An excerpt:

It’s this cognitive dissonance that’s most striking, and disturbing, about “The Thaw”. The language of bullying and social isolation of students who don’t fit in, increasingly a concern for many parents and schools, is harnessed for a defense of the imagined good old (viz segregated) days when conservative Christian tenets were even more privileged in school curricula: abstinence-only education, creation science, mandatory school prayers, etc. The absence of such privileges – infringements on the equal rights of students and families who believe differently – is presented as bullying and persecution. As Reach America director Gary Brown says:

“Bullying is in the eyes of the beholder, I guess.”

Read the rest at The Guardian.

I have to say, I know the video is a mix of alarming, ridiculous, and funny to a lot of people – but the kids in the video shouldn’t be blamed for saying such outrageous things. They’re only repeating what they’ve been taught. Knowing  something of how sheltered and manipulated these kids must be, I feel very sorry for them – especially the lone black kid in the group! I know how that feels, and it’s not fun at all.

Anyway, here’s the transcript, with some annotations:

Christianity is being completely frozen out of America.
Why can’t I pray in school?
Why do I have to check my religion at the door?
Why can’t I write about God in my school papers?
Why do I have to tolerate people cursing my God, but I am not allowed to talk about God and my faith?
Why are they taking God out of my history books?
Why do they teach every other theory in science except creation?
Why am i called names because I believe in marriage the way got designed it?Some even call us hateful. Hypocrites.
Unloving.
Closed-minded.
Bigots.

Why can’t Tim Tebow praise God after making a touchdown without causing a national uproar?
[reality: Tebow is immensely popular]
The football coach at Ridgeland High School in Georgia was investigated by the school board.
Did he abuse his students?
Is he a terrorist?
He allowed local churches to feed his football team. [actually, he forced his players to sit through sermons for team dinners]
*Several of the children gasp and grimace in an exaggerated fashion.*

In public school, I’m called lesbian or gay for not kissing, or for wanting to save myself for marriage.
In public school, dating is an obligation.
In public school, people are rude and disrespectful towards Christians.
Bullying is common.
What we see in our health classes – “sex education”
FOURTH grade and up -
is pornography.
People make fun of me because I don’t believe in abortion.
In public school, people believe Christians are goody goods and boring.
Dirty jokes fill the hallways between classes.
During class
before school
at lunch
after school, on the bus, off the bus.
Get the idea?

Despite modern popular belief, America was founded as a Christian nation.
My grandparents tell me that the church used to be the center of the community
In school prayer and pledge to the flag was welcomed and appreciated No one would dare not to stand place their hand over their heart and recite the pledge.
America was once a force for good.
America was once the hope for the world.
[Question: isn't this, um, supposed to be Jesus? Not America? - G]

What happened?
In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that prayer was unconstitutional in schools. [false - school sponsored prayer, yes]
in 1963, the courts ruled the Bible unconstitutional. [also false]
Saying that if the Ten Commandments were read in schools,
A student might feel inclined to follow them.
Really?
For over 50 years christians have been unwilling to get involved
People who do not love our god
have stolen our country

Jesus said we are salt and light.
Salt and light melt ice.
It is time for a thaw.
President Ronald Reagan [of COURSE] called America a shining light on a hill, a beacon of hope for the world to see.
We are going to let our little American lights shine.
Through the power of Jesus Christ we proclaim today,
We refuse to be frozen out of the public square.
Our voices will be heard.
Let’s reverse it.
Fix it.
We are going to turn it around.
This is a call to our generation.
We are calling on the youth of America to join us.
At Reach America, we are creating a Christ Centered Counter Culture – a C4 community.
A place filled with Christian teens on a mission
to reach America and our friends for Christ.
Christ and our country matter to us.

At Reach America, we are learning to reach our generation.
We are servants, encouragers.
We are learning to hear god’s voice and adjust our lives to his will
God is changing our lives.
We are building life changing relationships.
We are a family.
We are a team.
We are an army.
Christ is our commander.
His will is our charge.
We are impacting our friends, our families, our coomunity, our state, our country.
We are in a war for the hearts and souls of our generation,
and we know it.

