feminist blogs

One of my spouse’s college friends, a het woman, married a het guy who took her name. It has been years, but his mother is still bitter. I thought of it because it came up in Jessica Valenti’s new book, He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut, which I am in the middle of.

There are not many, but it happens. I could do research, but that would be hard. I’d rather let the hive-mind do it for me.

One comes readily to mind:

Jack White, who was born Gillis, and married Meg White, divorced, and pretended they were siblings until the Detroit Free Press found the paper trail. On the minus side, he’s nuts. On the plus side, he’s brilliant. (On could say the same about famous-in-Canada fiddle player Ashley MacIsaac, who is Jack White’s cousin. And who is married, but did not take his spouse’s name. And BTW, I’m not ignoring MacIsaac’s history of saying racist things and then saying he was being ironic — he’s done it and I don’t know if he’s tripped over a clue since then or not, but I won’t pretend it didn’t happen.)

I know of no list, but we can make one here.

Did you know that your marriage license is a property title to your spouse’s body and affections? Just ask Jake Knotts, conservative Republican and arbitrary legislator over the state of South Carolina:

COLUMBIA — Men and women who seduce married people could be sued by jilted spouses under a proposal that won initial approval from S.C. lawmakers Thursday.

You know, we protect our automobiles. We protect our homes. There’s laws to protect everything, and we just need laws to protect the family, said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jake Knotts.

—Jim Davenport, Myrtle Beach Sun Times (2008-04-18): Bill aims at marriage interlopers

Here’s where the bill is at:

The S.C. bill says someone can recover unspecified damages if they prove wrongful conduct between their spouse and the defendant during their marriage and that the defendant caused them loss of affection or consortium of their spouse.

The bill was approved by a Senate subcommittee on the heels of a study this week that found divorce and out-of-wedlock births cost S.C. taxpayers $469 million each year and $112 billion overall for U.S. taxpayers. The study was done by groups that advocate more government action to bolster marriages.

The chairman of the subcommittee said failed marriages are damaging society and there should be repercussions for interlopers in marriages.

Whatever we can do to strengthen the bonds of matrimony, we ought to try, said Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens.

—Jim Davenport, Myrtle Beach Sun Times (2008-04-18): Bill aims at marriage interlopers

You might have thought that the best way to strengthen a marriage is to be kind and respectful to each other, to talk things out that need to be talked out, and generally to treat your spouse like a free and equal human being rather than as one of your precious possessions. You might also have thought that a husband or wife remains her own person after the wedding, and can do what she will, even if she makes choices that are foolish, hurtful or wrong, because her spouse has no enforceable claim on anything more than she freely gives of herself. But Knotts, Martin, and their colleagues think you ought to be able to call out the force of the State in order to punish interlopers, if you don’t want other people touching your things.

I’ve heard no word yet whether or not the South Carolina senators are considering an amendment to the criminal code for branding cheaters with a scarlet A.

It’s like a perfect storm of right-wing policies: The War on Drugs, women’s liberation by way of imperialism, and “freedom” at the barrel of a gun.

Khalida’s father says she’s 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can’t keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can’t keep her much longer. Khalida’s father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It’s the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he’s losing far more than money. “I never imagined I’d have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter,” says Shah.

The vast majority of the world’s opiates originate in Afghanistan. To fight drug production, the solution has been to target individual farmers and destroy their crops — without offering them any other option for survival. And the U.S. keeps mucking it up. We offered farmers other crops (wheat, etc), but once it was grown there weren’t enough buyers (I guess we didn’t think that far ahead).

And it’s not just farmers who are suffering because of these policies — it’s girls.

Angiza Afridi, 28, has spent much of the past year interviewing more than 100 families about opium weddings in two of Nangarhar’s 22 districts. The schoolteacher and local TV reporter already had firsthand knowledge of the tragedy. Five years ago one of her younger aunts, then 16, was forced to marry a 55-year-old man to pay off an older uncle’s opium debt, and three years ago an 8-year-old cousin was also given in marriage to make good on a drug loan. “This practice of marrying daughters to cover debts is becoming a bad habit,” says Afridi.

