[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
And don't forget to tip your bartender!
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
And don't forget to tip your bartender!
This Isn't Disturbing at All
Let's all watch this gif of Leonardo DiCaprio doing a Jack Nicholson impression on a Japanese talk show until our heads explode:
On Naming, Identity, and Choice: Part II
[Part One is here.]
So. One of the results of a culture of judgment in which women's choices about everything from the shoes they wear to the sexual partners they take is that there emerges a language of easy responses to common judgments.
Some of these are reflexive qualifications, like the familiar, "I'm a feminist, but I don't hate men," which is a preemptive response to the ubiquitous judgment that feminism is not about hating patriarchy, but hating male people.
And some of them are responses like those being discussed inside the conversation about name-changing. The example I used in part one was: "I wanted my whole family to have the same last name." The examples Jill Filipovic used in her piece were:
"We want our family to share a name" or "His last name was better" or "My last name was just my dad's anyway" – all reasons that make no sense.Leaving aside the entirely subjective assessment of whether those reasons "make sense," if they don't "make sense" to you, well, maybe there's a reason for that. And that reason might be that they are being employed as easy responses to a common judgment.
I want to clearly acknowledge that some women cite those reasons authentically. Period. Pause. Break.
I also want to clearly acknowledge that some women cite those reasons uncritically, as in they've never really thought about it much, but those reasons resonate to one degree or another. Period. Pause. Break.
And there are women who cite those reasons because their prevalence makes them an easy deflection of someone impertinently asking her, directly or obliquely, to justify her choice.
This is a thing that humans do. Particularly when we are in a vulnerable spot, like being asked to justify an intimate decision irrespective of our having invited the discussion, humans tend to reach for familiar turns of phrase that we expect will suffice, specifically because of their familiarity.
We intuit, quite reasonably, that words which a judgmental inquisitor has heard before, and thus can easily be placed within an existent framework, will halt the inquisition. And that tends to work even when the person doing the asking doesn't like your answer.
It's great that there are women who are willing to publicly discuss decisions about name-changing! I love so much when women speak and write about the choices they make through the specific and unique prism of their individual circumstances!
BUT. No one is obliged to do that. And none of us are entitled to reasons that "make sense." None of us are entitled to forthright answers about complex personal decisions on demand.
If we can acknowledge that asking women to publicly comment on and justify their reproductive decisions and circumstances is wrong, then we need to similarly be able to acknowledge that asking women to publicly comment on and justify other personal, intimate decisions is wrong.
(Especially when we acknowledge there are women who change their names for immensely personal and sometimes traumatic reasons. No woman should be expected to disclose a history of familial abuse or sexual violence/stalking in order to be deemed A Good Feminist Who Changed Her Name for an Acceptable Reason.)
There is a deep tension surrounding the way we set off as fair game the very personal decisions regarding name-changing, in a way we do not for equivalently personal women's choices.
On the one hand, people are arguing that YOUR NAME IS YOUR IDENTITY! and it's so goddamn important that you should never change it for any reason ever—and, on the other hand, people are treating name-changing like something so casual that it's NO BIG WHOOP to demand women to justify their choices to anyone who asks.
Your name is everything when we want to judge you. Your name is nothing special when we demand you publicly account for your decisions around it. It's exactly as important or unimportant as we deem it to be in order to audit your choices.
This is bullshit. This is bullshit.
It might not be the worst thing if a woman offering a
Because seriously? It isn't.
Friday Blogaround: Women's History Month Edition
This roundup brought to you by International Women's Day.
Some Women's History-related blogs:
Keri: Amazing Women of History with a post on Huda Shaarwi, Egyptian Feminist.
Melisande: Women of History writes on The Bones of Arsinoe IV
Women's History Network Blog with a post on Up in the Air: Women Flight Attendants and Equality
The Suffrage Wagon on Safiya Bandele's Performance of Ida. B. Wells.
Maggie: Women of American History Blog with a post on Madeline La Framboise: Native American Businesswoman
Shelby: Radical Women's History Project on Jessie de la Cruz
And here are some archival links of interest:
Brown University's Women Writers Project has full transcriptions of over 320 texts published between 1526 and 1850.
Chick History has the Civil War Diaries on Twitter, bringing you daily updates from the diaries of seven women who lived through the Civil War.
People With a History is a guide to online sources in LGBT*Q history.
The U.S. National Archives has your Pathfinder for Women's History.
The Atlantic Canada Virtual Archives has collections related to Loyalist Women in New Brunswick and The McQueen Family Letters.