Failure is not an option.
We are going to win this war.
If god be for us,
who can be against us
The thaw has begun.

[graphic]

High school Christian teens, join us.
Join us.
Join us at Reach America
in the fight for our generation,
for our future.
In America,
we still hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal.
That they are endowed by their creator
with certain unalienable rights.
That among these are life,
liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

Join the movement at Reach America.

Let’s reach our communities.
Let’s reach our states.
Let’s reach America.

Adults, please pray for us,
support us,
and get involved

Together, looking to Christ as a strength, the thaw wil be complete,
and America will be one nation under god. Again.

Firstly, about this idea that black women and others who criticized The Onion are missing the joke or the idea behind it…It’s frustrating to have to say this repeatedly. Like many of us explained during the discussion of The Onion’s vulgar tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis: we all get what the joke is intended to be. No one is confused about this.

The fact that some white feminists seem to think that the only reasonable explanation for objections to a joke they found funny or effective is that people didn’t understand the joke, or that we lack a sense of humor, is quite telling. These responses imply that how these individual white feminists took the joke is the same thing as what the joke means “objectively” (spoiler alert: there’s no such thing). They suggest that black women can only object to a problematic joke at the expense of a black survivor if the conscious intent of the almost certainly white and male author(s) of the joke was to mock Rihanna as a woman of color and a survivor.

As I said in my tweets about this (though this and other similar observations from black women never seemed to make it into any of these articles) – the fact that no one at the The Onion is sitting around twirling their mustaches thinking about how they can hurt a black survivor is precisely the point. The way systemic racism and sexism work is that people can do racist and sexist things without ever consciously intending to do so. When white feminists suggest that black women are confused on this point, they not only derail what could be a productive conversation about how oppression works and manifests, they also set a ridiculously high bar for what counts as racist misogyny – much in the same way that Sam Morril thinks he’s excused from misogyny because it isn’t his “intention to write a joke that upsets people” and “never [writes] a joke thinking, “this’ll show ‘em.” It’s the exact same mindset.

I suspect these feminists all know that this is not how sexism, or racism, work. Intent, as ever, is not magic.

[ETA:] One defense claimed that there was no way for The Onion to tell a joke that “[places] Chris Brown’s despicableness front and center [without] turning a real person’s trauma” into a “passive comedy device.” Yet somehow, The Daily Currant managed to lampoon Brown (and Ariel Castro) without playing a detailed description of violence for laughs.

To be clear, I’m not endorsing this joke. At this point Brown-as-abuser has become such a meme that it’s become more about mocking him in particular than any real commitment to holding abusers broadly accountable . But clearly it’s possible to write satire about abusers that doesn’t objectify victims in the process.[/ ETA]

The rush to defend The Onion against women who are supposedly their fellow feminists should give these women, and all of us, serious pause. We see this happen repeatedly, and not only with white feminists who derail or object to conversations about racism started by women of color. Cis feminists will attack trans women for calling out transphobic jokes and slurs. Middle and upper class feminists slam women who call out classism and the oppressiveness of western capitalism. Anti sex work feminists shame and deride and exclude sex worker activists.

When it comes to humor that capitalizes on the oppression of women with marginalized identities, the response from mainstream feminists often ends up being totally different than what it would be if the butt of the joke were middle class, abled, cis, straight, white, etc. women. At best the response is a debate over whether these jokes and slurs are “really” offensive, and whether the offending parties really “meant it” to harm, and aren’t marginalized women being just a wee bit oversensitive and irrational, after all?

Recently some white mainstream feminists have complained that feminism is eating itself from within – that we’re using issues like intersectionality and privilege to “trash” fellow feminists for being successful. [I have to point out here that the concept of "eating the other" was developed by a black feminist, bell hooks, and it's kind of upsetting to see this idea being used, consciously or not, to advance a feminism where intersectionality takes a back seat and marginalized women are expected to shut up about oppression.]

