The inverse of those things that break a marriage?
If the INS were consulted, your friends' roommate's arrangement wouldn't qualify as a marriage.
I'm curious--what are these people like? how old, cultural background, etc.? I've known a married couple who didn't live together, but each had his/her own place, and they visited. (They lived in the same city.)
Marriage is what you have to do in a given society to have sex and not be censured.
5 wins!
I can sort of understand this, if the real estate situation is messed up enough. Like, if neither of them has the rights to an apartment, they might want to hold on to their current roommate situations rather than go through the hell of finding a satisfactory new place in NYC -- if it is still so hellish. But planning never to live together, that's a bit weird.
On the other hand, it worked out OK for Woody and Mia.
They're both in their 30s, not interested in kids, and kind of set in their ways, it sounds. It's unusual but not unheard of, I guess. When he told me, I remembered reading something similar in Salon.
For some couples, it strikes me as an excellent idea. My parents stayed married until I was out of college, but were very displeased with each other for most of that time. They always liked each other an awful lot -- similar senses of humor, politics, like to do the same things for fun -- but could not manage to cooperate successfully on getting anything done. I always thought that if they'd had separate apartments nearby, and just spent their free time together, they'd probably still be happily married.
Ok, so you know marriages chosen w/o love, w/o desire for children, w/o desire for monogamy, and w/o desire to live together. But do you know of marriages lacking all four? I almost laughed out loud at 5, but since the professor wasn't saying anything funny at the time, the rest of the class would probably have looked at me pretty funny.
Arranged marriages, of course, don't preclude love.
Marriage, as we currently understand it, is a promise between two people *and* a social contract. The exact nature of the social contract is what's at stake: are the couple to be treated as a couple for, say, social engagements? For billing purposes? As an economic unit? The move away from marriage as strictly a social contract, in which love could bloom (or not) towards marriage as first and foremost a committment between two people based on love is, of course, the problem: we're somewhere along the trajectory from defining it exclusively as the one towards defining it exclusively as the other.
I'm not sure I agree with your trajectory there, B. What's the only difference between my marriage and the couple who lives together across the street? Having gone down to the courthouse and gotten the legal particulars in order.
The increasing occurrence and acceptance of unmarried cohabitation seems to me to be moving marriage increasingly toward a purely legal contract.
Sort of an intense variation on 2- You realize, in certain situations, how profound it is to be legally bound up with another person. In hospitals, in financial terms, &c. Just the idea that this person is your chosen, affectionate next of kin and representative, recognized by absolutely everyone, with all the force and preference of the law--that can be pretty meaningful, in and of itself.
w/d, you know I love you, but I am really goddamn glad you're not in one of my classes.
If it were possible to read this blog while lecturing, I would be in big trouble.
Yeah, but that's my point: you see the only difference as being a legal one, because (if I may infer), your sense of what constitutes a marriage leans heavily towards the "two people in love" model--that is, a marriage in the sense of a couple is whatever the couple makes of it. One of the logical consequences of this poitn of view is that "marriage," as a legal term, is strictly a legal contract; but in social terms, it's no different than cohabitation *or*, as Becks' example points out, non-cohabitation--given that that's what the couple has decided to do.
That's really different from those who insist that marriage, as legal contract, is and should be inseparable from marriage as social institution: that is, legal marriage should be the only socially sanctioned form of coupledom.
I think the mistake here is to believe that there is one baseline definition of marriage, beyond the purely legal and formal one, to which a wide number of people will agree.
#2 hits it on the nosey.
Part of what makes the whole marriage thing, well, downright hilarious, is that one persons definition is another persons abomination. Sure, there are fiscal, cultural, and, perhaps, spiritual reasons to get married, as well as the whole love thing, but none of those define what a marriage is. So what makes a marriage?
Would you like to get married?
If yes, turn to page 54. Otherwise, turn to page 3.
w/d – I don't know any couples without all four and *I* think they're all perfectly valid. Each to his own, and all. But if the government is going to start saying what is and is not a valid marriage, I'd think a definition for what constitutes one is in order and I don't know if I can come up with one that encompasses marriage in all of its current forms. (Yes, this is a total backdoor exercise for supporting gay marriage – if we can't even come up with one for "traditional" marriage...)
B. – Yes, I agree, arranged marriages do not preclude love. However, I doubt that love is present at the time of the marriage (from what I've seen, it tends to more evolve over time) so I think that excludes love as a requirement for marriage. Also, people marry for other non-love reasons (money, etc.)
For those who will say, "huh? That's what she said in the post, I say my answer is everybody decides for themselves, for the most part (nature nurture, blah blah blah).
Following on apo's 12, I don't think marriage is anywhere near being defined exclusively as a love match. Most people expect love to be present at the outset, but a friend of mine is seriously intent on meeting someone she thinks can support her as she pursues her opera career. She also wants to love him, of course, but she's going to try to avoid falling in love with someone who wants to be an elementary school teacher. Those considerations aren't absent for me either. I'm not going to marry my boyfriend for a bunch of reasons, but at least one thing I think about when I contemplate our counterfactual future is that he doesn't make enough for me to be comfortable living where we're living, and I don't think he wants to leave.
14 (sorry Mitch): Using the wireless internet for non-class purposes, during class, is epidemic in my law school. That's neither an excuse nor a justification, but it is a fact. And yeah, I recognize that it's not the best teaching environment, and probably doesn't show as much respect to the professor as I should.
Yeah, I personally know one marriage consisting of a gay man and a lesbian and another one that was purely to keep one person from being deported back to his home country. Love (aside from platonic) doesn't really factor into either one.
21:
Hrm. Counting on any particular level of economic support out of a marriage strikes me as basically ill-advised. You really don't want to set up a life where you have economic needs and no control over your capacity to meet them. But I'm an overly cautious type.
tweedledopey gets it right in 18. Marriage is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.
Marriage is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.
Believe me, marriage is a "Let Somebody Else Choose Your Adventure" book.
22: mine too. I honestly don't know how professors do it. Even though I occasionaly IM during class (which everyone does), I feel like you're only allowed to do it during certain classes. For example, the huge-ass classes you take first year that you have no control over. Last semester, I was in a prison seminar and I would see people IMing for like 45 mins; it made me so mad. If you're not interested in the subject, why take a fucking seminar on it?
But I'm not in class right now. Although I'm positive I have commented from class.
That's not quite what my friend and I are doing. She actually has a good deal of family money and is pursuing a separate career track from opera so she has a fallback. But she wants added security from the marriage, so she could take a break from her separate career track to be serious, support the children she has when she's young (she has reproductive health problems ), and not tear apart her nest egg. In my case, I'm pursuing a career a picked in part because I thought it would be both meaningful and remunerative (thanks, Ben!), but I'm not going to try to raise a kid by myself in NYC even on 90k, or whatever I can expect. I know I *can* do it, but I don't want to. In neither of our projected futures would our lives fall apart if our husbands left us.
Horrible end to non-cohabiting marriage: a lawyer friend of mine, who was a "brittle" diabetic, was married to another lawyer. They lived together in Chicago. His law firm wanted him to move to California to head the firm's new office out there. He did. She wasn't wild about moving, and stayed in Chicago for the time being. She finally decided to move out to join him, but hadn't done so yet. One morning, the (gay male) friend with whom she'd been living woke up and found that she'd had an insulin reaction and died. Her husband felt terribly guilty and started drinking heavily. The firm's California office, and not long after the whole firm, went belly-up. (I'm not implying a causal nexus between the previous two sentences.) Last I heard, her husband had pulled himself together, more or less. The practice of law sure is fun.
Fair enough, but still: part of what you get in a marriage is someone to help take care of you, but the other part is that you have someone you're responsible for taking care of, and it's very hard to tell at the outset who's necessarily going to be leaning on who, and when.
30: Right. That's the part of the social relatioship that's called the code for conduct. Love, honor, and obey (or not). It's a promise, with consideration: a contract. see, ketubah
The part about the prevailing social sanction of man/woman relationships meant to permanent is obviously the gist of it. And people have always known that that varied from place to place. Nonetheless, cultures feel entitled to patrol the boundaries. Formal polygamy has been abominable to us; it's why the Mormons were driven out of states, and not permitted to join the union until they renounced it. I'm not ashamed of that; I'd like to think that the gross disparity of power in such relationships was a big part of why they weren't tolerated. No doubt someone will show what a fool I am for thinking that, and that a valid explanation completely consistent with the proposition that men hate women, always and everywhere, exists.
As a liberal, my inclination is to honor the intent of the parties. Hence gay marriage, for instance, is fine with me, and unconventional understandings between the parties to a marriage should be none of my business.
The obvious answer to the old guy who pipes up with "Then why can't a man marry his dog?" is that the dog hasn't got any agency, and isn't competent to contract.
On the other hand, marriage is based on a desire for social recognition, and protection for many of our rights and privileges. With that social recognition comes a normative idea of marriage, and our deviations from that norm put our marriages' social status under strain. I think we enter marriage to protect our relationship from interference by others and from the wrongdoing of our partners.
I think most of us are much more comfortable with the first protection than the second. Hence your partner should have the right of being in control at your bedside, not the state or the rest of your family.
On the other hand, protection against the partner, I think we're left with norms to judge by, in the absence of contract--or even in the presence of unconscionable contracts. I guess in theory people could agree to beat each other up.
I guess I'm always in support of partners who want recogniton to defend their relationship against the world. It's the other one that's hard.
While I don't (consciously) take financial matters into consideration when evaluating a partner (I say consciously because you know if a certain someone were here he'd point out the class-based decisions we all make), I am very aware of the financial and legal implications of marriage. While I don't agree with Bush's "marry 'em off to get 'em off welfare" schemes, I definitely think it's an important CYA move, especially for women.
I guess a lot of this is from people I've known – a former coworker was practically bankrupted when her long-term boyfriend was killed on the job and his parents fought her for his life insurance and assets. Also, watching what my (gay and straight) cohabitating neighbors in LTRs had to go through to prove they were eligible for benefits accorded to WTC-related next of kin left a big impression. Sure, both of these could have been prevented with the right legal documents, but you get a lot of automatic rights when you get married.
I just wanted to smack a friend of mine – she was engaged to a guy who was shipping off to do a tour in Kuwait and they planned on waiting until he got back to get married so they could have the big wedding, etc. I kept telling her just to go down to the courthouse and elope and have their big wedding later – they don't even have to tell anyone. But without that piece of paper, she's got nothing. (They waited, he came back alive, they had their big wedding, but still.)
Point well-taken, LB. I know you can't always anticipate what's going to happen, and marriage, at least defined as a love-match as both of us want, means being willing to weather the other guy's misfortune. But at the same time, you at least have some control over the odds of financial calamity. In my case, I just want someone who has roughly the same approach to their career and how it will eventually compensate them as I do.
(To clarify, by "she's got nothing", I didn't mean that in a craven "get his life insurance" way. I meant the government owed her crap as far as explanations or anything if something happened to him. That would be far more important to me were I in her shoes.)
26: Have you read any of those books? That's basically what they are anyway. All of the decisions in the books have basically unpredictable effects.