Daily Dose of Cute
Sophie the Cat Loaf, on the cat tree beside my desk.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In The News
Deeky is preparing his keynote address for the Butt Convention at the Stethoscope Institute, so you're stuck with me today...
[Content Note: Bombs; consent to agency; racism.]
Senator Rand Paul is "seriously" considering running for president in 2016. *practices typing something something Rand Paul*
In totally unrelated news, Senator Rand Paul praises horrendous Supreme Court decision and would let employers ruthlessly exploit workers. He seems like a cool guy, right? Such a cool guy. I wonder where he stands on whether people are entitled to food.
The pope election begins next Tuesday! Vote early and often or whatever! Huh? We don't get a vote? Oh. Well, the Catholic Church should have no influence on policy that affects my life! Seems fair.
A very scary climate change graph just got even scarier.
So did a chart tracking the gender wage gap.
Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks it's fundamentally wrong that banks who launder money for drug cartels get fined while drug users go to jail.
A TSA inspector with fake bomb in his pants "was able to get past security at Newark airport last month, passing through the magnetometer and a pat-down without being detained." Swell.
Idaho's "fetal pain" bill that bans abortion after 20 weeks has been struck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge.
Adam Carolla is still a racist garbage nightmare.
Dolphins may call each other by names. Neat! But where do dolphins stand on name-changing?
I Never Say The F-Word
I'm a feminist.
It may not seem like a secret: after all, I post it on my Facebook page, on my Twitter account, and on my website. I comment on feminist sites, am part of moderation teams for feminist sites, and almost all of the writings on my blog are feminist in nature. To the online community and my online friends, the fact that I am a feminist should be no shocker.
But in real life, in what I like to call "facespace", I never say the F-word, I never call myself a feminist.
I'm not ashamed of what and who I am. But I live in a deeply conservative community where I don't feel safe being openly "out" about my social and political beliefs. I live and navigate in a world where being openly and vocally known as a feminist can result in serious pushback in my personal and professional life. So while I don't actively hide who I am in facespace, I am very careful never to advertise it. And because they don't ask, and because I don't tell, and because the bulk of people I live and work with are proud non-users of social media, I pass relatively painlessly through my conservative environment.
I live in a community where I have been brought up short by a female coworker -- a woman engineer like me, a divorcee and survivor of an abusive marriage also just like me -- stopping me in the middle of an otherwise perfectly banal conversation to ask me in an accusing voice, "You're not one of those feminists, are you?" Confused and alarmed by her obvious disapproval and unexpected insight, I could only stammer jokingly that I thought everyone was, to which she gravely informed me that no, she certainly was not. Only rarely did she speak to me again after that.
I live in a community where I have been shamed and scolded -- from both sides of the issue -- over the decision of whether to change my name when I married. Before I made my decision, several people in my private circle felt it was appropriate to vocally question whether or not I could really love my husband if I didn't take his name and how he could ever really trust me if I didn't. After I made my decision, I experienced more than one shaming session where men at work literally yelled at me for changing my name and making it more difficult to find me in the company email directory.
I live in a community where many of my male coworkers can go their entire work day without meaningfully interacting with a woman, and where I am regularly treated as an object of strangeness and mystery, available to shed light on the strange vagaries of woman-kind. What do I think about this whole birth control thing? Can I explain why abortion really needs to be legal when there's always adoption? Do I as a woman vote for Sarah Palin, who is a Woman Just Like Me, or do I vote for that Democrat party that supposedly all the women go for these days? (You know, the one with the black senator that everyone is always talking about in the news. Did I know that he's the abortioniest senator in the senate? Fox News said so.)
I live in a community where I have on more than one occasion been forced to haul out the words "because my husband doesn't like me to" in order to get out of situations where I was being bullied and pressured into doing things that I didn't feel comfortable doing. After saying firmly and repeatedly that I didn't want to do these things, that I wouldn't do these things, and that I didn't feel comfortable being repeatedly asked to do these things -- all to no avail -- I dragged out the magic words that I hate-hate-hate to use. "My husband doesn't like me to" is the mantra that evaporates every objection in my community; a protective cloak that I resent being forced to wear by a community that considers my own consent to be meaningless even as it values my husband's consent not for who he is but for what he represents. (And, for the record, my husband respects my consent even when our community does not. I have his consent to use him as an excuse when I am forced to navigate these social hurdles.)
And because I am a feminist and because I care about the social messages involved in this daily navigation and specifically because I have entrenched issues with being Hard On Myself, I frequently feel guilty for making the compromises I have to in order to navigate safely through a conservative patriarchal environment. And I feel cowardly for not being more vocal, more obvious, more "out" -- and professional and personal consequences be damned.