Even so, the results of her survey shocked her. In the two districts she studied, approximately half the new brides had been given in marriage to repay opium debts. The new brides included children as young as 5 years old; until they’re old enough to consummate their marriages, they mostly work as household servants for their in-laws. “These poor girls have no future,” she says. The worst of it may be the suicides. Afridi learned of one 15-year-old opium bride who poisoned herself on her wedding day late last year and an 11-year-old who took a fatal dose of opium around the same time. Her new in-laws were refusing to let her visit her parents.

Gul Ghoti is on her first visit home since her wedding six months ago. She says it’s a relief to be back with her father and mother in their two-room mud-and-brick house, if only temporarily. “My heart is still with my parents, brothers and sisters,” she says. “Only my body is with my husband’s family.” She says she personally knows of two opium brides who killed themselves. “One of the girls had been badly beaten by her husband’s brother, the other by her husband,” she says. Ghoti says she’s considered suicide, too, but Islam stopped her. “I pray that God doesn’t give me a daughter if she ends up like me.”

The life expectancy for adults in Afghanistan is 43. Almost half of all children are not enrolled in primary school. Only eight percent of girls attend secondary school. More than half of all children under 5 are suffering from moderate to severe stunting. Only 34 percent of people in Afghanistan have access to adequate sanitation facilities. For every 100 people in Afghanistan, 5 have a phone. One has internet access. Women in Afghanistan have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk of maternal death. (By contrast: The rate in neighboring Pakistan is 1 in 74; the rate in Sweden is in in 17,400).

Thanks to Miss Sarajevo for the link.

Sorry for one more Spitzer/Paterson article, but this gets at the heart of the comment I just left regarding Jill’s previous post on Spitzer. Where do we draw the line on what is considered private versus public information? And if it goes beyond the illegal (prostitution, soliciting sex, etc) who gets to judge?

Does Alfred?

Alfred Harris, a deacon at the Samuel’s Temple of God in Christ Baptist Church at Park Avenue and 125th Street, who said that the new governor, like the old governor, should step down. “There are enough righteous men for these positions, but we just haven’t found them yet.”

(note the use of the word MEN here.)

Does Shelley?

“You wonder, if you dug into a lot of governors’ or senators’ lives, what you’d really find,” said Shelley Sue Reig, “I don’t think it’s really fair to dig, but they have always been held to a higher standard, just like C.E.O.s of companies. They’re held to a higher standard, too.”

(Just curious, but exactly what kind of ‘higher standard’ do we hold CEO’s to? I have never heard of a CEO being asked to step down because s/he had an affair…)

I personally think if it isn’t illegal, and it does not impact your job, then the moral judgments should be left to those who are actually impacted.

More on the Spitzer mess. This time, we’re hearing from the sister-punishing Serena Joys who’ll happily tear down their own gender if it means they get to spend more time in the warm, warm glow of the television lights:

“Are you saying the women should feel guilty, like they somehow drove the man to cheat?” a visibly aghast Meredith Vieira of “Today” asked Dr. Laura Schlessinger,* a radio host.

Dr. Schlessinger replied, “Yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.”

That’s right, Silda! It’s your fault your husband strayed! Why, if you’d just let him control you, you’d have satisfied his need to direct and dominate another human being, and he wouldn’t have had to move all that money around, attracting the attention of the banks and the IRS and the US Attorney’s Office! Dammit, woman, what is wrong with you?

Look, here’s another shameful political wife who couldn’t keep her husband in her bed! Bring her out for the ritual humiliation and penance.

Dina Matos McGreevey, the estranged wife of James E. McGreevey, who resigned as the governor of New Jersey in 2004 after admitting to an extramarital homosexual affair, has been much in demand these last two days.

On a different “Today” panel on Tuesday, called “Secret Lives: Does Power Equal Promiscuity?,” Ms. Matos McGreevey argued that blaming wives for their husbands’ infidelities was “like blaming a rape victim for being victimized.”

Heyyyyyy… she’s not following the script. What’s with this not being properly shamed? Get her out of there! Get a new panel to remind wives of their duty!