I guess in theory people could agree to beat each other up.
That's a great and incredibly touching movie, by the way, if you can get past the squirmy parts.
26: Have you read any of those books?
Not since I was a kid, but my eight-year-old has a huge stack of them.
Sir Henry Maine, in his 1861 book Ancient Law suggested that modern law is moving from a set of rights and duties based on status to a set based on contract. The traditional definitions were based in status (e.g. master & servant, minor, wife) and the law defined the obligations. More modern, said Maine, were definitions based on explicit agreements (e.g. employee, antenuptial agreements).
I don't see that it has worked out as he predicted.
On the subject of contracts and expectations and bargaining power in marriage, Bphd has a post worth reading.
On love within an arranged marriage, and how that works, I recommend Nirad Chauduri's Autobiography of an Unkown Indian. That made the concept real, and deserving of respect, to me.
33, 34: All very true, and you are right that getting married does have profound implications for your economic security -- pretty much any two people working together can be better off than a single person, just because the odds of something awful happening to both of you at once are so much lower. I just wanted to be clear that all you know going in is whatever you know about your partner's skills and character, and what that can tell you about what's likely to happen: often not all that much.
Non-cohabiting marriage sounds like a great idea to me. I find that I like people better if I don't live with them, and they find the same thing. Right now I'm living with my sister, and things have been great but there are starting to be signs of stress.
One interesting thing about that post of B's in contrast to my own life is that in many ways, my boyfriend is the "woman," that is, he does most of the emotional work, and has one of the best emotional skill sets I have ever come across. When a dark expression crosses my face, he patiently asks me what's wrong, and keeps asking until I stop saying "I don't know" and tell him. Of course, we are two single people living in separate apartments; I guess if we had a baby to take care of I'd have to be taking up more of the slack, which I think I'm capable of, but just don't because he in the large part is so exemplary in that regard.
one persons definition is another persons abomination
Yes; precisely because when we talk about "marriage" we can use the word in one of two senses. The strictly legal sense (which everyone agrees on) or the broader, muddier, social/cultural/personal sense--which clearly everyone doesn't. So the questions "what makes a marriage?" or "what does marriage mean?" can only refer to that second sense--because if one is using the word "marriage" to mean "a legal contract between two people," then there's no point in asking the question to begin with.
When a dark expression crosses my face, he patiently asks me what's wrong, and keeps asking until I stop saying "I don't know" and tell him.
While this is in no way meant to impugn the value of this to your relationship, which I'm sure is great, if someone did this to me on a regular basis I would kill them. Slowly.
I can't tell whether you would kill me or him, LB. If it's me you would kill, I know, I would kill me too; like I said, it's only because I can get away with it that I act this way. If it's him you'd kill, in the context of our interactions, he's learned that "I don't know" for me essentially means, "I'm nervous to talk about problems; I feel like if things aren't perfect we're going to break up" and that pressing me often blossoms into really productive conversations that lead to much better mutual understanding.
Hmm.
"I don't know" in my relationships has generally meant "I don't want to talk about it right now, so back the fuck off."
Why does 45 get it exactly wrong, exactly?
I was curious about that also, and should probably just let apo speak for himself, but my guess is that apo is suggesting that some people might think marriage is only the legal relationship, so that the secondary meaning collapes into the first.
50: Well, I was mostly just being a smartass, but 51 pretty much nails it. Also, not everybody agrees on the legal definition of marriage, or else we wouldn't have had multiple referenda in 2004 on the topic of legal marriage.
I had a discussion of "What does marriage really mean" somewhere (it was in the context of 'is marriage universal, or close to it, across cultures?'). I came up with a list of elements that I think cover the concept of marriage in most cultures, although they aren't all present in any individual marriage.
A marital relationship (1)It includes a small number of people, in the vast majority of cases two (2) in a relationship that lasts for an extended period of time (3) and incorporates a sexual relationship (4) and a degree of mutual economic support (5) and is recognized by the community at a reasonable level of formality for that culture. Now, not every marriage includes sex, but the vast majority do, and the same with mutual economic support -- I'd have a tendency to describe a relationship that didn't hit most of these points (e.g., friends of mine in a green card marriage involving neither sex nor cohabitation) as not really a marriage.
friends of mine in a green card marriage involving neither sex nor cohabitation
Can you do that? My grad school friends that were trying to set those up found that they had to cohabit.
Not everyone can agree on the legal definition of marriage everywhere, over time—marriage laws being subject to change and different from municipality to municipality.
I only know of one marriage-for-green-card and I'm not sure if they had to live together. Since they were both actively seeing other people, I imagine that could have gotten weird(er).
55: Well, I don't know if it's going to work out for them, but they're good friends who know each other well -- I'd expect them to pass an interview.
I know a marriage for greencard. I was certain that this was something that only happened on film, and were ever the bizarre circumstances to come about to bring into RL, it obviously could not involve a Russian bride. But truth is just as strange as fiction.
Weird, the one I know involved a Russian groom...
This is clear evidence that the gays have destroyed marriage.
As are all other wierd things about marriage.
For NYC at least, there are dozens of "will trade green card marriage for $$" posts on Craigslist at any time.
It turns out that the mail-order bride service is, or can be, a respectable service in Russia. I was surprised to overhear while I was in Moscow a conversation between my Russian instructor and my (American) professor in which the former asked the latter, matter-of-factly, whether she would serve as a U.S. liaison for her bride service. I was also surprised to learn that so many mail-order brides hold advanced degrees. Dissatisfied professionally and romantically, the mail order service is like entering into a quasi–arranged marriage (but without the family quality control function).
re: 58, what happens if your Green Card–marriage is foiled? Besides hilarity, that is.
My last partner and I got married after four weeks of knowing each other. We had just started dating, were enjoying it (how could we not? neither of us was working, and we were pilled up on ecstacy most of the time) and I needed my new country's equivalent of a green card in order to stay. Neither of us thought the relationship would last very long, and we were right. But I got the visa, and, for a while anyway, we had some fun.
Apostropher, that's nuts. Everyone agrees that a legally recognized marriage is a marriage--otherwise people wouldn't bother to fight the legal recognition of couplings that they don't think count for their *social* definition of marriage.
Is there any data to be had on the American men who purchase mail-order brides? (And is it properly speaking a purchase or a hiring, or something else?) I realized when reading Armsmasher's 63 that I know nothing of who patronizes such a service. Have only vaguely formed presuppositions, which are largely pejorative in nature. Also, are mail-order brides sent exclusively to the U.S., or to the U.S. and Western Europe and Japan? Or is the set of mail-order bride destinations larger? Also as long as I'm asking, how long has this been going on (in its current form)?
Bitch -- but it seems to me like I have seen opponents of gay marriage argue that a marriage between gays legally recognized by Massachussetts is not in fact a valid marriage.
The majority of men ordering Russian brides are white, educated conservatives in their late 30s; so says this not-great-but-sourced paper.
Ah, here's the original source. Less clip-art, unf.
Yeah, I think you interrogate the lex loci, the law of the place, where the marriage was formed, and the question is "would such a marriage contracted here be valid?" If not, not. Runs up against and contends with full faith and credit, which we all know.
Or maybe lex loci was trying to kill Superman, or the Mighty Thor, or both.
#68: Yes, of course. B/c their social definition of marriage means it has to be heterosexual. They mean "valid" in that sense, and they fight the legal recognition of gay marriage precisely because they realize that a legal marriage is, well, a legal marriage, and they do not want that to be distinguished from their particular social conception. It's a paradox: they recognize the difference between legal and social concepts of marriage in arguing that there is no difference and that therefore, legally valid marriages between two people of the same sex aren't "really" marriages.
Mail order marriages are not usually durable. There's a law about how long you have to stay married, and I think that most brides know the minimum.
A lot of American alcoholics are less alcoholic than most Russian alcoholics, in addition to earning more, and this makes American men a relatively OK deal.
Mail order brides were common in the American West. I know someone whose grandparents married that way. There's even a musical, "Seven brides for seven brothers."
Surely Russia is not the only country of origin for mail-order brides, right? For some reason I have a memory that the Phillipines is now or at some recent point a player in that business, and maybe some southeast Asian countries. Don't know where this comes from tho.
Or maybe lex loci was trying to kill Superman, or the Mighty Thor, or both.
He didn't really want to kill them. He just didn't want to recognize their marriage as valid.
Like, here's a counterexample. I, and presumably most of us here, would be quite happy to say in casual conversation that a mail-order bride arrangement isn't "really" a marriage, even if there is a marriage contract. It's a form of sexual servitude, or a way to skirt immigration laws, or whatever. Because, presumably, *our* social conception of marriage involves consent that is given to a specific person ("I love you, Apostropher, and *therefore* I want to get married") rather than consent to the relationship in which the person is irrelevant ("I want to get married to an American, and I don't care which one.")
53: I had a discussion of "What does marriage really mean" somewhere (it was in the context of 'is marriage universal, or close to it, across cultures?'). ...
The now classic critique of this approach is that it takes an essentially western cultural construct and applies it to people who don't share that construct. In the process it obliterates the indiginous constructs, the ideas by which people make sense of their own lives and actions. It has been argued that this wholly fails to make sense non-western systems.
For another point of view, see:
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/epub/books/feinberg/ch5.html
it seems to me like I have seen opponents of gay marriage argue that a marriage between gays legally recognized by Massachussetts is not in fact a valid marriage.
Isn't that the point of that Defense of Marriage Act shit that Clinton, whore that he is, signed into law -- that State A doesn't have to recognize a gay marriage entered into in State B, where it's legal?
It's a paradox: they recognize the difference between legal and social concepts of marriage in arguing that there is no difference and that therefore, legally valid marriages between two people of the same sex aren't "really" marriages.
I don't think so. They're arguing that law follows social norms; that the social concept of marriage has changed, and thus the law should recognize this change.
74, No, other nations operate mail-order bride services, but since the fall of USSR the Russian services have come to dominate the market. I could guess at some cultural and structural factors, but I don't know precisely why.
Expanding on my 78:
The anti-gay conservative response to the growing issue of gay marriage was The Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996 which denies federal recognition of gay marriages and gives each state the right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriage licenses issued by other states. http://gaylife.about.com/cs/gaymarriage/i/doma.htm
#76-- I'm not totally comfortable saying that a mail-order bride arrangement is not a "real marriage." The license is quite real, and, depending on the living, emotional, and financial arrangements, it might not differ much from other kinds of sub-optimal marriages. As a descendant of polygamy, though, I recognize that my views on marriage are not exactly normal.
I got 79 backwards. Each side agrees that the law should follow the norms. One side says that the norms haven't changed, and therefore the law shouldn't. The other disagrees. Both sides try and couch the argument over norms in terms of other norms - marriage is a tradition involving one male and one female; marriage is a contract, an agreement, and one should be free to make whatever private arrangements are pleasing.
As a descendant of polygamy
Can I ask how far back?