But then I remember how much I need my job and my health care just to survive and how strongly I require a robust social network in order to live with my disability, and I remember all over again all the reasons why I don't say the F-word, why I don't openly and vocally identify as a feminist in facespace: I can't afford to. It's too risky. It's too dangerous. And so I creep back undercover and long for the day when my online activism can meet my facespace movements without fear of reprisals.
I'm a feminist because, as Amadi wonderfully defines it, I conduct cultural critique and policy analysis while still understanding that my individual choices are choices that are made under a tremendous amount of social coercion. And I recognize that even though those patterns of coercion may not seem obvious to everyone, they nonetheless exist.
I would never call someone who felt forced to conceal a part of their identity for reasons of safety and survival a coward. I realize now that I need to stop internally calling myself that for my choice to conceal my social and political leanings from the people in my facespace in order to protect myself.
The fact that I don't feel safe saying the F-word doesn't make me a C-word. Coward, that is.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: The lyrics of this song include storytelling about surviving violent racism and misogyny.]
Nina Simone, "Four Women."
On Naming, Identity, and Choice
Yesterday, Jill Filipovic wrote a piece for the Guardian about male-partnered women changing their names upon marriage. The subtitle of the piece is: "Your name is your identity. The reasons women give for changing their names after marrying don't make much sense." and she says in the piece that she "fundamentally...oppose[s] changing your name."
A familiar debate about name-changing and individual choice ensued on Twitter (and elsewhere), which highlighted many of the issues that are casually elided with this position, including cultural differences in naming traditions, disparities in the authenticity of externally perceived choice (i.e. different pressures on individual women in separate spaces), and, if Filipovic is right that "Your name is your identity," are we not keen to support women in decisions about self-defined identity.
I have made my position on name-changing abundantly clear, and, while I absolutely believe it is important to do awareness-raising around the option to keep one's name, I also believe it is possible to have those conversations without judging women for whatever choices they ultimate make.
Central to feminism is the idea that women are not a monolith, and recognizing that individual women have individual reasons for their individual choices is a crucial act in demonolithizing women.
(As an aside, I have also found that many of the reasons deemed insufficiently reasonable, e.g. "I wanted my whole family to have the same last name," frequently are simplistic expressions of a more complex motivation. Sometimes they are not, but sometimes they are an easy and less vulnerable way to communicate something about insecurity or belonging or symbolically establishing new family patterns after a lifetime of dysfunction.)
Anyway. I noticed a couple of things about the public discussion of the piece and its assertions that I want to mention.
1. This conversation tends to treat changing one's name as a zero-sum game.
You either change your name, or you don't. But as I have previously mentioned, I effectively have two names: My professional, public name is my first name + Iain's last name. I also maintain private accounts and a personal online presence to keep in touch with friends and distant family under my first name + my father's last name, i.e. my "birth name." I am known by both my birth name and my married name. I am not just Melissa Lastname or Melissa McEwan. Even Iain will casually refer to me as Lastname. As in, "Give me a break, Lastname," when I asked him to get the mail at midnight the other night, heh.
Some friends call me Melissa. Some call me Liss. Some call me various other nicknames. I am introduced as Melissa Lastname or as Melissa McEwan, depending on who's doing the introduction, and however I'm introduced is fine with me.
It's really helpful for me to have two names. I can't have a private online anything anymore under the name Melissa McEwan, but I can under my birth name—which is useful for both practical reasons and psychological reasons, as "Melissa McEwan" gets to feel like a brand sometimes, or the person strangers define to to be, rather than who I actually am.
(There's that whole identity thing again.)
It's eminently possible to straddle multiple identities, and I don't think I'm the only one who does.
2. Women who have changed their names, and defend themselves against sweeping judgment for their choice, are accused of being defensive and emotional.
First I want to say this: My position would be the same whether I changed my name or whether I didn't. I can't make anyone believe that, if they're not inclined to do so, but there it is. And I take no shame in defending and being emotional about (these are bad things now?) challenging the policing of women's choices. I am defensive and emotional on behalf of women who do not change their names. I am defensive and emotional on behalf of women who do change their names. Because I don't care what choice you make: I care that you do, or don't, have a choice.
Secondly, I want to state plainly that I am indeed defensive and emotional about my own name change, too—because I was forced to be by my government, who made me "prove" that my relationship was real in order to keep it. The default position of immigration services is essentially: "We don't believe your relationship is real and we do believe you are trying to scam us; prove us wrong." (And "proof" of commitment is subjectively assessed by individual agents with individual biases that may dispose them toward suspicion or outright hostility for name-changing.) Being challenged to defend and be demonstrably emotional about your relationship is the sort of thing that makes a lady defensive and emotional, and I don't have any shame about that, either.
