Role reversal
So, most who know me are aware that I did not change my name (or identity) when Brandon slid that size-5 silver ring on my finger. And those who really know me, know why I oppose the practice.
Despite numerous letters of complaint, Brandon and I continue to receive mailings from the Cincinnati Museum Center addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon X. So, the fact that I would receive the below member newsletter from the Cincinnati Zoo kind of thrills me.
What’s in a name?
Although we’re on the national no-call list, we still getting telemarketing calls guised as donations to various “charities.” Each one has the same schtick: they always ask if I am Mrs. Kinman and each time I tell them there is no Mrs. Kinman at this address. It usually throws them off and flusters them just long enough for me to interject a “We ain’t interested” before hanging up.
I recently stumbled upon this article by Catherine Deveny about the whole business of changing your surname upon marrying. Deveny bluntly sums up my thoughts on the whole matter in mere sentences:
Wake up! We are in 2007. Women are no longer owned by their father and then their husband. So why are some women still changing their surnames? And why do some men still want them to? It’s sad, it’s misogynous, it’s archaic, it’s insecure and it’s unnecessary.
Long ago when I was just a budding feminist, I remember a conversation between my mother and older brother about women taking their husband’s surnames, which I denounced for the silly and archaic tradition it is. My brother insisted that because the man buys the ring, a woman is obligated to take his last name. My mother patronized me with a dismissed “She’ll change her mind once she falls in love and gets married.”
Fast forward ten years later: I’ve fallen in love, gotten married and still haven’t changed my name.
I announced my intentions to keep my name long before we said our “I do’s,” but never informed Brandon’s family, namely because, for me, it’s a moot issue.  Marriage isn’t about semantics; it’s about love, respect and commitment.
Both of Brandon’s sisters-in-law took his brother’s names when marrying, and are religious to boot, so I was somewhat apprehensive on his family’s reactions to my blatant act of feminism. His mother asked me outright the night before our wedding and I took a deep breath, and told her of my plans. She didn’t seem surprised; I think she knew the answer before she even asked.
My mother, by contrast, thinks I am being blasphemous and disrespectful to Brandon. You would think she of all people ought to know better. She went from being a daughter to being a wife at age 18, where she changed her name to my father’s name. Now that they’re divorced, she retained my dad’s name and is in a relationship with someone else who she could potentially marry, upon which she would change her name again. In just a short span of fifty years, she could literally have three identities.
Our reception is coming up on Sept. 15. I sent out all the wedding announcement and reception invitations with our “Brandon Kinman and Rachel Richardson” mailing labels, but I know I am going to field this question again. I’d rather not engage the questioner in a lengthy diatribe on how the practice is a tool of the patriarchy. Any clever response ideas?
Filed under Personal, Feminism | Comment (0)More peace and democracy in Iraq
President George Bush justifies the entire illegal invasion of Iraq with the tired line that it will bring peace and democracy to the Middle East, and liberate Iraqis from repression.
But these claims to be fighting a war to establish a democracy in Iraq are belied by the fact that Iraq is more theocracy than it is democracy, where the “peaceful†laws of Islam trump universal civil rights.
I have no love for Saddam’s brutal and sinister regime, but at least under Saddam, Iraq was a secular nation, one in which Iraqi women enjoyed freedoms unheard of in the rest of the middle east. But along with the death, mayhem and economic depression wrought by the U.S. invasion, women’s rights are experiencing a slow, agonizing demise.
The International Campaign Against Honour Killings recently reported on the beating and stoning to death of 17-year-old Du’a Khalil Aswad, in northern Iraq. While law enforcement officials turned a blind eye, a mob of frenzied men murdered the young girl to death. Neighbors watched, recording the crime on cell phones.
What was Aswad’s crime? She fell in love with someone of a different religious sect her family did not approve of.
In the U.S., most people think this kind of brutality is exactly the kind of thing that U.S. democratization will stop,†says Yifat Susskind, communications director of MADRE, an international human rights organization. But, they’d be wrong.
“In fact, the opposite is true,†Susskind writes on the ICAHK blog. “Since the US invasion, “honor killings” have been on the rise across Iraq, due in large part to measures enacted by the US.â€
CNN released video footage of the attack, and it’s been widely circulated on internet sites.