I'd agree that it's not necessarily not a real marriage, although it might be. That is, I can conceive of mail-order bride arrangements that I would call sexual slavery; that I would call evasion of immigration laws; and that I would call genuine marriages, depending on the intentions and behavior of the participants rather than a difference in the legal forms.
Just to throw this into the mix, the episode of This American Life broadcast last week featured a segment about a woman in a polygamous marriage. She defended the practice and claimed that "polygamy is the ultimate feminist lifestyle."
When marriage is understood as universal across cultures, it works best if marriage is understood as a way of producing heirs for a family group, rather than in terms of personal relationships, sexual activity, living arrangements, etc. Even within the Western world marriage often took bizarre forms (e.g., taking concubines and assigning the children to a barren legal wife).
And in American life, buying a house can be a reason to marry, even if children aren't planned.
Russian women have different expectations of men and marriage than American women, I gather; I imagine that YMMV across the world. So in part any evaluation of the validity of a mail-order marriage has to include a control for different norms.
Even within the Western world marriage often took bizarre forms ...
If you are constructing marriage as a system for passing property, there are still bizarre forms. There's a special ritual that can transmute a person with whom one share no genetic material into a "child" with full rights to support and inheritance. The ritual involves papers and money and someone in a black robe.
She defended the practice and claimed that "polygamy is the ultimate feminist lifestyle."
Open marriage could possibly be the ultimate feminist lifestyle. Or polyandry, perhaps. It depends how you define feminism. But I have a hard time seeing how polygyny -- in her case, being one of eight women married to one man -- can be "the ultimate feminist lifestyle." (Admittedly, I haven't watched the video.)
That is, I can conceive of mail-order bride arrangements that I would call sexual slavery
So, just to be clear, sexual slavery is NOT marriage?
66: "that's" s/b "show me your"
At this point, I think we may be bumping up against a semantic difference.
In my mind the profile of American mail-order husbands overlaps with the profile of warbloggers -- someone like Steven Den Beste.
91: Sounds weird to me, too, but there was a piece in the NY Times magazine a couple of years ago that had people saying the same thing. It came down to sharing chores and childcare -- that the women in the marriage had a lessened domestic burden because they could unload work on each other. As a practical matter this makes a certain amount of sense, so long as you define 'ultimate feminist lifestyle' as 'one that doesn't require men in a relationship to do anything domestic.'
JM, a kind of OT question -- do Mormon records from the time when polygamy was sanctioned indicate who a child's biological mother is, in the event that his/her father has multiple brides? And do you know if a child would accord his/her biological mother a different status from the rest of his/her mothers? And does this extend to e.g. grandparent relationships? That is, if my mother's father had 7 wives would they all be considered my grandmothers, or only one of them? How great a role did extended family play in Utah of old?
I'd add another clause to LB's marriage definition: if there are children born to the married couple, marriage structures the relationship between & rights over parent & child.
Not every marriage has children, of course, but one of the sticking points of gay marriage has been the ability of now-married gay couples to adopt children, so it seems that figuring out who's responsible for the rugrats has something to do with marriage.
93 -- "show me your" s/b "show me you're"
And in American life, buying a house can be a reason to marry, even if children aren't planned.
How so?
define 'ultimate feminist lifestyle'
Aye, there's the rub (and now I will unleash the collective fury of Unfogged 'pon my head). I had a long conversation recently with somebody who was quite offended that I didn't consider myself a feminist. I kept trying to explain that 1) I don't define myself by any isms, and 2) that the word has expanded to the point I find it meaningless.
When I pressed her for her definition of feminism, it roughly came down to "paying equal wages for equal work." Well sure, I believe in that, but I believe it for everybody, regardless of gender, race, etc. A basic sense of fair play doesn't rise to the level of a philosophy for me.
Of the widely divergent schools of thought that fall under the very large rubric of "feminism," there are many with which I agree and others that just seem silly. And a philosophy that every person is allowed to define as they see fit is no kind of philosophy at all.
Nonetheless, it greatly annoyed this person that I wouldn't pledge fealty to a word, despite agreeing with her on most of the particulars. I found it puzzling.
98: Osner, that's nuts. I show you guys that I'm nuts on a daily basis. Why would she ask for that?
Why do you hate women, apo?
Force of habit, I suppose.
ac: My great-grandfather was the son of a fifth wife. He probably could've taken multiple wives (his father, a president of the church was still performing plural marriage although it was illegal), but he wasn't exactly devout.
Jeremy: The son of a polygamous relationship would have the mother's last name as a middle name. A daughter generally had no middle name because eventually she'd add on her husband's last name. (This practice still persists, although it's fading.) To me, these practices reflect what my greater understanding of Mormon polygamy as privileging the small family unit (mother-father-child) but allowing for a weird kind of interreliance between units. Extended family remains incredibly important in Mormon life; ask me how my second cousin's swim team is doing this season, go on!
'Postropher -- I took it as an invocation -- when I read the Iliad I don't figure that the goddess would not sing about Akhilleus' wrath absent a request from the poet.
JM -- How's your second cousin's swim team doing this season?
104: So is this page about Utah names on the up and up, then? VulvaMae is my favorite.
107 -- how does one pronounce the name "Vvhs"? (If one is not Klingon or Dalek, I mean.)
106--very well, thank you, although they've had better seasons.
107--Oy. Some of those are truly unfortunate. I'd say that the site exaggerates slightly, but not too much. One of my cousins named her son Sterling, for example. The kid will probably be a 6'3" bruiser, so maybe he'll survive to adulthood.
i can't wait to get married.
i've heard sex is sweeeeet.
I don't define myself by any isms
Apo, don't be lying. You know you're a facist.
Nonetheless, it greatly annoyed this person that I wouldn't pledge fealty to a word, despite agreeing with her on most of the particulars. I found it puzzling.
I find that when women don't self-report as feminists, they turn out to be the sort who take their husbands names and don't see anything wrong with it. And then later they turn out to have serious qualms about a woman's right to choose. And then later...
That is, it does seem to correlate to generally recognizable, stable, core "feminist" political stances. It may not apply across the board, and may get a little wonky in translation and application to men, but the refusal to accept the word usually translates to a certain traditional and conservative set of ideas. So even if it doesn't apply to you, it applies more generally, and puts you in a different category, for reference purposes.
VulvaMae is my favorite.
She and Iron Rod would make a cute couple.
I might say in casual conversation that a relationship in which the woman is a sexual slave is not "a real marriage," as shorthand for my opinion that the relationship was not loving or mutual, but I wouldn't say it if I was trying to define marriage. Most marriages historically have constituted sexual slavery; even today, if I saw two people cohabiting, economically interdependent, raising children, with a marriage license, and one of them had no sexual autonomy, I'd say, "Yup, they're married."
109: I know three Sterlings here in NC. That one doesn't strike me as odd, but then I'm odd, so...
112: Okay, I can see the point there, ac. However, it seemed at the time to be analogous to "If you support public education and a minimum wage, then you ARE a socialist."
and one of them had no sexual autonomy
How are you defining "autonomy" here? Many would say a key component of "traditional" marriage is that neither partner has sexual autonomy.
101 gets it exactly right.
"VulvaMae"?! Oh my frigging god. The site looks to be on the up and up, too. What parents would name their kid "VulvaMae"? btw, as I've remarked before, I think "Chlamydia" is a pretty name, albeit with unfortunate associations.
Incidentally, on the subject of unfortunate names, there was a guy in the law school class after mine named "Suk Whang." I am not making this up. My mother knew a guy with the name "Mike Hunt." Then there's guys (one of whom I know) with redundant names like "Dick Johnson." (Peter, Rod, and perhaps Lance can be substituted for "Dick" with similar effect. Until Obama was sworn in a year ago, Illinois' governor was Rod, and our senators were Dick and Peter.)
Michael, sometimes a couple can buy a house easier than either could alone. Banks are much nicer to actually-married couples in some places. "Buying a house" can have the significance of "settling down" or "getting serious", and marriage can come along with that as an afterthought.
And last, and this is the sexist part of what I'm saying, some women are so insanely desirous of having a home of their own that marriage might seem like a reasonable means, even if there is no other reason to get married.
Maybe feminism is like marriage. There are certain core attributes, and you don't necessarily have to have all of them to reach the qualifying threshold, but just one of them won't do either.
That seems like something a libertarian would say. Only they'd use "statist."
If one of them had no sexual anatomy I would think of it as a marriage between Barbie(tm) dolls.
112,116: Yeah, I wanted to say this, but was having trouble formulating it. Resisting the word 'feminist' has a tendency to go with not being all that sure about equal rights for women. You, clearly, are just obsteporous rather than downplaying secretly sexist views, but I can see how someone might think the other.
Ebola -- what a cute name for a girl!
Marriage is what brings us together today.
My mother knew a guy with the name "Mike Hunt."
I've known two - count 'em, two! - Mike Hunts. Both went by Michael, understandably. Along those lines of understandability, I can't figure out for the life of me why this guy (who was on NPR's Marketplace the other day) doesn't go by Harold.
117: I don't mean "autonomous" to suggest, "Can do whatever you want," but rather, "you have a right to control over yourself and your body, and you can reserve from it unwanted intrusion."
121: Yes, it does. But in my head, it was a socialist saying it.
"Unwanted intrusion". No there's a euphemism for you. My sister-in-law's euphemism is "bother", which gives a whole new aspect to the Pooh books.
A friend of mine did her Teach for America stint in rural Georgia, where, apparently, a lot of the women went to the doctor for the first time when they got pregnant. She knew a child named Fallopia.
On my non-Mormon side, I've a great-great-something-or-other named Philander.
At least this guy has the sense to go by Richard.
my high school had a mike hunt. he went by mike hunt.
we also had a "thunder bolt" and a "lightning rod." they were cousins. happily, they were regularly called to the principal's office.
When I pressed her for her definition of feminism, it roughly came down to "paying equal wages for equal work." Well sure, I believe in that
I suppose that hardly anyone these days would admit to opposing equal wages for equal work, yet most people in this country don't call themselves "feminists." I think the word is sort of like "liberal": its definition is fuzzy, it means different things to different people, and the Right pretty much uses it as a synonym for "evil" and/or "nuts" (in the sense of 98, not 93).
I've mentioned Samoan names here before. I also knew an 'Airbase', when I was in Samoa -- while I didn't know the story, I always surmised that it was something along the lines of "Well, I'm not sure who the father is, but I know where I was that weekend..."
But now you can go back and fix your comment and pretend it never happened!
"Sterling" was in the top 1000 boys' names since the baby name wizard started tracking. And "Percy" and "Cecil," which I use as my gold standard for names that will get you beat up, both dropped out by 2004.
That would be in bad faith tho.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Now 137 seems a non sequitur. I tell you, Ogged leaves and anarchy breaks out!
Sterling is the first name of Sterling Hayden who doesn't seem particularly lacking in Machismo to me. How 'bout Tor?
I had a blond childhood friend, with hippie (rather than royalist) parents, named Sun King.
I think you just have to get into a different mindset when dealing with Chinese names. Pretend they don't sound like anything in English, and take them on their own terms. Otherwise it's just too distracting.
