NO. I don’t want to have to accommodate a patriarchal culture. The culture needs to change to accommodate me, and the other 50% of the population.  But I would like a successful career.

Soldier As Rapist: All Too Common [ms. blog]

Since one-third of women who join the military are raped or sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers, we must recognize that the soldier as rapist is all too common. Given that rape and sexual assault rates rise in the civilian world during wartime, we must also recognize that militarized sexual violence is trickling down into our communities.

Read on!  And as always, you are more than welcome to leave links to other posts that caught your eye or that you’ve contributed to the discussion in the comments.

On the possibility of a female president: “I don’t see it happening because I don’t see one coming up the line in either party.”

On Hillary Clinton: “People don’t want to elect a feminist because they are not likeable. You have to be likeable to be elected.”

On the other hand: “Sarah Palin is the total package. She’s got a cute husband. She’s got a lot of kids.”

Keep it classy, Phyllis.  From Politics Daily via Jezebel.

So I’m minding my own business, studying at my favorite bookstore coffeeshop, when I look up to give my eyes a break and what do I see?  This:

Exclusive! “TIGER: Raw, Never-Before-Seen Photos! by Annie Lebovitz”

Ahh, yes, always one to bring the scandal (remember the Miley Cyrus / Billy Ray Electra controversy last year?) I am not surprised to see Ms. Lebovitz has a hand in this.

“The MYSTERY of a SPORTS SUPERSTAR we thought we knew”

What is going on here.  Do I think that Tiger’s affairs should be cover material?  No, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles, isn’t it.  I don’t see why any celebrity (or politician) sex scandal deserves front-page anything, save for our human voyeurism.  But how is it that after all the scandal Tiger still comes out as an Adonis?

I can’t even think of a role-reversal example of this to compare it to.  We typically are left with the aftermath of a husband-gone-wild and a wife in shambles, where Mr. Wild Oats comes across as the bad guy.  It is rare that we see as much attention paid to scandals of Mrs. Wild Oats’s adventures of her own.  But, if we did, I think it’s safe to say that Mrs. Wild Oats would play the role of slut/whore/bitch and not be featured on the cover of fashion magazines as a brooding sexual object only months after the debacle.

And yet, there Tiger is in all his shirtless, weight lifting glory (where are the golf clubs?), with Never-Before-Seen Photos! and an Exclusive! insight into the MYSTERY of the man we “thought we knew.”  Please.  Vanity Fair will do anything to move their lavatory literature.

Can you think of any examples of women in Tiger’s position that come out on top?

Yesterday in one of my graduate level classes we had a guest speaker who shared with us some of his experiences and thoughts about being a crossdresser.  He reported that he spent 95% of his time as a man and didn’t have a “chip on [his] shoulder” about the questions we asked him or the pronouns we used to refer to him, so despite his being dressed as a woman yesterday I’ll be referring to this individual as “him.”  Although he gave us the disclaimer that we could ask anything, I still wasn’t comfortable asking everything I wanted to or voicing some things I was struggling to understand, but I figured this was as good a place as any to work through my thoughts.

I was born female and identify as female, and I view that as a privilege.  I don’t know what it’s like to be born in the wrong body, but I believe it can and does happen, and I believe it can and does make life harder for many people.  I also understand that there are individuals who are drawn to crossdressing who have no feelings of wanting to be the other gender, but simply like the way it feels or the way they look when they experiment with gender atypical attire.  But something wasn’t sitting right with me today.

Our guest speaker kept repeating, as he showed us pictures of 50s housewives doing chores in dresses and heels, “doesn’t that look like fun!?”  Maybe.  But not to me.  And the idea that this was once an expectation for women but is now seen as kitchy, cute, and “fun” rubs me the wrong way.  Women have worked long and hard to have the option to get out of that role, and “fun” kind of belittles that struggle.  I was also getting bogged down in privilege-tied guilt that its acceptable for me as a woman to dress in “male” clothing and the reverse isn’t true for men. I firmly believe that rigid gender roles cut both ways and hurt both women and men, too.  It sucks that men can’t dress how they want, and our speaker was right in stating that it’s not fair.  But it’s a little more complicated than that. More thoughts after the jump.

Particularly if you are in the academic world (grad students and junior faculty, I’m looking at you) I highly recommend you check out the Gender Bias Learning Project website.

Joan Williams and her colleagues at the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law has put together a fantastic interactive, educational website that illustrates the many ways that gender biases and double standards can create hurdles for women in the workplace.  The site is filled with fun videos that illustrate different biases, suggestions for overcoming them, and conversation starters that can be used with friends and coworkers.

I’m still exploring the site and really enjoying it, but I’m more of a reader than a viewer, so I kind of wish there were more written resources available on the site.  It would also be great if there were some sort of student version of this project.  Clearly, working women face these problems every day, and I think that  a great way to start preempting these issues is to educate our young people (high school and university students), not only to make them aware of the issues, but to help nip them in the bud.

In my own experience as a TA and lab instructor I always try to find ways to incorporate diversity issues, including the implications and influences of gender, race, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation.  Reactions are always (predictably) mixed with some students thinking in new ways and others wondering why we’re wasting our time talking about dumb issues.

To those of you who teach, how do you approach these issues?  To those of you who are and have been students, did you ever have any instructors that did an exceptional job of incorporating these issues?  What are your recommendations?

Shoutouts to Alethea Joy for bringing this project to my attention!