feminist blogs

I just dragged a huge BBQ grill five blocks and up seven flights of stairs — and now it looks like our rooftop BBQ is going to be rained out. But damn it, I will grill through a thunderstorm if I have to.

What are your plans?

Congratulations to Nancy Goldstein of National Advocates for Pregnant Women for not only being featured in an article in the New York Times, but on the reason for the article itself:

Officially speaking, same-sex couples who live in New York State cannot be married. Nancy Goldstein and Joan Hilty, a Brooklyn couple who celebrated their third wedding anniversary on Saturday, are an unusual exception.

The two women have a pleasant Park Slope apartment, an excitable dog named Juno and a marriage certificate signed by the town clerk of Provincetown, Mass. Ms. Goldstein, 45, and Ms. Hilty, 40, were two of the gay and lesbian New Yorkers who rushed to cities and towns in Massachusetts to get married in May 2004, after it became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriages.

In the three years since then, the validity of their marriage certificate has been something of a question mark. But Ms. Goldstein and Ms. Hilty learned last week that a judge had ruled that same-sex couples from New York who married in Massachusetts from May 2004 to July 2006 have a legally recognized marriage.

“I got married,” said Ms. Goldstein, a director of an advocacy group for pregnant women. “I did not get civil-unioned. I got married.”

The judge’s ruling, issued on May 10 in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston, stemmed from a lawsuit filed on behalf of seven same-sex couples from outside Massachusetts. (Tanya Wexler and Amy Zimmerman, who were married in May 2004, were the only plaintiffs from New York City.) The court decision was a little-noticed development in one of the most contentious issues in politics, raising the population ever so slightly of New York’s legally married same-sex couples.

“It really is a cloud that’s been removed from these marriages,” said Michele Granda, a lawyer with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the Boston group that represented the plaintiffs. “There shouldn’t be any question that those marriage licenses are worth the paper they’re printed on, and that Massachusetts fully backs the currency.”

The ruling affects only a limited number of New York’s same-sex couples: those who married in Massachusetts between May 17, 2004, when that state authorized same-sex marriages, and July 6, 2006, when New York’s highest court rejected an effort to allow gay marriage. Ms. Granda said the group knows of nearly 200 affected couples in New York, though she said the number is likely to be higher.

The lawsuit challenged a decision by Mitt Romney, then the governor, that only those gay couples who lived or intended to live in Massachusetts, or those couples whose home state did not forbid same-sex marriage, could get married in Massachusetts. Last year, a judge ruled that only Rhode Island did not prohibit same-sex marriage, noting that New York’s highest court ruled on July 6 that it was not permitted.

But lawyers for the out-of-state couples argued that those who had married in Massachusetts before the New York ruling had valid marriages.

Not that this is a total victory: there’s always the chance that there will be an appeal (though NY’s attorney general is not expected to do so, and the governor is on record as wanting to legalize same-sex marriage in New York), and even legally-married same-sex couples face roadblocks to acceptance. For example, Nancy and her wife Joan have six legal documents they keep with their marriage certificate to ensure that they will be able to make decisions about each other’s care should the occasion arise and rights to marital property; in addition, DoMA prevents them from filing federal taxes as a married couple.

But despite that, congratulations are in order for Nancy, Joan and all the rest of the couples whose marriages have been legally recognized. Mazel tov!

Thers at Whiskey Fire has a moving post about why he loves graduation day:

I teach at a community college. At commencement I get to watch students walk across the platform and pick up diplomas who have gone through some pretty tremendous shit. Working class people who have been told all their lives they’re stupid, only to find out they aren’t. Guys who got laid off from a manufacturing gig who learned how to program a computer. Divorced housewives who can write like nightingales sing but who were never encouraged to reach out for their intellectual potential, because our society is still burdened with idiotic sexism. Kids who were bright enough not to totally hock their futures for the debt you need for a 4 year degree and a chance at a decent life, wisely cutting their future debt burden almost in half.

Yeah, lots of people who go out for CCs don’t make it, for a lot of reasons. And if they just can’t cut it, I’ll fail them. But most of them are just thirsty as hell for something more than the crap they’re usually watered with. Amazing people. They want to learn so goddamn bad.

I tend to forget about this one because I’m not a mother, and I don’t have a mother anymore. But to those of you who are, Happy Mother’s Day!

Today is my two-year anniversary blogging for Feministe. It has been an excellent run. Thanks to Ms. Lauren for inviting me over two years ago. Hopefully I’ll stick it out for a few more. Na zdravie!*

*That is how we used to say “cheers” in my family. I always assumed it was Serbian because we got it from my grandfather, but a Google search reveals that it is in fact Slovak. You learn something new every day. So, na zdravie, Feministes. A very merry anniversary to us.

Be afraid, soon-to-be-marrieds. There are all kinds of people out there looking to separate you from your money, using the social pressure of having The Perfect Wedding.

Basically, a reporter tagged along with Rebecca Mead, a New Yorker staff writer and the author of “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding,” to the Great Bridal Expo. Read the whole thing to see just how much of a scam weddings are, but this really jumped out at me:

Advice books warn brides not to reveal that they are shopping for a wedding, if possible, Ms. Mead said; vendors know that “if it’s wedding, you’re going to spend more.” So her suspicion is immediately aroused when the woman at East Coast Limousine asks, “Is it for a wedding?” when the question of a 22-passenger excursion in a long, white stretch limousine comes up. The wedding special is $720 for 3 ½ hours and includes an aisle runner, Champagne, bar and “horns” that play a recording of “Here Comes the Bride” when the car stops. Ever the experienced shopper, Ms. Mead asks how much the regular rental would be, if there were no wedding.

