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.

This is a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships at small strokes.  If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.

Last week my partner and I went out to dinner to celebrate the six-year anniversary of our first date.  I wore grey jeans and a black, short-sleeved blouse with my short dark hair up in a pompadour.  He wore khaki shorts and a long sleeved pale-blue dress shirt.  And after we finished eating, our waiter asked us if we wanted two checks or one.  And I loved it.

Seated at the next table was a proudly married couple.  She was dressed in platform wedge sandals, a pastel skirt past the knee, and a pale pink shirt.  He was dressed in frat-boy plaid shorts and a navy blue polo.  They held hands over the table, shiny wedding rings sparkling, and asked for an alcohol-free wine list.  Ahh… I thought to myself, we are so different here.

You see, we are both midwestern transplants out here in Utah, and we don’t really blend in with the majority culture out here.  I mention this because I think it’s relevant to the way that I am comfortable “displaying” my relationship in public.  Which is to say, I’m not.

Along with “feminist,” one of the most important pieces of my identity is “ally.”  And this means that I try to examine my apparent heterosexual privilege as much as possible.  It wasn’t easy moving across the country with my partner and trying to find a place to live as an unmarried couple here, but it was a lot easier than it would have been if we weren’t One Man and One Woman.  I am privileged by the fact that the person that I fell in love with portrays the opposite gender to the word, and so we look like people expect us to look.  We could hold hands in public, we could snuggle at the movies, we could kiss outside the restaurant and most people wouldn’t comment. But I spend a lot of time wondering how different that would be if I happened to be partnered with a woman.  I don’t think that it’s okay that I would suddenly have to consider my own safety and the safety of my partner just to express affection outside our home (which here, I would).  So I don’t engage with that privilege in public. Maybe if I lived someplace where that didn’t feel like an in-your-face flaunt of hetero privilege things would be different.  Maybe not.

Add to those two pieces of my identity “independent.” I am one person.  I am one whole person.  My partner loves that whole person that I am.  He’s his own person, too.  We’re committed to each other (three years long distance followed by three years living together and we’re still doing fine, thank you), but we’re not married.  We don’t need to be in order for our relationship to be meaningful, in order for our promises of fidelity to be taken seriously, in order for our friends and family to recognize our commitment.  I don’t wear a wedding ring, engagement ring, or promise ring and neither does he.  For me, this is about the fact that my relationship status isn’t the business of, well, anybody.  It’s not something I need or want people to know just by looking at me.

So when the waiter asked if we wanted separate checks, I felt a little proud in addition to greatly amused.  We gave the impression of two independent people out to dinner to enjoy one another’s company and some good food.  We weren’t one couple, we were two people.

Oh, and if you’re curious, my partner paid for dinner since I bought the tickets to the play we went to later.

Ahh intentions.  Maybe it’s a pessimism/optimism thing.  You know, glass half empty, glass half full; people are inherently good, people are inherently dipshits evil.  I try to give the benefit of the doubt, and I’m certain that I don’t always do this when I should, and sometimes I do it when I shouldn’t.  But I really do try to work from the assumption that most people don’t mean any harm and that a fair amount of what is perceived as malice is often just ignorance.  Ignorance is something that is easier to modify than intentional cruelty.

Take it from Rabbit Lord of the Undead:

You harbour racist beliefs and assumptions. This, by itself, is not actually your fault and says nothing one way or another about you as a person except you live in a society filled with racist images and texts. It would be remarkable if you didn’t absorb at least some of what your environment has to teach you.

So what can we do about it?

Non-white people have been writing about their experiences for a long time and their writings are widely available. Find them. Read them. And always, always understand that a person who is sharing their lived experience with you is giving you a gift. It’s their life. Sharing it with you puts them in an incredibly vulnerable position. It’s not a philosophical point about which reasonable people can reasonably disagree and it’s not a debate topic…  Try to not fuck up. When you do apologise. Understand what it is you are apologising for (and it’s not ‘I’m sorry if you were offended by my completely harmless words’). Work on becoming a person who can be trusted by people who have had their trust shattered every day of their lives.