Daytime television does have a way of encouraging women to blame themselves or change themselves to hold on to their men. On yet another “Today” panel, this one labeled “Refresh Your Romance,” an expert advised viewers eager to rekindle their marriages to take erotic dance classes to “unleash the inner vixen.”

That’s better. Remember, ladies, it’s your fault, and yours alone, if your husband strays and gets caught and has to resign from office.

___________
* Yes, *that* Laura Schelessinger. Of the affairs and the divorce and the nude photos and the criminal son and the mother who was found in her apartment, having been dead for two months.

Yay! A New York state appellate court in Rochester has ruled that same-sex marriages solemnized in foreign countries (such as Canada) must be recognized in New York State:

The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court on Friday reversed a judge’s ruling in 2006 that Monroe Community College did not have to extend health benefits to an employee’s lesbian partner.

Patricia Martinez, a word processing supervisor, sued the school in 2005, arguing that it granted benefits to heterosexual married couples but denied them to Martinez and her partner, Lisa Ann Golden.

The couple formalized their relationship in a civil union ceremony in Vermont in 2001 and were married in Canada in 2004.

The college refused to add Golden to the health care benefits because its contract with the Civil Service Employees Association did not address benefits for same-sex partners. Since then, the contract has been enhanced to extend benefits to an employee’s domestic partner.

State Supreme Court Justice Harold Galloway dismissed Martinez’s lawsuit in August 2006, saying that the state does not recognize same-sex marriages. The state Legislature “currently defines marriage as limited to the union of one man and one woman,” he wrote.

The appellate judges disagreed, determining that there is no legal impediment in New York to the recognition of a same-sex marriage.

The state Legislature “may decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad,” the ruling said. “Until it does so, however, such marriages are entitled to recognition in New York.”

Now, this is a very interesting ruling, because there *are* some same-sex marriages that have been recognized in New York; Massachusetts law does not give legal effect to marriages performed there where the state of residence of the couple prohibits the marriage, but couples who were married in Massachusetts between the date it was legalized there and the date when the New York Court of Appeals ruled that New York’s laws do not permit same-sex marriage have valid marriages because the law in New York was unsettled at the time. So, given that some marriages performed out of state are valid, it would be inequitable for others to be invalid. And really, the only reason that most same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts aren’t valid in New York is because of Massachusetts law — if they’re not valid in the couple’s home state at the time they’re performed, they’re simply not valid at all. But AFAIK, Canada has no such restrictions.

Great news!

A Feministe reader sends this on, and it’s definitely interesting fodder for discussion:

Recent events in the news (UNICEF photo of the year) and my experiences in the field have gotten me thinking hard about what human rights advocates should do about the problem of child marriage. As a feminist, I am appalled and horrified by the idea of a girl being withdrawn from school (if she ever went at all) married, and impregnated –all as soon as she gets her first period, sometimes, depending on what country and culture she is from, to a much older man.* Her life is thus defined for her while she is still a child. She enters the same sad cycle her mother and grandmother and every female ancestor lived; early marriage, early motherhood, a life of hard labor, and early death. Her daughters soon follow.

So, child marriage, especially child marriage that enforces a cycle of gendered poverty. It is a very bad thing. It goes against just about every principle of human rights. But what should be done about it?
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Here’s a choice sample from People’s year-end interview with George and Laura Bush, in which George (who, unlike Mrs. Bush, is apparently so elevated in dignity that he must be referred to in print by a definite description rather than by his proper name) talks about his daughter Jenna’s recent engagement.

Q: Tell us about your future son-in-law, Henry Hager. Did he do right and ask for Jenna’s hand?

The President: He kind of sidled up to me and said, Can I come and see you? We were sitting outside the presidential cabin here, and he professed his love for Jenna and said, would I mind if he married her? And I said, Got a deal. [Laughter] And I’m of the school, once you make the sale, move on. But he had some other points he wanted [to make]. He wanted to talk about how he would be financially responsible.

—People Magazine (2007-12-31): We’ve grown stronger

(Via Jessica Valenti @ The Nation Blog 2008-01-03: The Daddy State? No Thanks.)

Guess what? Time for another post about ENDA, the bitter controversy that refuses to die! But first, let’s review, shall we?