3. Everyone is an exception.
I am one of hundreds of thousands of USians who have gone through this immigration process, each of which involves a different-sex couple (because the same right is not yet extended to same-sex couples) and thus a woman faced with the decision of a name-change that is not just about her preference, but is about convincing a deeply patriarchal institution that her relationship is legitimate.
And yet, I am still regarded, even by those who would begrudgingly concede the pressing parameters of my individual circumstance, as an exception. Okay, your choice, sure, I get it, but about all those other women... But I am one of a multitude of women in the same circumstance, some of whom will roll the dice without a name change, and some of whom won't.
And then someone will pipe up about this circumstance, or that one, or this other one, things like, say, how their professional life in a conservative place could be compromised by openly identifying as feminist by doing something like not changing one's name, and each woman with Her Reason is treated like an exception to some larger group of monolithized women who definitely don't have any good reasons for changing their names, rather than collectively being regarded as evidence that maybe this shit is more complex than Doing It Right or Doing It Wrong.
If only there were an existent framework which competently and confidently makes the argument that women should be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves!
*thatface*
* * *
I don't have any brilliant fucking conclusion to tie it all into a bow, so I'll just say this again: I love women. I respect women. I trust women. Not as part of some abstract, theoretical feminism but as part of an applied, practical feminism that urges me to love by nonjudgment, respect by listening, trust by supporting individual choices.
Bill Clinton Says It's Time to Throw DOMA in the Garbage
DOMA belonged in the garbage right from the start, and I was super pissed at former President Bill Clinton when he signed it into law 17 years ago, even understanding that he did it ostensibly to avoid an even worse and more deeply entrenched ban on same-sex marriage. But I also recognize the crucial symbolic and practical import of the president who signed the legislation now writing in the Washington Post that it's time to overturn it:
On March 27, DOMA will come before the Supreme Court, and the justices must decide whether it is consistent with the principles of a nation that honors freedom, equality and justice above all, and is therefore constitutional. As the president who signed the act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is contrary to those principles and, in fact, incompatible with our Constitution.Let's get it done, SCOTUS.
...When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that "enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination." Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.
...Americans have been at this sort of a crossroads often enough to recognize the right path. We understand that, while our laws may at times lag behind our best natures, in the end they catch up to our core values. One hundred fifty years ago, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln concluded a message to Congress by posing the very question we face today: "It is not 'Can any of us imagine better?' but 'Can we all do better?'"
The answer is of course and always yes. In that spirit, I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor, and the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.
Happy International Women's Day
March 8 is International Women's Day. I imagine there are as many different ways to talk about International Women's Day as there are women in the world. The UN's theme for IWD 2013 is "A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women." The International Women's Day 2013 theme is "The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum." I write about gendered violence every day, and I don't have much to say, truthfully, about gaining momentum, except that it feels sometimes like we are and sometimes like we're sliding backwards. So goes progress, I suppose.
So I am going to mark International Women's Day 2013 with something that I feel is central to all progress for women, including the end to gendered violence, and that is a challenge to us all to love, respect, and trust women.
Last year on this day, I wrote:
Today is a day when I am angry, but, also like all other days, it is a day on which I am happy to be a woman among women.To love and respect women yet remains a radical act. And so does trusting women to make the best choices for themselves, to believe that women are their own captains who do not need to have their choices legislated nor coerced through public judgment.
I do not long to be the Exceptional Woman. When I find myself in a space in which I am the only woman, I do not feel satisfied, nor do I feel insecure: I feel contemptuous that there aren't more women there. I do not want to compete with other women in a way that suggests there is only room for one of us. I want to lift up other women, and be lifted up by them, and blaze trails in the hopes that many more will follow behind.
I respect women, and I love them. And when I take stock of all the issues disproportionately affecting women across the globe, what I see is lack of respect and love for women so pervasive and profound that to merely assert to love and respect women yet remains a radical act.
I love women. I respect women. I trust women. Not in some distant way that treats these phrases as self-evident observations with which any decent person would agree, but as an intimate call to action rooted in the recognition that if everyone really did agree with those observations, we wouldn't need an International Women's Day.
I love women. I respect women. I trust women. Not as part of some abstract, theoretical feminism but as part of an applied, practical feminism that urges me to love by nonjudgment, respect by listening, trust by supporting individual choices.
I love women. I respect women. I trust women. Including myself. And I ask that the people around me love, respect, and trust me, too.