But the reality is that “successful” and “prominent” feminists are often all too willing to “trash” marginalized feminists whenever issues of inclusion and intersectionality come up – as bitter, angry, confused, not engaging in good faith, ungrateful, overly demanding. But we’re expected to fall in line to support “successful” feminists on their pet issues. We’re told we don’t really understand or appreciate what the people or organizations we’re criticizing are doing. That these groups are doing us a favor. That we don’t really know what our own oppression looks like.

This is not sisterhood.

A final point about feminism and humor: Hanna Rosin and Elizabeth Nolan Brown are particularly vocal in expressing their annoyance at feminists who “prove..right” the stereotype that “feminists can’t take a joke.” All of these pieces argue for the importance and power of humor to provoke thoughtful responses on important issues – Rosin even goes so far as to argue, repeatedly, that humor is far more effective than “any sober-minded discussion” in making feminist points about violence/social issues. For Vanasco, The Onion’s piece used humor to make discussion of violence against women “palatable”; to Redden, it was effective satire. Wakeman describes it as “not [her] type of humor…[but] spot-on in the particular ways it made us [question: Who is “us?”] uncomfortable. Humor can be a powerful way to make people think.”

I was reminded, reading these pieces, of a point that stood out to me in the controversial “FemFuture” report compiled by Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti. In their discussion of online feminism, they argue:

Humor, pop culture, fashion, and the punchy, sassy writing, tweeting, and memes that feminists deploy have become the most effective way to engage young people about the seriousness of injustice, using new Internet culture to speak back to pop culture….[feminists are] countering the long held, wildly inaccurate stereotype that feminists have no funny bones. Convincing the public that feminism can actually be fun through humorous quips on blog posts has evolved into savvy online campaigns that catch like wildfire. [p. 12-13, Emphasis mine]

Now, I’m a huge proponent of maintaining a sense of humor and engaging with pop culture in feminism and other activism – both as an act of self-care and because humor and pop culture are languages we all share in common, and thus too important to overlook as sites for engaging others and critical cultural analysis. However, I was disturbed by the FemFuture claim – offhand comment though it might have been – that humor is the “most effective” way create engagement around issues of injustice, and by the investment shown in that statement in “convincing the public that feminism can actually be fun.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is not actually the point of feminism.

As I did when reading the FemFuture report, I have to wonder why white feminists defending The Onion are so invested in people (men? white men?) believing they can be funny or see humor. Why to the extent that they will attack other feminists as obtuse or prudish for raising objections to problematic humor?

What this suggests to me is that feminism itself is in serious need of the same kind of analysis of the relationship between humor and power that they praise when Sady Doyle and Lindy West and other white ladies level it at white male comedians. Humor can be, as Wakeman says, “a powerful way to make people think.” But it can also be – and often is – a powerful way to reinforce patriarchy, racism, and other forms of oppression. Humor is very often about power – in many cases precisely what makes humor “effective” or “palatable” is that it plays on the very oppressive tropes and inequitable power dynamics that feminists are supposed to be fighting. If we lose sight of how humor can oppress in the rush to be seen as funny, our feminism can all too easily lend itself to ends we should find repellent.

[HT to the other feminist writers linked in this piece: Spectra Speaks, Nicole Clark, Jessica Johnson, and Kinsey Hope.]

This piece was originally published in Borderlands: Tales from Disputed Territories Between Races and Cultures and reprinted in Race Revolt Magazine.

The Little Things 

Having people see you the way you want to be seen – the way you see yourself – is a privilege. And when you don’t have that privilege, every day is a battle to have your identity validated, a battle against erasure and for self-determination. In a lot of ways this is a battle of details, where every choice you make about how you present yourself to others becomes loaded, and all the little things take on more meaning than they know what to do with.

