The Politics of Everyday Choices

We make hundreds of individual choices every day, big or small.  You decide what to eat, what to wear, to study for a test or watch DVDs of Community...and we make these choices because we can.  For the past almost 92 years, women in America have been choosing whether they want to vote or not because they can.  Same with abortion, since 1973.  And we have many more minor and seemingly superficial choices than we used to.  I have always, to an extent, ascribed to the "I choose my choice" mentality--the idea that we have the freedom to make the choices we want to make without scrutiny because that's what feminism gives us.  But there is another popular school of thought as well--"the personal is political"--and it is not entirely incorrect.

"The personal is political" basically means that the choices that we make as women do have a societal responsibility to make feminist choices because our actions have larger consequences.  I don't believe that these two ideas have to be entirely at odds with each other all the time.

There are a lot of choices that qualify for this discussion--the choice to wear makeup, or high heels, the choice to shave any part of your body, the choice to change your last name upon marriage, your choice to go to pro-choice or pro-life rallies, the choice to work or stay home and keep house, the choice to use words like "bitch" or "cunt", and a hundred other seemingly minor or instinctual choices.  On the one hand, these are things that are no one's business but yours.  You have been give the option to make hese choices and that right has been fought for by our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers.  On the other hand, these choices require some personal reflection about why you make them, and what will be the consequences of them.

Take, for example, the question of wearing makeup.  On the one hand, what's the big deal about that?  Everyone does it a lot of the time, and it's a minor and entirely personal choice.  It also gives women--and men, of course--the ability to look the way they want to look.  It's not cool to tell people how they should look or what they should wear or apply to make them look that way.  But, on the other hand, there is the fact that most people use makeup to make themselves look conventionally attractive and closer to the impossible standards of beauty we have thrust upon us (I mean, come on, can anyone's lips REALLY be that shiny?).  Continuing that construct isn't beneficial to us as a society.  So it becomes a difficult line to straddle.

How can one reconcile "I choose my choice" with "the personal is political"?  Well, firstly, let me say that that decision is entirely up to you--naturally.  For me, it comes with realizing that the decisions I make have a political impact on other people.  I haven't always made perfect choices, both personally or politically, and those choices have had negative effects on people.  So my new policy has become to consider what causes me to make my choices and what effect they will have on me, the people around me, and the world at large.  There is nothing wrong with staying at home instead of working or wearing makeup or not shaving your armpits or using words like "cunt" as long as you're doing them for your own reasons and you know what those reasons are.

This is important because it's going to spell out the rationale for a lot of what I will write on this blog.  of course, these are all just my ideas and beliefs--I would love to hear yours, too, readers.

Oh, and those of you at Chatham University, the Feminist Activists Creating Equality organization, in conjunction with PEACHes, will be giving away Safe Spring Break gift bags to anyone who stops by outside Anderson Dining Hall.  I'm going to have a post with some safe spring break tips later on tonight.  Also, check out this International Women's Reproductive Health Panel at Pitt Thursday night.  It looks really fantastic, I know I'm going to go! 

Feminist Relationships: The Last Name Conundrum

This is the first of what I hope to be many installments of a weekly Feminist Relationships series.  This week's topic has been on my mind for the past couple of days since Jezebel linked to this study about how people in the Midwest are more likely than they were 20 years ago to judge a woman for keeping her last name when she gets married.  Apparently, ladies, this means that we aren't as "committed to our husbands" as name-changers if we choose to stick with the name we were born with.  Which I think is pretty unfair.

I have my mother's last name, which is not a common occurrence.  Sure, it was just because she got to the birth certificate before my father and they were unmarried, but it was still a point of contention for years.  I love my last name--it's unique and interesting, and I plan to have it for the rest of my life.  And if I were a man, I wouldn't even need to explain this.

Marriage is a patriarchal tradition in itself, what with it being a way for fathers to transfer their daughters from their property to their new husband's property back in the day, but that doesn't mean it isn't still relevant.  It's so relevant that legalizing gay marriage has been a massive and passionately-fought fight and is finally starting to be accepted in a number of states (way to go Washington and Maryland!).  I think that gay marriage's mere existence may help to take some of the patriarchy out of marriage--hold your horses, conservatives, that's a good thing--and make it a more egalitarian tradition.  So many things about weddings and marriage leave the two people involved on non-equal footing based on sex, and maybe that can change now.

The name change is the first symbolic act of submission in a long line of real acts of submission a woman is expected to perform within a marriage.  She is literally her husband's now; he didn't have to take her name to prove that he was hers but she sure had to prove she was his.  As awesome as my boyfriend's last name is, it's not mine and it never will be.  And fortunately, he could care less about that.

Yes, it's a red flag when your man cares about the keep-or-change question.  I know Cosmo will tell you that you should never bring up marriage on the first date, but for me this one's a dealbreaker.  Even if it's asked as an entirely hypothetical question, I tend to bring up the name change question on the first couple of dates because it is indicative of so much more than what's on the surface.

Anecdote redacted as requested by the person it's about. Let's just say I know someone who felt pressured to change her name against her instincts.

Now, I'm not saying that changing your last name upon getting married is bad.  I am a strong believer in the "I choose my choice" school of feminism, and if that is what makes you feel good about yourself you change that name.  I considered taking a previous boyfriend's name if we ever got married simply because it was so damn cool.  The problem comes when you change it because you're bowing to pressure from your future husband, his family, your family, or anyone else you know.  They can judge you all they want, it makes you just as committed to your marriage as any man should ever be considered to be.

Of course, as a last thought, this leaves open the question of who gets to give their last name to the kids.  I have made a hard-and-fast rule that boys can have the husband's last name and girls ca have mine and that's fine with me.  Lots of people go by the coin-flipping method.  A lot of people hyphenate, which is great but which would never work wit my already four-syllable-long last name.  I like the idea of leaving it up to equal 50/50 chance who gets to pass on their name.

I'm going to talk more about feminist weddings next week.  In the meantime, there are some interesting articles on this site about that very topic that you should check out.

Oh, and lastly, the boyfriend and I saw CMU's production of Sweeney Todd last night.  I would highly recommend it, if you get the chance you should definitely go see it!