“A four-hour minimum is $576.” So you could spend $144 less and receive a half-hour more? Why not do that instead?

“You can’t,” the saleswoman replies. If it’s a wedding, you must do the wedding special. “If the bride and groom are in the car, you can’t do it. We’ve pulled in, and there is a woman in a wedding dress, and they can’t do it. The car had to leave.”

After taking a few steps away, Ms. Mead said, “This is the kind of thing that I’m really interested in — that mentality: you’re going to get the horns whether you want them or not.”

She imagines the scene: “They won’t let you in,” she repeats, picturing the bride, groom and 20 other passengers stranded on a street as the limo driver slams the door and pulls away. “That’s the one you need the videographer for.”

A friend of mine experienced this even with the very simple wedding she wanted. She wanted a dinner with about 15 people, with the actual wedding performed between courses. As she started calling around for reservations, she discovered that if she mentioned that it was for a wedding, suddenly she had to reserve an entire room rather than just a table, that there was mandatory cake, and expense upon expense upon expense. At every single restaurant she called. In the end, she just reserved a table for 15 and didn’t let on that it was for a wedding (since she wore a pink cocktail dress, it was easy enough not to give the game away by her attire).

One other very interesting point Mead makes in the article is that culturally, we’re conditioned to expect some kind of traumatic transition between single life and married life in order to accord marriage a special status and maintain that married people were changed by marriage. It used to be that just leaving your parents’ home and setting up as an “adult” was scary enough. Now, with people leaving the nest and moving in with their unmarried partners all the time, the wedding has taken on greater significance as a big source of drama that everyone has to get through in order to become a Married Person. There’s a sense that people who have easy weddings have cheated, somehow, because they get the status of being married without having gone through all the Drama. They might as well just be living in sin!

Go celebrate.

I will be posting more fully on this later today, I promise.

What started out as a lovely little thread in which Roxanne asked people to help Lauren out with ideas for her wedding reception turned into a debate about whether progressive straight people ought to get married so long as gay people cannot.

A commenter named Tara said:

Ugh. You know, I might be making a mistake and assuming the poster (Roxanne) and the people she’s writing about are in opposite-sex relationships (and, by marriage, that they’re referring to legally-recognized unions) and that this might not be the case. (I couldn’t tell, at a quick glance, but I think that’s the case.) If so, it’s just so hard for me to have warm and fuzzies (and also not be offended) when you’re taking this action (getting ‘married’), and also asking others to be excited for you, when other people, including some in your audience, can’t have their relationships validated in this same way. ‘Getting married’ is a political act. The institution, and its use to discriminate against sexual others (and, more broadly, subject everyone to its coerciveness — but, that’s a different post), only exists because people — many of whom consider themselves tolerant, even ‘allies’ — still decide to get married and/or perpetuate their being accorded privileges (some physical, some symbolic), even when they know others aren’t being allowed this right. I hope I’m not seen as someone who’s raining on someone else’s parade, but it just seems presumptuous to parade around hetero-privilege. I get offended.

Hilarity ensued.

Tara was pretty much alone in taking this stance. Can’t say I haven’t seen it before, in other contexts: for example, when I first started filing paperwork to emigrate (and, indeed, when a lot of disheartened people were talking about voting with their feet after the 2004 election), there were a lot of people who got very, very angry about it. Some of it was a form of American exceptionalism (i.e., people who didn’t think twice about immigrants moving here got very upset about the idea that Americans would want to leave), but there were others who made the argument that because there were people in the US who didn’t have the choice to emigrate, that I should forgo the opportunity.

Well, I’m not buying that.

Even if I forgo the opportunity, I still have it. Even if I choose not to marry, I still have the choice.* What good does it do to people who don’t have the choice or the opportunity to decline the choice or the opportunity? Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight like hell to expand the privilege?

Indeed, with marriage rights, maybe we should be thinking about challenging some underlying assumptions we have in this country; namely, that marriage should be the source of so many rights and privileges. The main reason that marriage equality is such a hot-button issue is that there are so many rights and privileges and protections that can only be had when one is married. But why should so many of them depend on marital status? Why, for instance, should people feel they have to marry so they can have health insurance?

It’s worth noting that Tara’s argument is rarely applied across the board. For example, perhaps she should abstain from voting until the franchise is extended to all women across the world. Or she should forgo internet access until everyone has it. Or decline to get an education because so many people don’t have the ability to go to school.

But I doubt she does any of that.

_________

* Provided, of course, I find someone I want to marry who is willing to marry me as well. Which is not looking good.

January 22nd, 2007 is the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. To celebrate, we’re blogging for choice! This year’s theme: Explain why you’re pro-choice.

It’s gonna be a good one. I hope all of you participate.

Pam has a video and text of the I Have a Dream Speech. She also excerpts one of the most brilliant pieces of writing I’ve ever come across, King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Today, it’s worth remembering that Dr. King was a radical man who fought for radical social change. He was for equality, but not the simple-minded concept that equality ends at legal rights. This is, after all, the man who said, “When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.” And yet, even today, conservatives invoke Dr. King’s name in order to push policies which serve only to maintain white privilege, and ignore the very real racial divides in this country.

Dr. King was peaceful, opposing violence in all its forms — including war. It’s interesting that when we celebrate this American hero, we often conveniently leave out his strong anti-war, anti-violence politics. From a little-known speech King made about Vietnam:

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

Go read the whole thing. It feels strangely familiar.

More of Dr. King’s progressive statements can be found here.