Rabbit’s post is about understanding white privilege – and this is clearly an important area in which to understand your own privilege – but there are countless other areas in which this advice fits.  We all hold some types of privilege, and we all have enormous gaps in our understanding of the experiences of others.  We all say stupid things and hurt people.  Hopefully, this usually happens unintentionally and we can genuinely listen to feedback, learn from it, and do better next time.  But just because we are trying doesn’t mean that we have earned a free ride.

One of the first rules of interacting with a group you hold privilege over is to remember that they have no reason to trust you. Not because you, personally, are a bad person, but because there is a history with people like you and the group you are interacting with. In the case of Nice Guys, that’s a complex and long and very sordid history.

s.e. smith has a great discussion of this in terms of Nice Guys and feminism over at this ain’t livin’:

Here’s the thing about Nice Guys. They want to tell you that they are different from everyone else. They are more understanding. They identify as feminist. They are not like those other men. And, apparently, we are supposed to magically be able to discern this, even if we have never met someone before, never interacted with him before, and have no idea who he is. Because he is a Nice Guy, his Nice Guyness shines out from him like a gentle light of goodness, alerting us to the fact that he means us no harm.

So what’s my (our?) point?  No matter who you are, no matter what your intentions, no matter what (or how much) you think you know, you’re flawed.  You’re imperfect, and you’re going to mess up.  Don’t try to explain yourself (“You misunderstood, what I meant was…”, “But I’m not [insert -ist here]..”), don’t try to dig yourself out, don’t try to convince the other person that the mistake was theirs in interpreting your words.  Gracefully listen.  Step across the issue and look at it from their perspective.  Internalize that.  Apologize.  And thank them for putting up with you.  This is how we all get better, one encounter at a time.

“Children should be allowed to express themselves in whatever way they wish without anybody judging them because it is an important part of their growth… Society always has something to learn when it comes to the way we judge each other, label each other. We have far to go…  I think she [her daughter Shiloh] is fascinating, the choices she is making. And I would never be the kind of parent to force somebody to be something they are not. I think that is just bad parenting.”

- Angelina Jolie

From ET via Jezebel.

I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable about a lot of things.  In particular, among a lot of my peers I’m sometimes considered the “women’s issues” expert, and people come to me specifically for my opinion “as a feminist.”  But I don’t know everything.  I have friends I can turn to for questions about ethnic diversity, multicultrualism, GLBQ understanding, and so on.  However, I’ve only begun learning about each of these.  And that pesky little “T” is often left out of these discussions (for instance, the Allies training at my university held a separate session on trans issues rather than covering them in the initial training).  So I am doing my best to become educated about the experiences of trans individuals.  And I will admit that that meant that the first thing I did was wikipedia the word “cis” that I kept seeing around.

Cisgender is an adjective used in the context of gender issues and counselling to refer to a class of gender identities formed by a match between an individual’s gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one’s sex.^[1] Cisgender is a neologism that means “someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth”, according to Calpernia Addams.^[2] “Cisgender” is used to contrast “transgender” on the gender spectrum.

This is how we learn.  It can be embarrassing, nerve-wracking, and above all humbling to admit when we don’t know and ask for more information.  It can feel almost shameful to stumble around looking for answers to questions we feel like we should just understand already.  But I encourage each of us to keep searching, keep learning, and keep asking (sensitively) so that we can become better friends, allies, and general human beings.  Here are some other great articles on trans issues that I’ve come across this week.

Who am I? [feministing]

I am tired-tired of my transgender identity being pushed aside by my LGBT people, by my brothers and sisters- the organizations, groups, and individuals pushing us-the T aside- in order to push their agenda further. Telling me, telling us that our time will come, that we will have a way, an option, a fight, an ally. I am the one who is tired and refuses to wait for that time, but one of many who makes their own time!I am one of many who will take our place in the struggle for equality. Not jogging behind, or stepped on, but standing next too our sisters and brothers fighting for equal rights- in addition to trans rights- not in lieu of them. I am the pissed off transgender womyn-with a y- who will forcefully take my place in the front line, not as a token, but as a warrior for peaceful means for equality.

