bluflamingo

The comments on this article at feministe make me so angry.

The article is about how choosing to take your husband's name on marriage is not a feminist choice, and that, essentially, the reasons many people give for doing this aren't really great feminist reasons (which doesn't make women who do this unfeminist, just that this isn't a feminist choice) and that feminism isn't actually about 'I'm a woman, it's my choice, therefore it's feminist.' The comments are full of people raging at the author for daring to say that the choice they made isn't a feminist one, and their reasons aren't feminist. That she's attacking them for their choices. That she's going after 'low-hanging fruit' and has chosen a totally ridiculous 'hill to die on.'

And reading it, I just think - could you even acknowledge how fucking lucky you are that you can marry the person you want to be with? And that there's convention for what happens to your name afterwards? And that you can make a choice to adhere to tradition, because it exists? Without being judged for that decision (and no, what the article says is not judging)? That your relationship is steeped in centuries of privilege for being a woman who wants to be with a man, and this is the one thing about it that you're going to be told is maybe not so ok?

Because, right now, my country is debating whether I even have the right to marry a hypothetical future woman I love, or whether I should carry on having a second class ceremony. People are arguing that religious beliefs (by which they mean Christian) trump what should be rights. That letting gay people marry will somehow damage young children. That it's OK to publicly say 'I think that if you're gay you should have fewer rights,' without fear of any kind of actual real reprisal. Because, basically, homophobia's OK.

Right now, I wish my biggest problem around marriage was whether a feminist on the internet thinks that my decision to follow tradition isn't very feminist.

Two name-related anecdotes...

My sister got married a little over a year ago, and it honestly never occurred to me that she'd take her husband's name until a few months before the wedding. I don't know why not, since she's very traditional. I remember saying to my mum that it's like she's no longer identified with our family - because it is. She's not identified as a new family with him, she's identified as part of his birth family, not ours.

I want to change my last name. I want to take my mother's maiden name, for many reasons, including practical ones like it's a lot easier for people to spell than my current last name, and ideological ones like, I have a troubled relationship with my father and his mother, and my blood-grandfather, who died long before I was born, sounds like someone I would be scared of, but I love my mother's family, and want to show that I belong to them. When I told this to my mother, she said that if I changed my name, it would be like I no longer identified as her daughter. Totally not the same when my sister does it though, because she's marrying a man and that's what you do.

Is my choice more feminist than my sister's? I have no idea. But it's a hell of a lot less acceptable, less normal, more likely to be commented on, more expensive, more complicated.

But yeah, what sucks is being told that your choice to take your husband's name isn't feminist.

The chair of the LGB forum I'm part of has been asked to participate in a TV debate this weekend. The question is: Should gay people be honest about their sexuality?

If it was me, my answer would be 'when straight people start being honest about their sexuality, instead of assuming I know what it is, I'll start being honest about mine.' How is it okay to go around asking that? Like we've got some moral obligation to be out to people, and if we're not, we're lying. How is it our fault that society assumes we're straight until we say otherwise? Am I lying if I don't tell someone I'm gay and they continue to assume I'm not? Where are we drawing the line anyway? Do I have to tell the guy at the Chinese takeaway? All my co-workers? All the people using the community centre? Am I being dishonest if I don't tell every single person I have contact with that I'm gay, or can I be honest about my sexuality if I don't lie if someone asks me outright? I mean, I'm openly gay, but everyone I know doesn't know it, the same way that I don't know the sexuality of everyone I know.

I hate that our chair is going to stand up and say that, although there are places where maybe people can't be out, they should be if they can be, so that bigoted people can learn that gay people aren't some scary abstract, we're just like them. Why do I have to be a teaching tool for these people? Why do I have to put up with their stupid, bigoted comments so they can maybe learn that gay people are actually okay? Or maybe not learn it, and maybe become really difficult for me to deal with instead. Why does being gay compel me to be more selfless than straight people?

Why isn't the question 'should society stop assuming that people are straight, and stop reacting in such a way that people are nervous about being honest about their sexuality if they're not straight?' Or at least phrased in a way that doesn't imply that we have some obligation to be honest, because people would like to be able to avoid us, like people who want to know if they have a child molester living in their neighbourhood.

And most importantly, why is a representative of the forum more or less saying that he agrees with this? No-one has an obligation to reveal anything about their personal life that they don't want to, from little old me who's not important at all, to celebrities. I mean, personally, I don't think people should lie about it, but (a) that's not the same thing as having to be honest (you can just be silent, for example) and (b) it's none of my business or anyone else's whether people lie, are honest, neglect to mention, or whatever they feel comfortable with, their sexuality, and there's no 'have to be' about it.

ETA: Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think my answer is 'when I can be honest about my sexuality the same way straight people can be (without fear, without losing anything, and without being asked a million questions because clearly I'm telling you so you can learn from me) then we'll take about whether I should be. Until then, I should be about as much as my sister should be honest about how she likes to knit, which is to say, not at all.'

I'm not entirely sure if this is a serious question or a sarcastic one, but what is it that makes people feel compelled to point out that major changes to opinions and civil rights take time? Is it meant to make people feel better about the fact that they don't have these rights yet?

Because I gotta say, I don't know many people who that works on. Actually, I don't think I know any. Seriously, is it actually conceivable that someone who's just been told that the population of their state doesn't think they're worthy of getting married is going to hear that these things take time and say, hey, that's so true, I feel so much better now?