I love women. I respect women. I trust women. And I am angry that these remain radical practices. But it is at the intersection of my anger at the mistreatment of women and my love, respect, and trust for them that I find my motivation every day.
On this day and every day, let us all be radical.
Here is a thing you should read.
Amadi: What Is Your "Feminism"? I'm not even going to excerpt it. Just go read the whole thing.
Relatedly: If you are on Twitter, and you are not following @amaditalks, @graceishuman, and @scatx, you should be.
Great Poll. I'll Definitely Remember It in Two Years.
Poll: Clinton, Christie fare best in possible 2016 showdowns. CNN is breaking news from THE FUTURE now! Oh wait. This is not news from the future, but news about an election that is almost four years away? Huh. Seems weird, but I'm new to your planet!
Drones, Continued
So, this happened:
White House press secretary Jay Carney on Thursday tried to put to rest a simmering debate over President Barack Obama's drone policy, stating in clear terms that the president doesn't have the legal authority to, hypothetically, order drone strikes on Americans on U.S. soil.Naturally, my immediate response was: But the president does have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American who is actually or assumed to be engaged in combat on American soil? Because, um.
During his daily briefing, Carney read aloud a short letter that went out Thursday afternoon from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who waged a 13-hour filibuster on Wednesday over Obama's secret use of drones to carry out targeted killings. Throughout the effort, Paul, along with a dozen other Republican senators, demanded to know whether Obama believed he had the right to order drone strikes on U.S. citizens on U.S soil.
Carney said the answer is no.
"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: 'Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?,'" Carney read aloud. "The answer to that question is no."
I'm sure I'm just being silly. It's not like the US government would ever define "enemy combatants" so vaguely as to appear to leave room for ideological opponents of a sitting administration to qualify. Ha ha it's not like there's ever been an administration, and I'm sure there will never be again, who spoke of US citizens as being traitors for dissenting with a (terrible) national policy decision. It's not like a president saying "you're with us or against us" was ever a fucking real thing in the world.
The Obama administration is setting a precedent for an authority no administration should ever have, and some even less so than others.
For the record: I oppose the use of drones on people outside this country, too.
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, animal cruelty, rape, rape culture, misogyny]
It's Thursday and I Am Sooooo Hungover:
Mexico's Supreme Court has ruled that homophobic slurs are not protected speech.
Senate Republicans are more optimistic about the prospect of a grand bargain on the deficit after an intimate dinner with President Obama. Of course.
North Korea threatened the U.S. today with a preemptive nuclear strike. Neat!
A Utah lawmaker say cockfighting can't be a felony because abortion is legal. Makes sense!
Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin overturned the rape conviction of an Air Force service member who was found guilty by a jury, claiming there was not sufficient evidence that the woman had been raped.
Here's a look at what is known about the consumer data industry. Scary!
This week's EW cover is the greatest thing ever.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of Divine's death. Check out these cool postcards from her.
Daily Dose of Cute
"Where's Dudley?"
Sneak attack!
And so it begins.
Rumble in Snow Town.
"You want another piece of this action?" "HELLS YEAH I DO!"
Rumble in Snow Town 2: The Re-Rumbling.
"I love you, Dudz." "I love you, too, Zelly."
Happy Girl.
Tired Boy. "Time for warmth and treats now, Two-Legs?"
Obviously.
Quote of the Day
Don McPherson. Image via.
[Content Note: References to violence.]
"What can men do? Men do not just need to stop being violent. The vast majority of men are not violent. But men do need to stop being silent. Calling violence against women, whether street harassment or sexual harassment or rape or murder, a 'women's issue' allows men to ignore it as if we have no responsibility for it or stake in ending it. We all have grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters and female friends and colleagues. Our lives are inextricably interwoven; women's issues of safety and equality directly affect our lives as men. Beyond that, women are humans, with the same rights to safety and freedom as men. It is therefore our moral responsibility to not remain silent or passively on the sidelines, but to be actively engaged in confronting this problem in every corner of homes, communities, and societies."—Former NFL quarterback and current feminist Don McPherson, in an op-ed at CNN inviting men to join in anti-violence advocacy. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
This piece means so much to me. The brevity of that statement does not befit the enormity of the emotion behind it. I am so grateful to Don McPherson for writing this piece, for leveraging his platform to speak powerfully and passionately to the issue of violence against women, and for being my ally.
Thank you thank you thank you.
[Related Reading: Woman's Work; The Best Thing You'll Read All Day; My Liberation as a Man Is Tied to Your Liberation as a Woman.]