A couple of months ago, the US House of Representatives passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would grant limited forms of protection to gay people… at least as long as they don’t “act gay.” As Jill noted at the time, it was a pretty Pyrrhic victory. Even the sponsor of the bill, veteran gay congressman Barney Frank, suggested that a presidential veto was likely, and that one of the real reasons to pass it was to try and soften up Congress — to get them used to voting for LGBT rights. Unfortunately, Frank also found it was necessary to throw trans people to the wolves as part of this effort to create a kinder, gentler, gay-friendlier Congress. Discarding trans rights into a pit full of rabid, conservative lupines is a habit Frank has acquired over the years by repeatedly talking about how freaky it would be if trans people and non-trans people had to share showers. (It’s worth noting that I’ve never actually heard any trans advocate suggest what Frank is so nervous about.)

Since then, there’s been a huge amount of bitterness over the decision by Frank and Nancy Pelosi, with the backing of the most powerful gay lobby in the country, the HRC, to go forward with the non-inclusive ENDA. Prominent trans activists working with the HRC felt compelled to resign. The HRC put out a jaw-droppingly tone-deaf PR plan to win back the hearts of the trans community. Pretty much every trans person who was paying attention to this debacle felt that it was far too little, far too late. Here in New York, HRC representatives were publicly excoriated at the local LGBT center by a crowd of activists, trans and non-trans alike, and picketed by a few dozen silver-haired veteran queer activists outside the heavily symbolic Stonewall Bar.

But now, apparently, a trans activist has really crossed the line, to paraphrase the headline of an editorial just posted by Kevin Naff. Naff is the editor of the Washington Blade, the nation’s second-largest gay paper:

The recent remarks by Meredith Bacon, president of the board of the National Center for Transgender Equality, denouncing the Human Rights Campaign’s handling of the ENDA debate, serve as a vivid and disappointing reminder of why the trans movement hasn’t progressed as far as the gay rights movement.

“[A]s the chair of the NCTE Board of Directors, I can assure all who read this blog that NCTE will not work with HRC in the foreseeable future, until the current leadership is completely purged, and until we are convinced that, unlike its predecessors, any new HRC leadership is totally committed to working for transgender rights,” Bacon wrote.

“As long as HRC is controlled by and is dependent upon white, rich, professional gay men, such collaboration may never occur,” she wrote.

Her comments are offensive, counterproductive and totally unacceptable. She should either retract those comments and apologize or be removed from her position post-haste if her organization is to retain any credibility whatsoever in the gay rights movement.

Now that… that is over the line! How dare she… how does she think she can get away with this kind of “name-calling,” as Naff puts it? You know, calling people nasty names lke “white,” and “rich,” and “professional gay men.” No wait, that can’t be what he means. Everyone KNOWS the HRC is beholden to affluent, mostly-white gay folks; they provide the money, they influence the agenda. Nobody even bothers to argue otherwise. It’s how most of the large non-profits in this country work.

Maybe the point is this: how dare Bacon claim that rich white men won’t eventually come back to help other oppressed people! It’s a totally offensive assumption, and wounds the sensitive feelings and dignity of rich white professional liberal dudes everywhere, whether they’re gay or not! I mean, the HRC and its overlords are totally liberal, I mean progressive, and will always fight for the little guy, right? It’s not like the HRC endorses Republican candidates who oppose reproductive rights, affirmative action, and perform racist caricatures of Asians. Oh, oops. They DID do that. But it’s not like the HRC supported the Bush Administration’s plan to privatize Social Security. Oh, oops. They did that too, in exchange for promises that gay partners might be able to receive benefits in a privatized program. Oh yeah, you can totally trust those Bush adminsitration guys. Just like you can trust the HRC, apparently.