On my non-Mormon side, I've a great-great-something-or-other named Philander.
That is an amusing old name, now out of fashion for obvious reasons. The natural father of Dennis Rodman (a bizarre player on the Chicago Bulls during the last three, IIRC, of the Michael Jordan championship years) is also named Philander. Aptly enough, he has 27 children by four wives and various "extracurricular activities." There is a fancy restaurant in Oak Park, Illinois named Philander's.
Now 137 seems a non sequitur. I tell you, Ogged leaves and anarchy breaks out!
Nah, JO's going to do the important work of policing us.
Off topic and selfish: My email is all screwed up. If anyone mailed me at my becks - at - rdp dot mailshell dot com address in the last 24 hours and I haven't responded, it's because your message never arrived. Please try resending it to my becks - at - unfogged dot com address.
If you're running the blog, you don't have to be apologetic about posting off-topic.
Does Warren Goldfarb fold his own garb?
My thought was related to marriage at first, but did transmute by processes inexplicables.
...and if she still fails to respond, you will know it is because she loves you not.
Re 132: I knew a Peter Ball in law school. And let's not forget Harry Kuntz.
Variant of the old Sara Lee jingle: "Everybody doesn't like someone, but nobody doesn't like Harry Kuntz!"
Resisting the word 'feminist' has a tendency to go with not being all that sure about equal rights for women.
I suppose that's right. But let me take what little heat there is off of Apostropher and increase it, by admitting the following: I'm not sure I would again get into a long term relationship with someone who identified herself as a feminist without any prompting. This is different from women who would reject the label, which I don't really understand. I am leary of people who have theoretic schema at the core of their being.
If you're running the blog, you don't have to be apologetic about posting off-topic.
This seems to suggest that other people do have to be.
If you do have to be apologetic, then you're not running the blog.
SomeCallMeTim says, "I am Leary" -- and the truth is out!
154: Indeed, that's the contrapositive of your original assertion; but I claim that the original assertion implicates that non-blogrunners should sometimes be apologetic about posting off-topic. Whereas I think mere commenters can drag the conversation to such subjects as contrapositives and implicatures any time.
Careful, eb, or Weiner will bust out his symbolic logic stuff again and make our heads hurt.
I agree that the "any time, any topic" potential exists for all commenters, but I am suggesting as a matter of fact, that off-topic comments - or rather, the initial ones that take the conversation off topic - are indeed sometimes apologetic. There are many examples that could be linked, including one in a thread above this one.
None of us wants to be objectified, but don't you think her using the term straight out was intended to test your reaction? So what's it mean to her? How is she going to try to make it work, live by it? Can't you concede that structural issues, even if only apprehended theoretically by an earnest young woman, might be worth talking about? Maybe I'm in job interview mode (is there an ascii convention for crossed fingers and toes?), but that looks like an opportunity to me. I'd even be willing to discuss what it means to say that men hate women.
Dennis Rodman (a bizarre player on the Chicago Bulls during the last three, IIRC, of the Michael Jordan championship years)
Surely Dennis Rodman needs no introduction, n'est-ce pas?
I don't know about you, Becks, but 160 does not make my head hurt. Probably because 154 was written deliberately to provoke the symbolic logic. Not true!
even if only apprehended theoretically by an earnest young woman, might be worth talking about
This has been previously discussed: I thought it was broadly agreed that earnest people are not worth talking to.
And a philosophy that every person is allowed to define as they see fit is no kind of philosophy at all.
Nonsense. Or, rather, saying "there are different kinds of feminists, and different kinds of feminism, and one of the things feminism does is argue about these things" is not the same as saying "hey, it's a free for all and everyone gets to define it however they want." The "Independent Women's Forum" is not feminist. "Feminists for Life," however, I would say is--because their primary agenda seems to be working to counter social and legal barriers to women's full equality. Feminists may argue about how best to do this, or about what "equality" means, given biological difference, but at bottom we all agree that it's an important principle.
Which is why some of us get irked when people refuse to claim the label. It sounds like they're saying, "I oppose X instance of overt discrimination, sure, but the larger principle of full equality, I dunno...."
their primary agenda seems to be working to counter social and legal barriers to women's full equality.
I think that this is something to which most people in our cohort subscribe, particularly if we're not going into details about precisely what "full equality" means. I honestly don't know a single person who would disagree with that agenda.
154, 156: This is what "The exception proves the rule" supposedly means. If you say that "Blogrunners need not apologize for OT comments" it's implicit that everyoneelse does.
119: Michael, sometimes a couple can buy a house easier than either could alone. ...
Indeed. But the couple needn't be married to buy as a couple. JTw/ROS works fine for any people, and any may be jointly liable on a mortgage. In fact, I've wondered if my partner and I should perhaps incorporate rather than marry.
And last, and this is the sexist part of what I'm saying, some women are so insanely desirous of having a home of their own that marriage might seem like a reasonable means, even if there is no other reason to get married.
What happened to all the old fashioned women who'd be perfectly happy as a mistress in exchange for a simple apartment, rather than a whole house? Too much greed nowadays, that's what I say.
164: This is exactly my point, though, B. If your definition of feminism is "working to counter social and legal barriers to women's full equality," beginning with an argument over "what 'equality' means," well, that's vague to the point of meaninglessness.
I don't have a problem with feminism or feminists (disclosure: my conversation was with my wife, who has a master's in women's studies and her original last name) and I certainly don't use it as an epithet, a la the IWF. I'm also perfectly willing to admit to being obstreperous or cantankerous - but mostly over words.
You had this convesation with your wife and you quibbled like that? And I'm ashamed of arguing about Garrison Keillor.
#169: Pshaw. Yes, obviously, "equality" is a somewhat flexible concept, but, for instance, it doesn't stretch so far as to say that women are equal to men if they don't have the vote, or are prohibited from holding a job outside the home, based on biological difference. It is in the nuances that we quibble, not in the broader principles. It's solipsistic to say that acknowledging nuance renders something meaningless.
vague to the point of meaninglessness.
You think? I find this an "I know it when I see it" kind of thing -- while there's room for a fair amount of disagreement within that definition, I'd say from experience that someone who can't accept that definition without carping is someone I'm going to have a lot of differences with about gender issues, while someone who responds to it with "Well, of course" is someone I'm going to basically get along with and be able to treat as an ally. Given that I'm a feminist, that means that I'll think of the latter as feminists.
#170: There is no shame in arguing about Garrison Keillor, as long as the argument being put forth is, "he sucks."
with your wife and you quibbled like that
She started it, yo. Actually, the circumstances were that a friend she hadn't spoken to since before either of our first marriages ended emailed out of the blue. She was catching her up and the friend asked if I was a feminist. She asked me, I chuckled and said, "I don't subscribe to isms."
It was some time before I got to get back to what I was doing before the question.
The thing is, LB and B, I doubt we harbor much in the way of differences on gender issues.
Standpipe:
I was refering to the thread from a couple of days ago, but that one was better.
#175: I doubt we do, either, but that's why, were I your wife, I would find your quibbling annoying. You're refusing a label for something you do, in fact, believe in, because you don't believe in labels: the implication is that resisting labelling > feminism.
Does GK really get no points for Sunday's review?
Apo: Sure, and I meant to say that in 123. I can see what made your wife testy, though: "If we agree about this stuff, why can't you just admit it? Show the flag, dammit!"
178: And again, why do I bother. What B. said.
(and I think garrison kellior is funny. What can I say?)
#179: Dunno, I ignore him on general principles.
#178: That's why you bother. B/c you never know when we'll differ about something. Like Garrison Keillor. Ick.
The advantage of marriage, Michael, is that divorces are much more dramatic than dissolutions of corporations.
Marriage-for-the-sake-of-home-ownership is obviously not your personal cup of tea, but it does happen quite a bit, and not all areas are equally accepting of unmarried couples.
I know a guy who bought a house with his sister.
You're refusing a label for something you do, in fact, believe in, because you don't believe in labels: the implication is that resisting labelling > feminism.
I can't speak for Apostropher, but I certainly subscribe to what we've indicated as the core tenet of feminism, yet I would never call myself a "feminist." It just sounds disingenuous coming from a man; I'm broadly sympathetic to equal rights for African-Americans, but I wouldn't call myself a "black power" guy.
I know a guy who bought a house with his sister.
This reminds me: I remember thinking when I saw Brokeback, why don't they just get a ranch together in some community where no one knows them, and tell everyone they're brothers? In small town rural settings, such an arrangement wouldn't be too unusual, would it?
I like "The Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra."
I tried to post this earlier, but my connection went out. I know that John Bailey remarried after Iris Murdoch died, and that he and his wife who was, I think, a widow, bothkept their houses. Part of the reason that he got married was that he wanted to be left alone. He didn't want people feeling that they had to take care of him. And there was a shocking number of young women who hit on him *very* aggressively. Marriage by asserting a single unit was almost a barrier against the rest of the world--even if they chose to live separately.
I also heard of an Oxford Professor whose husband was a professor somewhere else. He was older and retired before she did, and she was really scared about the prospect of living together full-time. I think a similar sentiment is expressed by homemaker wives when their husbands retire and are underfoot: "I married him for life, not for lunch."
112, ac--I certainly consider myself a feminist, but I don't really see a problem with taking a husband's last name if you want to. A friend of mine did that, and I probably would--depending on the name. I have a foreign last name which is hard to pronounce.
I did know a very liberal couple who felt very strongly about the last name issue in a way that I thought was confusing. Their first child was a girl and they gave her the father's last name. Then they gave their son the mother's last name. That just seems like a recipee for confusion at scool. I think hyphenation could be an excellent option.
The playwright David Lindsay-Abaire compounded his last name with his wife's maiden name (I think he was just David Lindsay before he got married).
Mutual hyphenation works for us.
I certainly subscribe to what we've indicated as the core tenet of feminism, yet I would never call myself a "feminist." It just sounds disingenuous coming from a man;
Well, while I disagree that there's anything wrong with a man calling himself a feminist, a quibble like that: "I agree with feminism, but calling myself, as a man, a feminist sounds wrong," wouldn't make me cranky.
#185: See, I can respect that position.
I have huge issues with women changing their last names, though.
185: You don't have to be female to be a feminist. Hell, even Richard Posner (the Reagan-appointed judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and U of C law school professor) calls himself a feminist (a "conservative feminist," in his case).
Surely Dennis Rodman needs no introduction, n'est-ce pas?
Probably not for most readers, but I threw in the description for anyone who didn't know. I love the article you linked to, especially item 7:
"I had great expectations," she wrote of the first time they made love. "They were not met. There were still about 10sec left on the 24sec shot clock . . ." Ouch.
like a recipee for confusion
No kidding. In meatspace, I go by my middle name (and have done so all my life), and you wouldn't believe the hassles that creates all by itself. Hyphenation works for one generation, but then when Mary Parks-Robinson has children with George Lincoln-Cadwallader, little Billy and Susie Parks-Robinson-Lincoln-Cadwallader are going to develop carpal tunnel in 1st grade.
