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

[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.