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

[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 Mostly I feel OK about it because I perceive it as our name and nothing at all to do with his family or outdated notions of my being a chattel.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.