I have huge issues with women changing their last names, though
What if they don't like their original surname? My first wife took mine, my second wife didn't. I didn't care either way, either time; my surname is very common and not particularly mellifluous. However, people legally change their names for all kinds of reasons, and convenience seems a perfectly reasonable one to me.
Sure. I don't care if someone wants to legally change their name. I do care that arguments like "it's confusing" or "what if they don't like their last name?" somehow never get asked of men.
If Posner is a feminist, then I'm not one.
I know a kid who chose his own first and last name at the age of 18. It was fine with the parents. He had an embarassing hippie first name, and while he was changing he decided to go all the way.
What if they don't like their original surname?...people legally change their names for all kinds of reasons
I don't know, I've always thought that changing ones name upon marriage raises a presumption of ones agreement with a prior existing (and to some extent still existing) bad system. Obviously, there are things which are ok if done for no reason, or for certain reasons, but the same action would be much worse if done for a different set of reasons.
If Posner is a feminist, then I'm not one.
Which returns to my original objection.
Posner is a mixed bag, and there are far worse things than being associated with him. His recent articles on the NSA surveillance which contravenes FISA have been deplorable.
apo, I think the Spanish solution is pretty good. You keep your father's last name when you marry and take your husband's. At least I think that's how it works. But before you're married, your father's name comes first and your mother's second.
Mary Parks-Robinson has children with George Lincoln-Cadwallader, little Billy and Susie Parks-Robinson-Lincoln-Cadwallader are going to develop carpal tunnel in 1st grade.
I know a couple who both, a la LizardBreath and Mr. Breath, hyphenated their names after marriage, becoming "Berger-White." I did a Google search and found someone named Eleanor Castle Hamm. I observed that if her kid married their kid, the two of them could hyphenate all their names and become White-Castle-Hamm-Bergers.
My wife appended my surname to hers after we married, a la Hillary Rodham Clinton. If she had had an Irish surname, I would have dropped my name and taken hers, the better to run for office with. In Chicago, the voters love those Irish names. Great reason to vote for people. :P
Well, yes, Posner isn't Hitler. The bad things about him are bad enough that I had to reconsider pragmatism when he showed up in Menand's pragmatist anthology. Posner is the worst way pragmatism can go wrong.
200: I don't think that solution overcomes B's objections, though.
I would state it a bit more strongly than w/d. Keeping your own name is, to me, a signifier of being attached to your own separate identity. I can understand LB's decision to assert a truly shared new identity. But I'm sorry, taking your husband's name signals a surrender of sorts, a loss of self. It may truly be a matter of convenience. I would not read it that way, given the great weight of the historical meaning of that decision.
199 gets it almost exactly right; I would strike the "far" in the first sentence.
Mary Parks-Robinson has children with George Lincoln-Cadwallader, little Billy and Susie Parks-Robinson-Lincoln-Cadwallader
Sally and Newt will have to figure this out for themselves, but I always figured a sensible solution would be for Sally to keep my name and hyphenate with a spouse, while Newt kept Mr. Breath's. Or vice versa, I'm not fussy.
195, 197, 204: I agree with all of those, with the caveat that I think a lot of otherwise perfectly feminist women change their names because they've never thought about it or don't consider it a big enough deal to fight over. I wouldn't expect a woman not to be a feminist just because she changed her name.
Posner has increasingly turned into a complete jackass. His particular worries about "grapefruit-sized" nuclear bombs were the tip-off.
200: I don't think that solution overcomes B's objections, though.
No it doesn't, but it avoids the 4 name sprawling that you identified in 194, and you do keep part of your name.
204--ac, would your nswer change at all if the woman had been molested by her father? (Let me just say that this is not my own experience, though I do have a lot of wacky weirdness in my family.)
Also B, if my grandfather were alive, I think that he would be hurt if I changed my name to something random (unless it were a stage name), but I don't think he'd mind at all if I took my husband's name.
Tangential: Are y'all familiar with Philip Larkin's poem "Maiden Name"?
His take on Bush v. Gore was shameful. "Um, I can't really defend this on legal terms, but political solutions are so messy and dangerous!"
For a feminist, the Icelandic solution would be perfect. Mary's daughter Susan would be Susan Marysdottir, and her daughter Mary would be Mary Susansdottir.
When I was married my wife had the choice between my name, her ex-husband's name (which she had taken), her father's name, and her hippy name. She still goes by her first husband's name.
It may truly be a matter of convenience. I would not read it that way, given the great weight of the historical meaning of that decision
That's the thing. What we're really looking for are predictors of future behavior. And answers to a small number of questions are more likely to be really bad predictors.
That said, I can't imagine marrying someone who would want to take my last name. And that's not just because my last name is "Vulva."
I'm cool with the Spanish solution, actually. It's not perfect, but it's not appalling.
The "it's your father's name" thing is a red herring, I think. I didn't keep it b/c it was my dad's name; I kept it because it was mine.
As I said, I don't care if people want to change their names. But it's evasive to pretend that the "real" reason women, and not men, make this decision is neutral--b/c they don't like it, to prevent confusion, b/c it's hard to pronounce.
211: I think that Dorothy Parker did that. She was running away from a Jewish name--Rothschild, I think. When asked why she called herself Mrs. Parker, she said "because there was a Mr. Parker."
My 8th grade :atin teacher did something sort of similar. She had developed her professional reputation when she was married to husband #1. So in school she was Mrs. X, but socially she was Mrs. Y.
I suspected when I typed comment 100 that it would precipitate at least another hundred comments.
I wouldn't expect a woman not to be a feminist just because she changed her name.
It's not that I couldn't be persuaded otherwise, based on other information, but that would be my presumption. In some ways this may be a broader cultural softening of 1970s-style feminism, not so specific to the individual woman, but in the aggregate I think it's a defeat.
Apo -- what was the over-uder on that?
I kept it because it was mine.
Wasn't your name yours by virtue of the same system that bothers you?
Of course your grandfather would be happier with a name change to your husband's name than just a random name change, BG. But that doesn't mean that doing so isn't a capitulation to sexism. Which, I hasten to add, fine: we all choose our battles. I, personally, think that not changing one's name is a pretty easy feminist statement to make, so I think people should do it.
The question of what to name children, by the way, is a *separate* question from whether or not a wife should take her husband's name. Hence, the "cascading hyphens" argument is, again, an evasion. There are good arguments to be made for patrilinear naming (the baby comes out of the mother's body, hence matrineal descent is certain; the baby takes the father's name as a sign that the father claims / acknowledges paternity), just as there are for matrilineal naming (only maternity is certain, barring DNA testing) or hyphenation (the baby is the product of both parents). But the argument that women should change their names in order to avoid confusion for future generations just begs the question, why should it be women, and not men, who do that?
#218: Sure. Nonetheless, the fact is that my name is the one *I* was born with. I can't retroactively change the system.
My ex-wife married more to get away from her Mormon parents than for any other reason, so taking her first husband's name might have been liberting.
219: Oh, I'm sure that it would be a small capitulation to sexism, but, as you say, we all pick our battles.
Just curious, did men ever take their wives names? I seem to recall examples (from several hundred years ago) of men who *did* take a wife's family name, if the wife's family was more prominent or very rich.
Yes, that kind of arrangement happened if men married up; it would be part of the legal arrangements made prior to the marriage, which in such cases virtually always also included safeguarding the wife's property by placing it under the direction of some other male relative--since, by law, married women were femmes couvertes, that is to say, "covered" by their husband's identity and therefore not separate individuals, legally speaking.
Which, of course, is directly related to the tradition of taking the husband's name upon marriage.
(FWIW, BG, changing your legal name, even as a result of marriage, is a lot of paperwork; I was pleasantly surprised to find that *not* changing my name meant I didn't have to do anything. I fully expected to have to sign some kind of affadavit to social security to say that though I was married, my name was not changing; mais non. If you change, you have to fiddle with bank accounts, social security, passports, etc. etc.--if not, no problem.)
You would think there would be more examples of guys who took their wives' names because their own surnames were weird, but I don't personally know of any. Of course, as B suggests, that kind of belies the "lots of women take their husbands' names because their own names are weird" assertion.
Well, I'm not in danger of getting married any time soon. And I sort of dream of marrying someone from a nice Commonwealth country which would inevitably involve a lo of fiddling with passports and social security/ national insurance numbers.
I think I remember that James Smithson, for whom the Smithsonian is named, was the birth name of a man who changed his name when he married up into the aristocracy.
Woman keeping her own name is easy, convenient, and doesn't confuse that many people. I just renewed my son's library card. My wife had signed it. They needed to call a supervisor to let me validate it, but that was easy.
Anybody read Law and Literature? Highbrow, but his judgement was uh, eccentric.
B, in 164: ...what "equality" means, given biological difference ...
B, in 171: ... based on biological difference ...
What does biological difference have to do with gender, or equality? Is someone claiming that biology *is* destiny? Why mention it once, let alone twice?
Marriage-for-the-sake-of-home-ownership is obviously not your personal cup of tea, but it does happen quite a bit, and not all areas are equally accepting of unmarried couples.
I can well understand forming a relationship to facilitate home purchase. I can see forming a relationship that bears the stigmata of marriage to buy a house. I can see buying a house in an effort to shore up the relationship. But I don't see the connection between marriage (as a legal status) and buying a house. Getting a mortgage might be easier, but I strongly suspect that as the mortgage market has become national, this should be only a very small issue. Perhaps if we had needed the approval of a co-op board it would have been different.
I know a guy who bought a house with his sister.
I tried to buy an ice cream cone with my brother, but the vendor didn't want my brother. I often wished I'd had a sister instead. Brothers are so illiquid.
the stigmata of marriage
The what?
What does biological difference have to do with gender
The relationship seems pretty straightforward to me.
When my wife and I got married she took my name but I would have had no problem at all with her keeping her maiden name -- not least because it's a cool sounding name.
Czech law, however, used to be pretty strict on this issue and she was required to take my name and add the Czech -ova suffix on pain of losing her Czech citizenship.
McGrattanova is a wierd/ugly sounding name and it causes total confusion in the Czech Republic and here in the UK.
Recently the Czech law has been changed to allow her to change it, thankfully.
As I've mentioned in a comment ages ago, my brother has an entirely made up second name as my mother didn't want to use, for him, the name she still uses (her ex-husband's i.e. my dad's). So his surname is totally unique to him. Which is cool...
stigmata: (ideosyncratic) marks; indicia; attributes.
The relationship seems pretty straightforward to me.
Can you explain it?
It's solipsistic to say that acknowledging nuance renders something meaningless.
I could agree if you'd said it's solecistic.
I would surmise that B. was talking about issues relating to pregnancy and childbearing, in which biological differences between men and women place the sexes in systematically different positions. Analyzing 'equality' for people in different factual positions is not simple.
Can you explain it?
As one of the many people on this blog who has been through law school, use of the Socratic method in friendly conversation makes me want to hit you with a brick. Clearly, Apo is referring to the fact that men and women differ biologically -- you can usually tell whether a person in our society will be treated as a man rather than as a woman by checking to see if they have a dick. You propbably have some interesting higher-level point to make, but can you make it without the rhetorical questions?