Example, this little thing, the way I wear my hair, will seem trite to those who aren’t walking through a cultural minefield of misinterpretations everyday, but I feel like when I cut it boy-short or let it grow wild and curly I have to choose between presenting as queer (a white dyke or white pretty boy, specifically) and maintaining my “ethnic ambiguity,” thus having a slightly greater chance of getting read as a woman of color. In short, I have to choose between being queer and being of-color in the eyes of the world. I’m not one who puts a lot of effort into my appearance, so why do I feel like my hairstyle has so much meaning?

Boy-short my hair looks straight. I lose the curls and gain the guilt and fear of being interpreted as “trying to pass” as white. My hair is one of very few markers of my ethnicity that I inherited from my Black dad. In itself it’s not usually enough to get me read as Black, but it does make people think twice when mentally trying to squish me into a race-box, and inspires remarks like, “I never seen a white girl with hair like that before,” (because I’m not fucking white) “are you ethnic or something?” The conversation only goes from there.

I like my hair boy-short, I like it a lot. I like passing as a boy at times, it makes me feel safer out in the world, alone after dark especially. But with boy-short hair I fear melting into white dyke oblivion. And sans curls I am reminded of a time when I was ashamed of my “ethnic” hair, the hair I wasted endless time, energy and styling product trying to straighten (like many women of color on the curly-to-nappy spectrum) after the kids at school dubbed me Mufasa (see the Lion King). When I cut off my curls, I wonder how much or how little I’ve outgrown that shame since middle school.

I am a queer woman of color, so why would I have to choose between getting read as one or the other? Part of it has nothing to do with me, but with racism in “the queer community” at large. White queers have more visibility in the media, in the US, than queers of color, and thus historically they’ve gotten to set the standards for what queer is “supposed to” looks like. When queers of color enter white spaces, many of us have to fight for visibility as queers (while additionally fighting against being desexualized, fetishized and tokenized as people of color, or POC.) Unless POC match white models of what queer looks like we’re often simply invisible in such spaces.

In my somewhat unique position of POC-nobody-knows-is-a-POC, I can fit the queer model easily, but have to fight in white queer spaces (as in the world at large) to be read as a person of color. Because of the lack of queer POC visibility, the tendency to assume someone is white until proven otherwise is even stronger if said person is queer. Thus because of my light skin and blue eyes, and because of the queer default is already set to white, I can rarely be recognized as both queer and as a person of color.

Nia’s partner on a beach in Monterey. Image used with permission of author.

Earlier I said that my hair is one of the only markers of my ethnicity. The other big one is my name. Nia is Swahili for “purpose”. It’s also the fifth day of Kwanzaa, which falls on December 30th. When I compiled “MXD: True Stories by Mixed-Race Writers,” I edited it and submitted to it under the name Oxette. I took this nickname while traveling places where no one knew me. I decided to use it full time when I was looking to settle down and start over. I hoped ditching the old name would help me put the past behind and get a fresh start. But I had this nagging guilt. How could I start over and leave the proud Black name my father had given me – one of so few markers of my ethnicity – behind? It was unconscionable. And so I took the name back.

Acting out of fear and guilt feels pretty absurd sometimes, especially because I happened to be starting over in a unique community where folks would validate my identity as a person of color even if I decided to call myself Whitey McWaspsalot. But that’s the kicker. When the general public doesn’t see you the way you see yourself – as a queer; as a person of color; as a boy, a girl, or genderqueer – you have to protect the few things that grant you entry into the communities where you see yourself, where you want to be accepted and validated.

I know that I will never be anything but a queer person of color, regardless of whether I get read as white, “ethnic”, straight, or queer. Knowing who I am is crucial, but unfortunately I can’t write off everybody who doesn’t see me the way I see myself. The uphill battle to be seen for what I am has no end in sight. And so I continue to strive to reconcile what you see, how I identify and what I have to do to be accepted in the communities in which I know I belong.

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction with Flyover Feminism.

Let’s Talk About Names: Annamarya is the previous post in the series.