You don’t get to out me [feministe]

When I out myself, or am outed, I never know what the reaction will be. Before hormones, and early transition, my transness was noticed quite frequently. Now, I have to be outed—by my documents most often, or by my friends, family and acquaintances. Which is where y’all come in. So here’s the deal: if you out us, you can do more damage than you can possibly imagine.

The Term Same Sex Marriage = Cissexist [amplify]

We have done something right by framing the issue as “marriage equality” or “civil marriage”. But the term “same sex marriage” simply creates a binary of cisgender male marries cisgender female, cisgender male marries cisgender male, or cisgender female marries cigender female.

I guess the answer to the question I proposed a couple of days ago (“Anyone else having a rough body image week/month/year?”) is a resounding “yes.”  The bad news is that it sucks to feel like crap about the body that you inhabit, and this is something that the majority of women experience from time to time at best, and most of the time, well, most of the time.  The good news is that we have platforms where we can talk about our feelings, experiences, and the culture that puts these ideas in our heads.

Here are a few more posts from the last few days on body image.

Being a Comfortable “Other” [fbomb]

Renowned scientists and doctors agree that low self-esteem, poor body image, depression, perfectionism, and rigid thinking patterns can lead to anorexia in adolescent girls. All of these are things that can come from viewing negative images of women in the media. Studies have shown that even a small exposure to these types of images can cause immediate drops in self-esteem, positive body images, and happiness. Rigid thinking patters can come in the form of stereotypes that girls feel the need to conform to, and the idea of perfectionism collides with the idea of the “perfect” body.

My Day As An Anti-Feminist (Role) Model [the ms. education of shelby knox]

After I got to New York and into feminist activism, I gained a perspective on beauty that eased my body hatred a bit. I realized that what’s ugly in one culture is desirable in another and vice versa and that this constant pressure –- applied to women by the media, our friends, our family, random strangers on the street and online -– to be unnaturally thin is another form of sexism that at best hobbles women by making us spend unnatural amounts of time concerned with our appearance and at worst, kills.

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.

We recently upgraded to WordPress 3.0, which meant that a bunch of our customized settings got wiped.  And since it’s been a year since I changed them, and computer science and web design are not my forte, I haven’t quite figured out how to change them all back to the way that I like them.  So you may have noticed this:

As a matter of fact, I (currently) do have short brown hair, and although I prefer black t-shirts to blue, it is theoretically possible that the standard wordpress avatar might represent me.  Except that this is another example of the male-as-default thing that most people don’t notice most of the time. (For more on this trend check out this post at Sociological Images.)

I guess the default blogger is a white guy with short brown hair and a blue t-shirt.  And I guess it’s not important to make it easy for anyone who doesn’t want to be represented by that little dude to change their avatar.  Thanks WordPress.

This irritates me.  Hopefully I’ll fix it soon.

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.

Lady Gaga expresses her hopes for the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, bans on gay blood donors, and restrictions and discrimination faced by teens in the American education system.  (She’s not super well-spoken, but she has some inspiring points – it’d be great to hear more of this type of thing from public figures in pop culture who, whether they like it or not and whether they admit it or not, are role models for many youth and adolescents.)

“There are so many archaic things floating around in the the government right now that are so misinformed and so wrong and it’s very confusing.  It’s very confusing for young people, especially, you know, 14 year-olds in high school that are getting sent home because they have t-shirts that say ‘gay’ on it, as if gay is a curse word or somehow inappropriate.  I just think that, in terms of education – sexual education, political education, and social education in schools – I think that it’s important to be specific about civil rights and a person’s worth.  No person’s worth any less than another human being based on their sexual orientation.”

You can check out more moments of Lady Gaga’s Larry King interview over at Jezebel.