(This is a bit of a pet peeve. My six year old started using the Socratic Method on me over the weekend. I explained what it was called to her, and then explained what the Athenians did to Socrates.)
233: Huh. I'd never seen it used outside of the "wounds of Jesus" meaning.
Michael, Michael. I'm not telling you that you should get married in order to buy a house. I have no opinion on that. I'm just telling you that I think that people do it. I think that it does depend on local markets. It might also just be a psychological compulsion at times, or a way of getting a parental cosigner, or the ploy of a desperate woman.
LB, poisoning your child or hitting it with a brick would be understandable in that circumstance, but still not right. But Michael -- maybe OK.
I know of one man who changed his last name to his wife's upon marriage, because his father was abusive.
He's a distinct minority, however; when this discussion came up among my college friends the guys' uniform responses were 'shows respect for tradition', 'secures an identity as the family', 'makes sure we're serious about marriage'... best response was by a woman grad student friend who simply said, 'If changing your name isn't such a big deal and won't affect your career, and demonstrates your commitment, why aren't you changing yours?'
I'm not sure changing your name, however, is a mark of anti-feminism (though I'd agree with the reverse in a lot of cases.) Most women still change their names upon marriage, but I think feminist ideals have percolated through a lot of society. Maybe changing your name excludes one from being a radical feminist (even so, I'm not sure-- heels & lingerie are okay).
I do not plan to change my name professionally or legally. Socially, I'm fine with being known as Mrs. Whatever; I find people who insist on the Dr. in non-academic settings to be annoying, and the last name is just easier in social contexts, mostly because I hate correcting people over something (to me) comparatively minor. Kids will get his last name; hyphenating bothers me aesthetically.
Do marriage stigmata bleed?
Hyphenation works for one generation
If that. A friend whose name is Nakumura married a Nakanishi. They didn't hyphenate.
Re unfortunate names: the smallish, very white town I grew up in had an influx of Southeast Asians starting around the mid-70s, leading to cute scenes like aging 1st grade teachers having to deal with names like Phuoc Vu.
Re the Utah page, Hawaii is another good place for interesting names. Lots of Sterlings running around, including at least one Sterling Silva. And for some reason there are a lot of Winstons, mostly of Chinese ancestry. Not to mention the cool combinations of names that show up after a few generations of intermarriage.
Sex is biological, and there are obvious differences between men and women on that level.
Gender is a social construct; while we tend to treat gender as a consequence of sex, it isn't, really.
Owning property with someone you're not related to can, I believe, be a major legal headache--if, say, the relationship falls apart or if one partner's right to the property is challenged for whatever reason (say the other partner dies). Whereas married couples owning property together, because it's pretty common, is something the law has figured out (rightly or wrongly) how to deal with; e.g., your husband dies, the presumption is that you get the property. If you're living with someone you're not married to, that presumption may not hold.
Gender is a social construct
Not in the world of clinical trials, it isn't.
Socially, I'm fine with being known as Mrs. Whatever; I find people who insist on the Dr. in non-academic settings to be annoying, and the last name is just easier in social contexts, mostly because I hate correcting people over something (to me) comparatively minor.
Hrm. It's funny, this (and one-way hyphenation: woman hyphenates, man doesn't) bothers me more that a straight name-change. Changing your name to your husband's can be anything from never thought about the issue, to really not caring and figuring that it's easy, low-conflict, whatever. Not giving a damn is always a defensible position.
Intermediate steps on the other hand, like using one name professionally and the other at home, or hyphenating when your husband doesn't, seem like losing on an issue that you care about -- "Equality and keeping my own name matter to me, but keeping peace with people who will make that difficult matters more."
I don't mean to disapprove of your position -- it just doesn't click for me.
Re unfortunate names: The Cook County (Illinois) State's Attorney is named "Dick Devine." Sounds like a porn star name, doesn't it? Inexplicably, though, when he indicted the singer R. Kelly for messing around with an underage girl, all the news stories called him "Richard Devine." Heaven knows why he doesn't use that name all the time.
The President of the Cook County Board some years back was named "Dick Phelan." When he ran for election, one of the radio stations played his ad, and thereafter the deejays launched into a long discussion of sexual dysfunction. "Dick Phelan? Yeah, I had that problem the other night. I was so embarrassed." (etc.)
#241: I'm not sure what you're talking about, but that's the way the terms are used when one is making the distinction.
LB, I don't know if that's what Cala meant. For instance, I didn't change my name, but yeah: when telemarketers or PK's schoolteacher call me "Mrs. Not-me" I'll sometimes let it go, b/c, whatever. I'll correct someone once if I'm going to see them again (e.g., the teacher) but if they insist I'm not going to get in a fight about it. This is helped, of course, b/c Mr. B. is usually the one who takes PK to school, so I don't have to show up very often and deal with it.
Having said that, another big reason I, personally, have for not changing one's name is archives: do any of you have any idea how fucking hard it is to trace women's history when you can't be sure if "Elizabeth Nells" is the same person as "Elizabeth Miller" or maybe she was "Elizabeth Baker"??? And my god, if she married more than once?? Argh. Talk about disappearing.
Oh, letting mistakes go without getting pissy about them doesn't bother me in the slightest: it's the Dr. Smith at work, Mrs. Jones at home as a matter of policy that gives me the willies.
Sex is biological, and there are obvious differences between men and women on that level.
Gender is a social construct; while we tend to treat gender as a consequence of sex, it isn't, really.
Thank you. That's the distinction I was taught, which was why I was surprised when somehow biology crept into a discussion of social constructs - marriage, equality, etc.
Perhaps the question "What does biological difference have to do with gender?" was infelicitous, but it seems to have uncovered a disagreement. Apo and LB, if I understand them, do say that gender tends to be based on sex; B (if I understand her) and certainly myself disagree, and see them as distinct analytical systems.
LB: Clearly, Apo is referring to the fact that men and women differ biologically -- you can usually tell whether a person in our society will be treated as a man rather than as a woman by checking to see if they have a dick.
That certainly wasn't clear to me until he explained. And I disagree. In our society (and in Samoa, as you pointed out) the concept of masculinity (gender) doesn't map all that well onto male (the sex). When Gov. Arnold talked about girly men he wasn't referring to sex, he wasn't talking about people with an XXY genotype, he was talking about masculinity. There are females who aren't very ladylike. There are cross-dressers. There are people who present as socially androgynous. There are children.
Failing to insist on this distinction leads to conclusions such as "of course we gave her custody of the kids in the divorce, women are just naturally more nurturing".
I'm not sure what you're talking about
In the documents I spend my working days editing (mostly clinical study reports, protocols, and statistical analysis plans for drug trials), "gender" is used more frequently than "sex" to refer to XX vs. XY. Lingos differ between fields, I suppose.
Sure. Gender is the social category, sex is the biological category.
Apo and LB, if I understand them, do say that gender tends to be based on sex
Well, yes.
B (if I understand her) and certainly myself disagree, and see them as distinct analytical systems.
Distinct analytical systems, sure, but I have a hard time accepting that you disagree that gender tends to be based on sex. In a roomful of people whose sex you know, you would be able to make a set of educated guesses as to what gender roles they are likely to express. You wouldn't always be right, but you'd do better than chance.
Michael, Michael. I'm not telling you that you should get married in order to buy a house. I have no opinion on that. I'm just telling you that I think that people do it. I think that it does depend on local markets. It might also just be a psychological compulsion at times, or a way of getting a parental cosigner, or the ploy of a desperate woman.
And I disagree. I think people get married in order to meet societal expectations, to conform to a familiar role. You may be saying this in your final sentence. The buying of the house may trigger the need to do what's expected, but it's the expectation that's the underlying reason. Again, I'm trying to draw a clear distinction between marriage as a legal status, and other legal relations that have the same effect.
B may be correct in saying "Owning property with someone you're not related to can, I believe, be a major legal headache...". I have not run into that. In the instances I've heard about the problems arose because of some failure to follow the legal requirements. For example, forgetting to put the deed into joint tenancy, or failing to name the partner as the beneficiary on a pension. To the extent that she's right, that's a reason to actually get married.
Okay, using "based on". I should have said "constructed as".
Much of what we regard as gender may well not have anything to do with sex. Such things as sensitivity, intuition, nurturing, mechanical skills, etc.
But because we construct gender as based on sex, we leap to the conclusion that these gender markers can be generalized on the basis of sex. That is, upon meeting a random female we expect that she will be sensitive, intuitive, nurturing, and a mechanical klutz.
That, I believe, is a pernicious aspect of sexism. I think the way to avoid it is to insist that gender is not sex.
Well drat. I was getting all testy, and now I don't have anything else to disagree with.
Yeah, but the point is you need to go through those extra steps. I think it's one of the reasons why there's a new kind of legal practice that caters specifically to gay couples, for instance--precisely so that you can hire someone who knows the ins and outs and can make sure you don't forget anything.
In the documents I spend my working days editing (mostly clinical study reports, protocols, and statistical analysis plans for drug trials), "gender" is used more frequently than "sex" to refer to XX vs. XY. Lingos differ between fields, I suppose.
I think it's more than different jargons. The claim that gender is the same as sex, that gender distinctions are natural and biological, is only of the rationalizations for sexism. The usage you cite is a normalizing of sexism, among folks who should certainly know better
#247: Oh, okay. I'd surmise that that's because those in the medical field may not bother to be familiar with the distinction, which obviously comes from the social sciences. And most people do use "gender" and "sex" interchangably. Of course, folks who are XXY or who are transgendered or whatever would point out that we're still assuming binary categories for both gender *and* sex....
. That is, upon meeting a random female we expect that she will be sensitive, intuitive, nurturing, and a mechanical klutz.
This may sound snarky, but it isn't so meant: why do we care? Increasingly (entirely, in my case) we live our entire lives surrounded by both genders. If we start with wierd assumptions, we end up with lots of data points to correct those assumptions. I tend to believe that meeting a number of deeply cruel or unnurturing or mechanically skillful women will disabuse you of easy claims based on gender. And it will do so much better than people pointing it out.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be pointed out; it probably should. But I think, as in many cases, the vast majority of the work in making the world more equal is being done day-by-day in small, unconscious (BW?) interactions. Do people feel obliged to make these sorts of points in real life?
#256: Are you kidding? We care because weird assumptions can affect education and employment.
Sorry, LB, I really wasn't trying to bait anyone. But I really do think that careful use of language is an important agent of culture change. If we want to eliminate sexism, I say we should never never never let anyone obscure the distinction between sex and gender.
Yeah, but the point is you need to go through those extra steps.
True. But again, if we want to decouple the notion of marriage from notions of property rights, and inheritance, etc., we should be careful not to use 'marriage' as shorthand for the way to acheive those other results. Doing things the normal way is always easier - but the only way to change norms is by doing things the hard way.
I kind of only scanned some of the comments, but I actually think the "sex is biological; gender is a social construct" phrasing is wrong. Sex is biological and so's your gender identity; the particular behaviors we associate with gender identities are socially constructed (mostly, anyway). I'm planning a post on this, in fact, apropos of some reading I did.