After destroying the Iraqi state, religious powers amenable to the United States quickly filled the legislative and political voids. Although the U.S. is responsible for the protection of all Iraqi’s human rights, honor killings are still rarely prosecuted and if they are, only carry a sentence as little as six months in jail, versus life in prison for murder.
These same religious leaders who operate with the blessing of the U.S. promote honor killing as a religious duty. Women are killed to protect the “honor†of their families, even if they are raped. In October 2004, Iraq’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs revealed that more than half of the 400 rapes reported since the US invasion resulted in the murder of rape survivors by their families.
The next time you hear Bush praising the new democratic system in place in Iraq, think of the Du’a Khalil Aswads in Iraq, whose murders are a direct result of American empire-building.
Filed under Feminism, Politics, Religion | Comment (0)In the Name of the Father
For my columns and review writing class, we had to use a personal narrative to illuminate a larger issue. Here’s my stab below:
In the Name of the Father
At first, they amused me. Later, they perplexed me. Now, mailings addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon X infuriates me.
Amused, Brandon warned that my angry and corrective letters to the mailings’ originators, instructing them on modern mailing etiquette, would be ignored. But I sent them anyway, signing Rachel Richardson with a large flourish on each return.
Long before Brandon popped the question, we discussed our views on marriage. The ambiguity of children hung in the air but one thing I stressed was that I will never become Mrs. Kinman and certainly not Mrs. Brandon X.
As my friends have gotten married, I’ve watched with fascination and more than a bit of irritation as they took the surname of their husbands. “I never really thought about it.” “I didn’t care and he did. “It was important to his father we pass on the family name.” “Hyphenated names are so confusing!” I didn’t really like my last name anyway.” “I wanted my children to have the same last name.”
On and on it goes - the rationalization of an outdated cultural practice steeped in paternal patronization.
It isn’t the aesthetics of name-changing that bothers me; it’s the principle. The tradition of assuming a husband’s last name is rooted in the now-defunct and outdated law of coverture, when a married woman’s social and legal identity was subsumed by her husband after proclaiming “I do.” It’s the same practice white slave-owners self-righteously imposed on black slaves.
Yet, a century later, the patrilineal torch has barely flickered. A survey conducted by Brides magazine in 2001 showed that 83 percent of women changed their last name. A similar survey conducted in 2004 by TheKnot.com revealed 81 percent of women taking their husband’s name.
What’s really in a name? Isn’t it but a technicality fluttering abstractly on bureaucratic forms? Hardly. If names are so arbitrary and devoid of any real meaning, why don’t more men take the last names of their wives? No, Mr. Smith, Jones or Simpson is born with his name, grows with it and dies with it, whether single, married or divorced. His identity remains constant.
Women, on the other hand, reincarnate with each marriage. Prey to the patriarchy, a wife’s identity is lost among words.
I realize the irony here: because of our patriarchal history, my surname is really a man’s. Sure, my last name is also my father’s, but I’ve lived with it for 28 years, molding it, recasting it, making it uniquely my own. It is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes, the timbre of my laugh, the mole on my cheek.
When Brandon and I get married, ours will be a partnership. Not a merger. Never a takeover. At our wedding, the officiant will conclude the ceremony with “And now, introduced for the first time as husband and wife, Brandon X and Rachel Richardson.”
Not abandoning our names in favor of our husbands’ names won’t, in itself, change the world. But maybe it will change the way people think - just a little - about the man as the “head of the household” and all those who inhabit it.
As for future mailings addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon X, I intend to return to sender with the words “Mrs. Brandon X is not known at this address.”
Filed under Personal, Feminism | Comment (1)Yet another web project
So, I finally got off my derriere and started the new blog project I registered months ago.
Announcing…The-F-word.org
When I tell people I want to study the social history and psychology of food as my graduate focus, I’m often met with a blank stare and then, a patronizing “Oh, how nice.”
But really, the study of food and culture, especially as it pertains to women, is an infinitely fascinating field of study. Food and power are inextricably linked, and often women are its victims.
So, basically, the new site will be an extension of my research, providing an outlet for less than scholarly review.
Bon appetit.
Filed under Pop Culture, Personal, Feminism | Comment (0)