Robyn is a parent, educator and writer living in New England. Her writing tends to focus on issues of gender, food justice, sports culture and queer parenting. She manages an urban farm project for a living and loves to laugh, learn, share and smile with her wife and beautiful toddler. You can find her on twitter (@1brobyn).

A Personal Naming History

“Hi, I am about to purchase a ticket on your website and have a random question…I know that TSA will not allow me to board if my ID doesn’t match the name on my ticket, but I’m kind of in a weird situation. I am in the middle of this legal name change right now and am not actually sure which name to put on the ticket, though I would like to have it under my new name. Is there any way to switch the name with the airline after I purchase it?…Ok, I understand. I hope to have my updated ID by then, but I have no guarantee that it will arrive in time…Well, the flight is three months from now and I’ve been told that the process should definitely be wrapped up by then…Yes, I understand the risk in using the new name, thanks for your help.”

Robyn. Image used with permission of author.

The day before I made this phone call, I filed my name change paperwork at the county probate court. I was told that a legal document would arrive by mail in 2 to 3 weeks. Once I had this document, I would have to plot a course through multiple agencies.

First would be a trip to the Social Security office for a new card, which would be in my hands 5 to 7 days later. Then, I would take that card to my local RMV for a new driver’s license and wait another 10 to 14 days. Once completed, in order, these steps would enable me to board that plane with all of my IDs aligned.

Four weeks went by with no word regarding the name change. I began to get nervous. In week five, I started calling the court, only to be abruptly transferred to a nameless voicemail box that wasn’t accepting new messages. Weeks six, seven & eight followed a similar pattern. By week nine, I had resigned myself to having to cancel the flight and absorb the cancellation fees.

After ten weeks, the document finally arrived. After originally thinking that 3 months would be plenty of time, I had to scramble to secure all of the necessary IDs only days before our scheduled flight.

But in a bizarre twist, it turned out that no one actually boarded our flight. A blizzard shut down the airport, forcing the cancellation of the flight and our trip.

Grounded during the blizzard. Image used with permission of author.

Changing my first name was not merely about legal status. It represented the realization of a more intimate understanding of myself. See, I’m trans*, and I changed my first name to align with my gender identity. I identify as transgender, as a trans woman, and as a woman. It was crucial for me to have this reflected in my name.

Even as part of the trans* community, I maintain certain privileges as a white, married person. I’m working on checking these privileges and am constantly learning how to be a better ally. As a trans* person, however, I regularly find that I experience social situations at a more heightened level of awareness than many of my cisgender friends. For me, there are complexities within the minutiae of society’s gender binary. I get better at managing this reality every day, while still knowing that a single, seemingly minor affront to my identity might set me back.

The legal name change process can be very challenging to navigate; for me, the situation was only compounded by the stress of travel. On top of the initial steps completed in time for the flight that never was, I’ve contacted the State Dept of Vital Records to update my birth certificate, applied for a new passport, corrected my health insurance and acquired new debit and credit cards. The list goes on.

With every phone call, email or office visit, I never know what to expect. Sometimes, staffers says “sure,” and other times I am met with judgment or resistance. Sometimes I am able to send one email and other times I must fax multiple forms. Sometimes gender matters, and other times it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s infuriating and other times it’s awkwardly hilarious. I hear the line ‘Well, I have never gotten that question before’ more than I ever expected to in my lifetime. Sometimes, I’m even embarrassed by my own behavior, like when I entered “tips on how to take a good driver’s license picture” into the search engine and proceeded to watch a recommended video for pointers.

The business side of transition continues. At last check, I still had dozens of updates that I hope to make. I try to take care of these in small doses, when I have the time and energy. I’ve also come to the realization that my name and gender trail is long and complex, to be found in numerous manila folders, databases and pockets of the internet. I might not ever completely update my name and gender marker in all of these locations. This is unfortunate, but it’s not something I will allow myself to be consumed by.