I think it's more than different jargons. The claim that gender is the same as sex, that gender distinctions are natural and biological, is only of the rationalizations for sexism. The usage you cite is a normalizing of sexism, among folks who should certainly know better
I don't think that's well supported. The gender/sex distinction as you describe it is pretty new -- while I don't have the timing off the top of my head, gender started as a purely grammatical term, and then in maybe the late 19C through the mid-late 20C was used as a euphemistic synonym for sex. The 'sex refers to biological categories, gender to the associated social categories' disjuction doesn't go back much beyond Second Wave feminism, I don't think, probably the 70's sometime, and was for a long time pretty internal to academic discourse on gender issues. The fact that clinical trials use gender as a euphemistic synonym for sex doesn't mean they're trying to normalize sexism, just that they haven't caught up to what is still a fairly new and not completely universal usage.
257. Right. Those assumptions can also be internalized, and deprive individuals of liberty. Or they can become embedded in law, and really screw things up.
I tend to believe that meeting a number of deeply cruel or unnurturing or mechanically skillful women will disabuse you of easy claims based on gender. And it will do so much better than people pointing it out.
I don't think so, so much. I'm raising a boy and a girl, and I'm pretty solidly feminist. And I will still look at the two of them doing precisely the same thing, and interpret it differently based on their sex: Newt hits Sally with a block -- drat the boy, they're all like that. Sally hits Newt with a block -- my goodness, what's wrong with her? A lot of gender preconceptions are self-confirming -- you see what you expect.
Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael! I have no idea what you're trying to say! Are you saying that buying a house is not really a valid reason for getting married? Or that even if it seems to be the reason, that it can't be somehow, because there's a deep underlying reason that's the real reason?
The desperate woman I was thinking of was desperate to buy a house, not desperate to get married. I know two or three women who gave up on marriage and decided to go buy the house on their own and were perfectly happy that way, but that's not possible for every woman, for financial or other reasons.
To put it differently, some women want houses more than marriage, and they're willing either to get the house without marriage, or to get married in order to get the house, with the house being the motivator either way. But they would not want to get married without a house.
#256: Are you kidding? We care because weird assumptions can affect education and employment.
Not kidding, but not explaining very well. I think there are now significant parts of the country where most men, at least those below 40, interact with women as both equals and superiors. (BW?) It seems to me that once you get to a certain -- gawd help me -- gender penatration in the labor market, people start sorting this stuff out for themselves. Maybe I live in a particularly strange place, but I'd be stunned if anyone I worked with thought women were somehow confined by their gender. And I think it's because a significant percentage have female bosses. I suspect there are lots of second order sexism effects - how the labor market is structured, no mentors, etc. - but I really rarely (never) hear people say things like, "Well, she'll suck at that - she's a woman." Not even meaningful looks, really.
262: Not just gender. Just about any belief will take consonant events as confirmation and dismiss dissonant ones. It takes often takes alternate models for interpreting events to change people's minds.
260: I don't think that's well supported.
You may be right. I don't have this well worked out, and I may not be able to articulate it clearly, but here goes.
The 19th C notion was that natural=good (proper). I think it may go back to Rousseau, the noble savage, the debilitating effects of civilization, etc.
That implicated the concept of the natural man (and natural woman), the masculine and feminine beings who acted in accord with their essential nature.
Thus, using gender for sex was more than a euphemism. It was - and, I think, remains - a reaffirmation of that idea that our customs were the highest and best expression of a natural progression. The fact that medicine hasn't caught on to what they're doing may say a lot about the hierarchical and patriarchal structure of medicine.
I've always considered myself to be Mr. Natural: nasty, brutish, poor, solitary, and short.
Re: the "gender" vs. "sex" terminology issue
I've heard that in middle and high school textbooks, there is oftentimes a preference for using the term "gender" rather than "sex" to refer to XX vs XY. Maybe not in biology, but in other subject areas; for example, a social studies textbook with a chart showing differences in life expectancy for males vs. females would use "gender" as the category label. The underlying justification for using the term "gender" is that it does not tend to bring out the inner Beavis in the way that using the term "sex" does. And so many kids end up thinking that the two terms are interchangeable.
Newt hits Sally with a block -- drat the boy, they're all like that. Sally hits Newt with a block -- my goodness, what's wrong with her?
I don't have kids, so I can't draw on a precisely analogous situation. I have a very young niece who's fairly aggressive, and I don't think anything much about it except that it's funny. But I'm not sure that's the same.
Right, that's the older but still current purely euphemistic usage.
266: You lost me. Not that I disagree, I'm just not following.
Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael! I have no idea what you're trying to say!
My apologies. I may have misunderstood you. I hadn't really considered the idea that someone would be going around telling people "I'll marry you if you help me buy a house." I was presupposing the existence of the relationship.
266: You lost me. Not that I disagree, I'm just not following.
Sorry. I know I'm not being clear.
English has always had the parallel term: male and masculine, female and feminine. One is sex, one is gender. My impression (I may be wrong) is that even back in the 19th C these terms were used this way.
I'm claiming (without much evidence) that even in the 19th C the notion that 'masculine' was the embodiment of 'maleness' was a cultural construct. That it was supported by ideas about nature, and naturalness, and good, and proper. That it was based in the idea that acting as nature (or God) intended was good.
That is, that what we now call culture would than have been called nature. That even then using the term 'masculine' to mean XY was an affirmation of the idea that masculinity was a natural phenomenon.
I see the continued use of gender to mean sex as an indicator not of the intellectual isolation of medicine, but of its patriarchal traditions.
Michael, you're obtuse. That kind of thing wouldn't be made explicit that way, would it? In your world, do people normally enumerate their motives during the courtship process?
That even then using the term 'masculine' to mean XY was an affirmation of the idea that masculinity was a natural phenomenon.
See, here I'm pretty sure you're historically wrong. 19thC usage, so far as I'm familiar with it it, treats feminine, at least, as a joking synonym for female. I won't deny that at the time most people thought that the social roles and the biological categories were naturally connected and that this was normatively, not just descriptively true. I am pretty sure, however, that the use of 'gender' to mean 'sex' was not an expression of this thought -- it really was treated as just a synonym.
The usage of 'gender' as a synonym for 'sex' is older than the differentiated usage you describe, and it's still current: while the 'sex refers to biological categories, gender to the associated social categories' disjunction is useful, and using the word that way makes an important distinction clear, you really can't deduce anything nefarious from anyone's usage of the terms as synonyms.
but of its patriarchal traditions
I think you're reading too much into the medical usage of the term, Michael. Stedman's Medical Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary both list the reproductive anatomy definition first, and the anthropological definition second. Masculinity and femininity (and for that matter, the anthropological use of "gender") are not medically useful terms outside of psychiatry.
In pharmacology, there is nothing inherently good or bad about male or female, no matter how it was viewed in the 1800s. However, drugs do react differently in men than in women. Gender identity matters not a whit to a chemical compound. Similarly, race is a social construct but, for example, most beta blockers don't work as well in blacks as they do in whites when it comes to reducing blood pressure.
Since the medical use of "gender" precedes the social science use, I'm a little puzzled as to how medical personnel "should know better." The term, like so many others in English, has multiple definitions.
Since the medical use of "gender" precedes the social science use, I'm a little puzzled as to how medical personnel "should know better."
Of course, as LB mentioned, the grammatical term precedes all. It originally made no reference to sex, either; generis just means "class." The early Latin grammarians used it (presumably to translate some Greek term) for the Latin noun classes, which happen to line up somewhat the with biological sexes, in that all nouns denoting explicitly male beings are masculine and the same for feminine (hence the names of the genders). Over the years the term extended its semantic domain and eventually mostly supplanted "sex" when it came to mean "sexual intercourse" (this is what I meant in 274). Then anthropologists and psychologists appropriated it to signify socially-constructed roles, in opposition to biological sex, which was a useful distinction but unfortunately confused the issue quite a bit. And as a result we have discussions like this.
Late to the discussion, but I am really, really opposed to changing my name. I just feel like it's an identity thing - do I really want to signal that I'm somehow a different person now that I've gotten married? Plus, in my case, as someone who comes from two cultures, I treasure having a last name that reflect my Egyptian heritage - I would never want to give that up.
Even though it's not a big deal for a lot of people to change their name, I still think the fact that it's default to the man's name makes it suspicious. Sure, women aren't regarded as property now, but isn't that tradition just a remnant of a time when we were? Same reasons apply to my objections to engagement rings, veils, and givings-away. But I'm a little nuts like that.
#264: Oh yes, absolutely; as women enter and succeed in various fields, that kind of stereotyping--there's a term for it, but I forget what it is--lessens. Which is, of course, the reason why it does, in fact, matter that women be represented across different fields.
I'm not sure I'm as sanguine as you are about how successful that is quite yet--I mean, Larry Summers. And the mommy problem is surely not one we've gotten past. But yes, broadly speaking, this is obviously much, much better for young people than it was twenty or even ten years ago.
Re. gender as a euphemism for "sex"--my other favorite (not) euphemism is when people use "female" or "male" instead of "man" and "woman." But I think I've bitched about that before.
Apos, the argument I'd make for why the medical field should use "sex" instead of "gender" is that, as LB points out, social scientists and the like have made an excellent case for distinguishing between the two; the distinction serves a useful purpose, and the conflation doesn't, really.
the distinction serves a useful purpose, and the conflation doesn't
Granted.
Likewise -- I'm not suggesting that the disjunctive usage isn't more useful, just that you can't, fairly, deduce much from a failure to have adopted it.
Plus, you know, if the box says "sex" rather than "gender," there's the opportunity for appallingly bad jokes.
278: No, there's clearly more to be done. But I sometimes wonder if some younger women reject the "feminist" label because it is associated with a series of descriptions of the world that just don't apply to their (very limited) world. Similarly, I wonder if some men (and I may mean me, per above) react somewhat negatively to the feminist label because of associated theories that, again, don't seem to describe the world they encounter very well.
Yes, possibly. Then there's the other thing; young women who do call themselves feminist and think of themselves as impervious from discrimination. Then you get older and wiser and look back and realize the subtle things that you didn't even notice at the time.
Okay, now I'm confused, and my blood sugar is low, so I'm stupid, too. I've been looking for more data.
This is from Merriam-Webster's New International Dictionary, 1925 (I thought I had the 1896 version here somewhere, but I can't find it).
Feminine.
1. Female; belonging to, or regarded as belonging to, the female sex.
2. Of or pertaining to a woman or women; as, feminine society; feminine needs; feminine tenderness. [quotes from Milton and Johnson here]
3. Effeminate; weak; womanish.
end quote. I think that puts the use of feminine to mean what we would now call a socially constructed role (or something beyond simply sex) at least back to 1925.
Sure, but not explicitly; this is sort of what I meant by the semantic shift of the terms over time. This is (I assume) why anthropologists chose to use "gender" for this meaning -- because it and related terms already covered similar ground (pretheoretically, as it were).
Same source.
