Feminisms

[faustus]

I've recently been copied into an email correspondence with a writer who claims not to be a feminist. Have you been educated beyond the age of 10? Are you published under a name rather than initials? Do you work other than in a factory, as a teacher, a nurse, a nanny or a mother? Still, her choice, of course. Her life would have been very different without feminism though. I did enjoy that the response to her began Ms---.

And on a related note, an account from a woman who, like Rose Marie in A Very Peculiar Practice, has rejected the patronymic. Curious how such things are now more difficult than they were. I wonder how Peri 6 copes.

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

It's a very small world.....

I strongly suspect that the writer in question would be utterly comfortable with describing herself as a feminist in nineteenth and early twentieth century terms. The issue is that she does not regard herself as actively advocating feminism and a critique in the modern world which is what was implied by the other person in this discussion.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

No doubt - the exchange I've seen part of opens up a large number of cans of worms but I've not read the thing that set it off. She is of course free to take or disavow any label she wants. Still, maybe the invisibility of the novelty of education of women and the vote is in itself is a success of feminism.

Normally about this time of year I see a classroonm half full of people who don't see themselves as having any connection to any form of feminism but are only there because of it. (The other half are male, and feel that the pendulum has swung too far, because now we have Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) I also spent part of last night talking to a woman who had just realised she did all the cooking, cleaning etc for her ex- and let him choose her clothes, yet thought of herself as a feminist.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree it's a can of worms. Assuming we are talking about the same person (whcih we may not be of course), I did find it remarkably odd in that discussing intention he hadn't actually checked to see what she had said on the matter.


Re the last one: oh dear. But not the first or last to get into that rut.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I'm not identifying the writer - in fact I probably should have said person or woman because the specifics aren't what matter. (And I actually like her as a person even if she does infuriate me on occasion.) Just a constellation of thoughts around issues of female (and other) identity.

Intention in itself is a can of worms. Public pronouncements are worth taking into account - but my experience of working with Philip K. Dick's fiction is that I could often find a quotation from him to support the opposite position. Sometimes an attitude is not apparent to a speaker. ("I'm no racist/amti-semite/homophobe but ...") Ideology blinds us. Still, I haven't read the article that sparked the exchange.


Not the first, sadly not the last. From two meetings she strikes me as a trainwreck waiting to happen, but that a gut reaction and probably prejudiced as a result. There's just something about women and pints of Stella that often doesn't end well. Of course, it need not end wel with men either.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Fascinating article. I remember when I got married, and decided not to change my name, my mother asked me why I preferred my father's name to my husband's. I didn't see it that way--my name was MY name, and always had been!

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

It always strikes me most forcefully when writing about Frankenstein and the Creature, who is nameless, by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley.

My own issues (beyond the omission of my middle intitial) tend to revolve around titles not surnames (the patronymic is likely to die with me in this genbe line). In a rarity of self-esteem I insist on Dr A over Mr A - preferring A to either. Whenever I get a letter addressed to Mr A I think, he lives in Newcastle. When I had trouble with my fridge, suddenly I became Mrs A. Sexism is alive and well and living in consumerism.

[dalmeny]

I feel a bit up myself when I use Dr, but it does nicely avoid the whole Miss/Mrs/Ms issue (no prizes for guessing which one I used before I got the PhD). It makes me feel slightly more secure in my credentials when I turn up at a meeting as a fancy consultant or tech expert. It also makes it easier to weed out junk mail and calls if they're addressed to Mr Dalmeny or Mrs Dalmeny. I did have a medical doctor who gave me grief over it though. Bugger him.

My Javanese friends tell me that the custom there is to make up your child's surname, so siblings do not share a surname with each other or their parents, it's just a second name.

My experience with I'm-not-a-feminist-but people is that they often change their minds once they read the actual definition of feminism. One of my LJ friends, after months of denial, finally had a look at Wikipedia and then announced her newly-discovered feminism with great enthusiasm. Up until then she'd associated the term purely with the run-with-the-wolves women and not with the gender-equity lot.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I think I worked out that I'd worked bloody hard for it and deserved it, and if it got me a slightly better airline seat then... (The one time it did, I was assumed to be Mr fjm or Dr FJM's husband which was disturbing on more levels than would be polite to acknowledge. I have also had the "Are you a medical doctor?" moment, to which I didn't reply that I do smeicolons; not colons.)

With Mr there is a whole class status thing and who is the elder/eldest son thing (Esq. is as bad) which isn't quite as impertinent as assumptions about one's marital status which are gleaned from the use of title and whose initial. (Apparently Ambrose Bierce suggested the use of Mush as the male equivalent to Miss.)

There are moments when I think that some of the worst advertisements for an idea can be some of the people that hold it - but the media is very good at patriarchal propaganda. It always feels odd, as a male, to be telling women what feminism is. Hello grandmother, here's an egg... I try to play to its plurality, but the burning bra image is so strong.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I have also had the "Are you a medical doctor?" moment

My PhD is actually in history of medicine: my leeches and cupping glasses, let me show you them.

And more seriously, I think there are real problems with the way that feminism gets defined by the media, whether it's in the direction of 'hairylegged humourless bra-burner' or conversely 'pole-dancing as female empowerment' at the other end of the spectrum.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting article - all too easy to predict the problems of not fitting the computerised system.

Some days I worry about the fact that I changed from my father's name (an ugly name I never liked) to my husband's name (which I appreciate for its being unusual). Mostly I feel OK about it because I perceive it as our name and nothing at all to do with his family or outdated notions of my being a chattel. I do insist on being Ms though, just to confuse. And woe betide any person who calls me Mrs Husband's Fullname.

Interestingly (imo) my mother has always regretted taking my father's name. She and her sister were the last with her family name, as also happened with the generation before in which her mother was one of three girls. My mother has always tended to identify herself as A Maiden-name not as A Married-name.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I think there's something to be said for Vonnegut's idea about new names (middle names?) being allocated to individuals. There's no reason why you should get on with any of the Daffodil 11s more than your own family, but it does escape ownership.

Is it the substitute family that appeals to me in Whedon's stuff? I fear that the one in Firefly would have been picked apart as it was in later seasons of Buffy and Angel for purely dramatic reasons, and that hurts.

eek., better go teach mid thought.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I'm not certain that my name has anything more to do with my identity than does what I do for a living and you know how I feel about the latter.

Of course, there's the question of people taking liberties with my first name, which annoys the hell out of me: if it's not to do with identity why should I care; if it is to do with identity how come other people get to mess with it/impose their own version.

Who knows what I think? The only thing that is clear is that I am avoiding work today.