How dare she say that her organization won’t trust the HRC anymore? It’s appalling, this lack of trust, and she ought to be removed from her position, or none of you trannies will ever work in this town again, I say! Harrumph, harrumph. Can’t have these people insulting the rich white professional men now, now can we? Absolutely improper. Totally unacceptable.
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Jane Rule, a feminist before the Second Wave and a pioneer lesbian novelist before Stonewall, died last month at the age of 76. She was born an American but moved to Canada with her lover Helen Sonthoff, where they would live for the rest of their lives, in order to escape the persecution of the McCarthy era. In her novels, she was known for her nuanced and sympathetic portraits of lesbian characters’ lives—one of the first novelists to write books about lesbians in which her characters lived through ordinary human problems, were not punished for their sexuality, and were not treated as psychological freaks. Her essays, columns, and correspondence were notable for her generosity, patience, and also vigorously independent thought. Although she wrote passionately and movingly about her own life-long love affair with Helen, she was sharply critical of the gay rights movement’s efforts to win State recognition for gay and lesbian marriages. Here is what she wrote for the Spring 2001 issue of BC Bookworld; while I’d urge a radical people-power solution to problems of welfare, based on mutual aid between workers rather than State redistribution, the rest of the essay is almost entirely right-on. The solution is not to lodge same-sex relationships firmly under the eyes and the bootheels of the marital State; it is to free everything that’s valuable in both straight and gay love, intimacy, and commitment from the State’s stifling embrace.

The Heterosexual Cage of Coupledom

Over thirty years ago, when homosexual acts between consenting adults were decriminalized, Trudeau said that the government had no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

Until a few months ago that privacy was respected.

Now the government has passed a law including gay and lesbian couples as common-law partners with the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual common-law partners. Any of us who have lived together in a sexual relationship for over two years must declare ourselves on our income tax forms, or we are breaking the law.

With one stroke of the pen all gay and lesbian couples in Canada have been either outed if they declare or recriminalized if they do not. Our bedroom doors have come off their legal hinges.

Why then is there such support for this new law among gay people? Svend Robinson spoke in favor of it the House. EGALE, the national organization for gays and lesbians, encouraged its passing.

It is celebrated by all of them as a step along the road to total social acceptance, to a day when those of us who wish to can be legally married, our relationships just as respectable as those of heterosexuals.

But common-law partnerships were never about respectability. They were forced on couples as a way of protecting women and children from men who, by refusing to marry, were trying to avoid responsibility, free to move on when they felt like it without legal burdens of alimony and child support, without claims on their property or pensions.

There are some gay and lesbian couples raising children who, because they are not allowed to marry, may find a common-law partnership useful for benefits in tax relief, health benefits, pensions, if they can afford to expose themselves to the homophobia still rampant in this country. The law may also protect those who are financially dependent on their partners from being cast aside without financial aid.

But the law, far from conferring respectability, simply forces financial responsibility on those perceived to be irresponsible without it. What about those poor who are unable to work because they are single parents or ill or disabled?

The single mother on welfare has long had her privacy invaded by social workers looking for live-in men who should be expected to support her and another man’s children. Now single mothers must beware of live-in women as well. The ill and disabled will also be forced to live alone or sacrifice their benefits if their partners have work.

Over the years when we have been left to live lawless, a great many of us have learned to take responsibility for ourselves and each other, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, not bound by the marriage service or model but on singularities and groupings of our own invention.

To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship. With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there.

We should all accept responsibility for those who must be dependent, children, the old, the ill and the disabled, by assuring that our tax dollars are spent for their care. We should not have any part in supporting laws which promote unequal relationships between adults, unnecessary dependencies, false positions of power.

No responsible citizen should allow the state to privatize the welfare of those in need, to make them victims to the abilities and whims of their legal keepers. Human rights are the core responsibility of the government.

The regulation of adult human relationships is not.

To trade the freedom we have had to invent our own lives for state-imposed coupledom does not make us any more respectable in the eyes of those who enjoy passing judgment. We become instead children clambering for rule, for consequences to be imposed on us instead of self-respecting, self-defining adults.

Those of us who want to legalize our relationships for the protection of our children, for our own security, for whatever reason, should have the right to do so but not at the expense of imposing that condition on all the rest if us.

What we have now is neither the right to marry nor the right to remain private and independent in our relationships.

What kind of victory is that?

—Jane Rule, BC Bookworld (Spring 2001): The Heterosexual Cage of Coupledom

Via Women’s Space / The Margins 2007-12-02.