Masculine.
1. of the male sex. Now rare.
2. Gram. ...
3. Belonging to, or consisting of, males. appropriated to, or used by, males. Rare.
4. Having the qualities of a man; ... virile; not feminine or effeminate; strong; robust;
end quote. I'd call #4 something more than sex, something involving social roles.
So by 1925 we've got both masculine and feminine used to describe socially constructed characteristics. Using 'gender' to refer to the categories 'masculine' and 'feminine' is no great leap
same source.
Gender.
...
3. Gram. ... Natural gender is that which, as in English, corresponds to actual sex. ...
end quote. Does that make the connection between nature (biology) and gender (the social role), as of 1925?
Using 'gender' to refer to the categories 'masculine' and 'feminine' is no great leap
Exactly.
I spent about 15 seconds trying to figure out how masculine referred to a gram before it dawned on me...
Does that make the connection between nature (biology) and gender (the social role), as of 1925?
No, it's something different. Natural gender just means that animate nouns have the gender that corresponds to their sex -- basically it's a way of describing the kind of gender marking that English has, as opposed to grammatical gender like in French or German, which is arbitrary and covers all nouns.
I can see that the situation is desperate, and I must think. Also sleep. Thank you for trying, however unsuccessfully, to educate me. Somehow I still think that there's a power relation underlying the cultural pattern of treating masculine (as in 'manly, virile') as synonymous with the biological category. But I can't make a good argument right now.
Plus, you have to be careful with dictionary definitions. I'm sure that in a modern dictionary, one of the definitions of "gender" would be "sex." Dictionaries report how words are used, even when they're used in ways that are confusing, slangy, or inaccurate for specialized purposes.
293: true. It was, however, the only data I could come up with at the moment. So I threw it into the discussion.
242: LB, while I do think that using different names in different contexts in intellectually defensible (if wimpy), I had more in mind what B said. Introduce myself as Cala Maidenname, but if someone I don't particularly care about says Mrs. Marriedname, I'm unlikely to care enough to correct them if they're a one-off sort of contact. School nurse, telemarketer, etc.
Not sure what to do about the title thing though. 'Ms. Maidenname' seems a bit weird. 'Mrs. Maidenname' is my mom or grandma. And not everyone gets to call me by my first name, and not all of those people are going to say 'Professor', soo....
I wish I was Southern. 'Miss Cala' would be cool.
Miss Cala -- is the first syllable of your name pronounced 'Kay' or like the first syllable of 'California'?
Like 'California'. (Though being a pseudonym, it's rarely said, come to think of it...)
Hm. But if it's a pseudonym the last sentence of your 295 doesn't make a lot of sense. Your pseudonym could as easily be "Miss Cala" regardless of your geographical origin, non? And if you were a Southern belle, presumably people would call you by your given name rather than your not-yet-selected pseud.
(...all other things being equal)
Oh my gawd, this must be heaven -- I have been accorded the 300th post!
'Ms. Maidenname' seems a bit weird.
I'm curious as to why. This is what my wife uses, and it's never seemed weird to her, or me. To each her own, of course; I'm just wondering if it's the "Ms" or the "Maidenname" that's weird.
(Of course, if your father's last name really was Maidenname, that would be quite something.)
Osner, just because w-lfs-n is blogging now, doesn't mean that you need to be a little bitch, or lint puppet, or whatever the kids are saying these days. Mutatis mutandis, people.
Cala -- the posters for my upcoming wold tour carry the legend, "Osner: as bitchy as we wanna be"
I think comments 295-299 answer question 1 here.
Also, I do not expect anyone to ever hyphenate their name with mine.
Matt #3, it's because I've never known anyone that uses 'Ms.', and I don't have an ear for it.
I'm not going to tell you Mr. Breath's name, but it was right up there with Weiner goofiness-wise, and I hyphenated.
Gotcha.
My mother and hers both did, so I suppose that's why it's more natural to us.
Could somebody like w-lfs-n or Weiner tell me what quasiquotation is, so's I could better understand Weiner's assertion?
I deny that Mr. Breath's name is right up with 'Weiner' goofiness-wise.
Osner: The way I'm using it, quasiquotes mean that the stuff in the quotes is quoted, except for the variables. As in "Many women whose name is X call themselves 'Ms. X'." It substitutes to "Many women whose name is Jones call themselves 'Ms. Jones'," etc.
Ah -- got it. Can you do that in Lisp, from which I know not? In C many functions support a similar functionality using printf-style formatting but it is not built in to the language.
I'm reminded of a funny family story. My aunt was about to get married, but for some reason she had to get a blood test before she did so. She was afraid of needles, and was complaining about this to my grandmother. My grandmother replied, "Well, honey, if you're going to get married, a little prick shouldn't bother you." Much hilarity ensued.
Another time, my aunt's brother, my father, was in the car with my grandfather. They were listening to golf on the radio. The announcer kept saying over and over, "He's having a little trouble with his putts. He just can't get his putts in the hole. His putts won't go in straight."
310: There, you'll have to ask w-lfs-n; I only know the philosophical uses, not the programming ones.
Yes, it's a quasi-quote. (Good god, people. Of all the things to talk about and you're wondering about the quotation marks? EPISTEMOLOGISTS.)
for some reason she had to get a blood test
I think testing people for syphilis before they get married is pretty standard in the US. Not sure exactly why or what happens if you fail the test, but Ellen and I had to do it to get the license -- and I remember seeing references to this in various reading over the years.
it is not built in to the language
Nor, come to think of it, is it particularly elegant or as powerful as it could be if it was built-in.
You can do that in Lisp, but not in C. What you're thinking of is string manipulation, which you can do in C and Lisp etc.; quasiquotation takes place at the level of tokens of the language. So let's say you have:
(define foo '(a b c))
This defines foo to be the list with three elements, the symbols a, b and c (note that this list was created using quotation). Then, if you include it in a quasiquotation, you can unquote it: `(1 2 ,foo foo) results in '(1 2 (a b c) foo), see? You can't do anything like that in C. For one thing, C has no notion of symbols. As a result, C's macro facility blows.
Quasiquotation is really useful for defining macros, since in Lispy languages macros are written in the language itself. For example, in one Scheme environment there's a simplified macro facility called define-macro that would allow you to write a "while" loop macro like this:
(define-macro while (lambda (test . body)
(let ((loop (gensym)))
`(letrec ((,loop (lambda ()
(if ,test
(begin ,@body (,loop)))))
(,loop)))))
The gensym call is to ensure it's hygienic, something else you can't do with C macros; ,@ is unquote-splicing.
testing people for syphilis before they get married is pretty standard in the US
My first marriage (1992), NC was still requiring a doctor visit, but didn't actually require any tests. He just asked whether we had venereal diseases or mental illness, and took our word on the answers. Sensing we felt a bit cheated (the visit wasn't free, y'know), he also told us we should quit smoking. Thanks, Doc. That made it worth it.
By the time of my second marriage (2004), NC was no longer requiring any sort of doctor visit.
In fact, standard Lisp's printf analogue is crazy powerful, and supports all sort of insane constructs, including conditional expressions and looping.
Though now I see that for purposes of 295-299, something like printf or shell-style string interpolation would have worked too.
I wonder if the test for syphillis was originally intended as proxy for virginity.
320 -- yeah that was what I figured based on Weiner's 309 -- I didn't quite realize he was speaking as a philosopher rather than as a programmer. Damn philosophers! Lisp sounds very cool, I hope one day to learn it.
Common Lisp's printf analogue also happens to be craazy unlispy, and I personally detest it. And I'm not alone.
Too bad free lisp implementations suck. I wish Microsoft would adopt Common Lisp for .NET. That would rule in so many ways.
I thought people had to go through a blood test to make sure they weren't related.
(Note that the linked page uses Lisp macros to design an entirely new output facility to replace FORMAT.)
321: No, I think the idea is that untreated syphilis can infect a baby during childbirth (See Ibsen's Ghosts.)
321: Wouldn't it make more sense to test at pregnancy, then? I guess marriage is the only point where you have to go and get a license anyway.
323: Oops. I mean, here.
I posted and then read the rest of the thread. And realized my link was broken.
And once again, a thread eerily stops right around the time I join it. I'm beginning to see a pattern.
An EVIL PATTERN.
pdf23s -- if you were really malicious I bet you could shut down Unfogged, just by being the first commenter on each new post.
My wife hyphenated because she wanted to share a name with me. I would have been willing to hyphenate, but since my last name is an adjective, there would have been a serious lack of euphony.
I'm not getting it -- isn't it just a euphonious for her as for you? Or were you going to hyphenate in the reverse order from the way she did it? We just picked the order that sounded best, and both went the same way.
#321: It's a public health issue--it makes sense to treat before marriage, b/c back in the day it was naturally assumed that marriage --> pregnancy. Testing after you're pregnant is too late.
I'm sure that Mr. B. and I did not have to have any medical tests before we got married, although on general principles we both had STD blood draws. But they didn't get reported to anyone except each other.
Feminists may argue about [...] what "equality" means, given biological difference
This.
Illinois, in the '80s, traditional syphilis test. Don't remember getting results. Unless they had stopped doing anything besides go through the motions, I presume they'd notify you of a positive. And I don't know what would happen then. If the test had been required before WWII, i.e. before antibiotics, that'd be the stuff of nightmares. Like the films shown us in basic training.
#334
Interesting idea, voluntary mutual STD test before marriage. Interesting way of solemnizing the event. Baseline. Pretty admirable actually. Wouldn't have occured to me, because marriage wouldn't be changing my "contacts" or habits. I would have thought the same of you, so it plainly is a responsibility issue. First I've ever thought of it.
Getting back to the discussion upthread about polygamy . . .
LB--I dunno, I guess I've always felt that hyphenation should in part indicate which is one's original family name, and which is one's spouse's, and the conventional way of doing so is to have your original name first.
I can't claim that an immense amount of analysis went into it. I should note that my wife was the first person on either side of our family to even hyphenate, so we're still breaking new ground on that front.
I should also note that for whatever reason, I did feel some investment in her changing her name. I wouldn't care to defend it, beyond saying that it felt right. I did not ask or expect her to change her name all the way, since she has a very common first name, and I have a *very* common last name.
Eh, I don't mean to be accusatory about it. (I actually hadn't realized that was the convention -- all of the hyphenates I knew before I did we're women, and while they all had their own names first, it seemed to be so that they could pull out or drop their own names depending on context: Joan Fotherington-Smythe at work, and Joan Smythe at home, using Fotherington as a middle name. In the context of someone planning to use the whole thing consistently, I hadn't realized there was a convention.)
Eh, I could have created a "convention" out of whole cloth, as well.
No, I think you're right that there is one, because people comment on our name, which is hyphenated Male-Female. They both expect the second name to be my husbands, and have a weird tendency to want to file things under the second initial rather than the first. (That is, I was Joan Smythe and married Richard Fotherington -- we're now Joan and Richard Fotherington-Smythe. People assume that my husband's name was Smythe, and want to file "Fotherington-Smythe" under "S". Peculiar, but survivable.)