It's by far the most popular response from straight people when I'm complaining about some stupid thing someone's done or said to or about gay people (interesting fact: the chaplain to the London stock exchange thinks that all gay people should be tatooed with health warnings like cigarette packets. Sadly, he neglected to say what people might need to be warned about if they come into contact with me - I'm pretty sure gayness isn't catching, and neither is my fucked up knee, which is my only other health issue until summer rolls round again).

Either that, or, people don't have a problem with gay people, they'e just not ready to see them on the street.

Yeah, ok, that's a problem! I mean, I love that in my country, I can get married (well, civil partnershipped, and could someone please conceive a verb for that already, it's been years!), but that doesn't make all the casual homophobia ok, and being told that things take time to change, whil undoubtedly true, just makes me want to scream.

This rant was brought to you by way too many people making this argument when commenting on the gay marriage prohibition that California just passed, by my splitting headache that laughs in the face of pain killers, and by the guy I work with who, now that he knows I'm gay, assumes that, when I say minority rights, I really mean gay rights, because I only have a self-serving interest in civil rights.

On the other hand - Obama for president, oh yeah! I just wish there was someone who might run for prime minister who I felt this passionate about.

This should be a ranty post, really, but I'm too tired to even rant. Give me a few days and I'll be back to my normal ranty self, but right now, I'm so fed up with this, I haven't the energy.

The thing is, in the last couple of weeks, I've

- been wolf-whistled in the street
- been told that this is really a compliment and I should be flattered
- been told that if I wear a slightly low-cut top, I have to expect that men will not only look at the tiny bit of my cleavage they can see, but also not be able to take their eyes off it
- had a twenty minute conversation with a guy I work with, all of which was conducted to my breasts
- had a guy I've never spoken to in my life come and put his hand against mine, then move after me to do it again when I moved away
- found out that I'm about to be working with someone who thinks 'is your wife hot?' is an okay question to ask his brand new supervisor, and also feels that it's okay to announce, in front of said supervisor after he's explained that actually his wife is not his wife but his husband, that 'I don't like gay people, I don't like what they get up to and I think it's wrong, but it's fine unless they try to come on to me'.

And the thing is, none of this is even really new. Most of it happens every year. It's just - is it so hard to understand that I dress in these clothes, in the same way I dress in everything I wear, because I like how I look, not because I want people to ogle me? Do men really have so little self-control that they become utterly transfixed by the slightest hint of cleavage, and are incapable of looking at my face while I talk to them?

My friend said, about the new guy at work, that at least I can educate him, and my first thought was, yeah, but I don't want to have to. He's 32, he should know better by now, and I'm not a walking education in how to treat women and gay people, or what's appropriate to say in the work place. If I wanted to do that, I'd get a job as a diversity and equality trainer. I just want to be able to go about my day and not have to put up with all this, and right now I think, it must be so nice to be a man, because whatever else you have to put up with, you don't have to put up with this.

Also, if one more man listens to me explain my thesis into perceptions of female date rape victims and tells me that this is a problem for male victims as well, or that not all men who are accused are guilty (which, btw, has absolutely nothing to do with my research), I swear I'm not going to be responsible for what I do or say. I don't need this pointing out to me - I'm not living in a bubble, I get it. Men get raped as well. But that's not what I'm researching, and the way they come out with that right after makes me think they just don't get where I'm coming from at all, and that they can't think about anything except in terms of how it affects them as men.

1. Yay! I have Sheppard/Mitchell for sgabigbang! And the prompt I wanted crossed over from the original post, so double yay!

Of course I also have half of a gate_women, a remix and two lgbtfest fics to write as well, but, feh, who needs sleep? On the bright side, my fic for sga_genficathon is done!

2. To the guy in the Big Issue talking about behaviour on public transport, who said, "As a man, I run after street muggers..." I'm sorry, what? AS A MAN? What the hell does that have to do with it? What, if you were a woman you wouldn't? All women wear high heels and can't run? Try again - I could probably do him more damage with my red, vegetarian pseudo-doc martens than you could in your dress shoes, and I'd look funkier doing it.

3. Also 'I'm not homophibic, I just think it's an abomination'... um, ok. Then I hope I never run into any actual homophobes!

4. Since I co-facilitate a group for building self-esteem and pushing people out of their comfort zone...

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don’t blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don’t blog about, but you’d like to hear about, and I’ll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on tv, favorite type of underwear, stories I'm working on, travel, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

If nothing else, it'll stop me ranting about sexism and homophobia all the time.

5. What the hell is going on with the weather? I know they were forecasting a hurricane, but I thought they were just being British and paranoid! Weather, there is no need to live up to this prediction, seriously. I like my feet on the ground!

OK, I realise that I sometimes have unrealistic expectations of how open-minded people will be, but I don't think it's unrealistic to expect that a group of postgraduate social science students have a basic understanding of personal identity and people's right to self-define.

So, to put it in context: in my class this morning, another student brought up a friend of hers who has transitioned from male to female, and asked if we thought this person could contribute to discussions about how it feels to be a woman as a woman. To which my answer was, well, she's a woman, she defines and presents herself as a woman, and is experienced by society as a woman - of course she can contribute, as much as any of us can.

( Cut for semi-incoherent rage about people's failure to understand sexuality, gender or what it means to be transsexual )