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.

[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]

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.

[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.