What equality looks like
Oct. 26th, 2011 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabrinamariLast night Michael found this on his computer and showed it to me. He wrote it just after Trent was born. He posted it on a locked filter, and I asked if I could repost it publicly in my own journal if I took out all proper names. He agreed, asking only that I use initials in place of full names. I've done so and it is reposted it here, beneath the cut.
"My name is M. B. I just recently had a son, and his name is T. B. P. What is most interesting is that as soon as I mention this to people they immediately ask me why he doesn’t have my last name. I explain simply that his mother’s last name is P. and we (all decisions are made together) decided to use her last name. For some reason, just stating this is never really enough for most people. Though it’s usually all they get, since going into a tirade is simply not my way of doing things. What is disturbing though is that if my wife were to have done the same exact thing (used her last name as his middle name and my last name as his last name), she would never have gotten a single strange look, and probably only 'extreme feminists' would have shown any sign of disapproval. This, actually, is the exact reason that when the naming topic came up, I suggested using her last name as the last name for our child.
And no, this was not a choice made to get people to bother me, to give my son a hard time, or to irritate the people around me. This was a choice I had to make (and not alone) so that I could live with a clear conscience. To understand though, you must understand the choice in a larger spectrum.
In my life, I would say somewhere from 1/3 to ½ of the women I know have been the victims of some form of sexual assault, ranging from actions within dysfunctional and abusive relationship to outright rape. These numbers when read as statistics seem disturbing, but when these are not statistics but people you consider your friends and family, a person really needs to stop and think about what the hell is going on. Now I honestly believe that most men don’t really believe these statistics are true or accurate, but I need to ask these men how many women are they really so close with that they would know firsthand.
One of the reasons I feel that this is the case within our society is because women are generally considered to be a non-valid half of the society, if not consciously then unconsciously, not only by men but also by most women. One of the ways this has been expressed within our culture for thousands of years now is that women are expected to, and willingly give up there own names for the name of the man to whom they marry, and then as the generations pass, their names are silently lost. This is simply another of the subtle influences of our use of language on creating a system of personal invalidation.
The devaluation of women in our culture by this and by other more overt forms of semantic misogyny lead to a property value mentality instead of an egalitarian relationship between men and women, and oftentimes between women to one another. By viewing a woman’s role in society as 'less than human', this allows for mental and physical abuse, dictatorial relationship and attitudes to develop toward women. When a person views another as an equal, attacks against them cannot be rationalized, therefore, by decreasing a woman’s value as a human individual, the tendency for violence against them increases.
This is not only a symptom of the sexism within our society, but also another way in which we teach our children how to think about the value of men vs. women within our culture. I personally do not wish to live in a society where one in every three (at the very least) women have to live with having experienced some form of sexual assault. Nor do I wish to raise my son in that type on a culture or environment. And how can I expect him to be any different from those who would propagate the devaluation of an entire gender if I myself am willing to [do so]?"
"My name is M. B. I just recently had a son, and his name is T. B. P. What is most interesting is that as soon as I mention this to people they immediately ask me why he doesn’t have my last name. I explain simply that his mother’s last name is P. and we (all decisions are made together) decided to use her last name. For some reason, just stating this is never really enough for most people. Though it’s usually all they get, since going into a tirade is simply not my way of doing things. What is disturbing though is that if my wife were to have done the same exact thing (used her last name as his middle name and my last name as his last name), she would never have gotten a single strange look, and probably only 'extreme feminists' would have shown any sign of disapproval. This, actually, is the exact reason that when the naming topic came up, I suggested using her last name as the last name for our child.
And no, this was not a choice made to get people to bother me, to give my son a hard time, or to irritate the people around me. This was a choice I had to make (and not alone) so that I could live with a clear conscience. To understand though, you must understand the choice in a larger spectrum.
In my life, I would say somewhere from 1/3 to ½ of the women I know have been the victims of some form of sexual assault, ranging from actions within dysfunctional and abusive relationship to outright rape. These numbers when read as statistics seem disturbing, but when these are not statistics but people you consider your friends and family, a person really needs to stop and think about what the hell is going on. Now I honestly believe that most men don’t really believe these statistics are true or accurate, but I need to ask these men how many women are they really so close with that they would know firsthand.
One of the reasons I feel that this is the case within our society is because women are generally considered to be a non-valid half of the society, if not consciously then unconsciously, not only by men but also by most women. One of the ways this has been expressed within our culture for thousands of years now is that women are expected to, and willingly give up there own names for the name of the man to whom they marry, and then as the generations pass, their names are silently lost. This is simply another of the subtle influences of our use of language on creating a system of personal invalidation.
The devaluation of women in our culture by this and by other more overt forms of semantic misogyny lead to a property value mentality instead of an egalitarian relationship between men and women, and oftentimes between women to one another. By viewing a woman’s role in society as 'less than human', this allows for mental and physical abuse, dictatorial relationship and attitudes to develop toward women. When a person views another as an equal, attacks against them cannot be rationalized, therefore, by decreasing a woman’s value as a human individual, the tendency for violence against them increases.
This is not only a symptom of the sexism within our society, but also another way in which we teach our children how to think about the value of men vs. women within our culture. I personally do not wish to live in a society where one in every three (at the very least) women have to live with having experienced some form of sexual assault. Nor do I wish to raise my son in that type on a culture or environment. And how can I expect him to be any different from those who would propagate the devaluation of an entire gender if I myself am willing to [do so]?"
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 05:48 pm (UTC)Woman is the eternal other in patriarchal society, which almost everywhere.
If i can learn that one "other" is, in fact, my equal, perhaps i can learn to treat all the other "others" as my equals as well.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 10:17 pm (UTC)We did this for precisely the same reasons M describes.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 02:09 am (UTC)In a human sexuality class I took in college, we discussed how the *vast* majority of commercials portray women in one (or more) of seven archetypes, all of which were negative in some form or another. After learning about this, I started keeping a closer eye on it and was shocked at how true it was.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 10:16 am (UTC)I've often found it interesting, to say the least, that I'm branded as a radical for insisting upon equality.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-27 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-28 12:42 am (UTC)