Like many folks, I’ve adopted nicknames and variations of my birth name over the years. I generally liked my birth name and went through phases of preferring either the full version or choosing to use one of its two most frequent abbreviations. It was a common and easy name for daily use. Also, there was a historical and cultural significance to it since I shared this name with a certain famous Scottish poet, a fact people often wanted to talk about at length.

Yet over time, I found myself balancing the daily, social usage of this birth name with a private, chosen name. This chosen name connected me to, what was then, a hidden gender identity. For a time, I was able to balance this dual name reality. My name identities were operating parallel to each other, juxtaposing an ease of ‘the way it’s always been’ with that of a more difficult and deeper relation to self that existed within.

As my true gender identity broke through, it became very difficult to still connect with my birth name. It was no longer easier to use and became a liability in my efforts towards personal authenticity. I became more comfortable sharing my gender with others and began to use my chosen name, Robyn, in social settings.

There have been numerous challenges for me during my gender transition, but I’m fortunate that it has evolved within a supportive community, which is not the case for many trans* individuals. One aspect of my transition that has been mostly positive has been the switch to Robyn.

I often find myself being overly apologetic and accommodating when others slip. “It’s ok, I mess up, too” is a constant refrain. Outside of the occasional awkwardness, friends and most family members are very supportive, particularly after I’ve shared how the name change is intimately tied to my gender identity. At work, the situation has gone smoothly. My coworkers are extremely professional and have quickly adapted to my new name and gender pronouns.

If there has been a major challenge, it’s been my relationship with family members who have refused to acknowledge or have struggled to cope with my name change. The cause of their struggle seemed to be that Robyn and her gender represented a rejection of a mutual past, breaking away from collective memories and the person they thought they knew.

My efforts to support them in their struggles have been in vain so far, though I know acceptance is ultimately their own challenge to overcome. I hope that we can revive our relationships in the future. Now, I must keep the focus and energy both on myself and with the loving community that has chosen to journey alongside me.

As I move forward, I’m intrigued by the relationship between my evolving transition and my personal history. Robyn is a constant reminder of who I am and who I am becoming. I want to feel the empowerment of living genuinely while also accepting my past. I want to speak openly about my birth name and be comfortable engaging the complexity of my gender. Right now, though, it’s hard. I still cringe when people use my old name or male pronouns. It happens less and less now, but it’s painful, even when done innocently.

Still, I long for a more peaceful understanding of myself through my naming history. I want to be able to explain who ‘Robert’ was and is to my child. I want to be comfortable in sharing how special and unique his ‘Dede’ is. I am not there yet, but I’m hopeful. The power of my own quest for authenticity may be my greatest lesson to impart as a parent.

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction with Flyover Feminism.

Let’s Talk About Names: Marna is the previous post in the series.

Minna Hong. Image used with permission of author.

My name is Minna, as in Minnesota, for which I was named, if you are American. My name is Mee-NA, if you are Taiwanese or Chinese, which is my Taiwanese name and what my parents call me. My name is MEE-na, if you are any other kind of Asian – it seems to be how my name would be pronounced in other Asian languages, including Southeast and South Asian tongues. My name is NOT Myna or Nina or Ninna or Minnow or a dozen other things I’ve been called.

If I don’t care about a person or the meeting is incidental, such as on the phone with a customer services rep, I will let that person call me whatever he wants. He doesn’t matter to me, so what he calls me doesn’t matter, either. If, however, a person with whom I’m going to have an ongoing relationship mispronounces my name, I will correct her and give her my ‘Minna as in Minnesota’ spiel. If she gets my name wrong after that, I mentally give her the side eye and think less of her. Yes, my name isn’t the easiest in the world to pronounce, but it’s not that difficult, either. Someone repeatedly getting it wrong shows me that the person doing the mispronouncing is either lazy or not interested in really getting to know me, so fuck that person, anyway.

I hated my name when I was a child, because it got mispronounced so often and because I got teased about it relentlessly. Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnetonka, Minnehaha (living in Minnesota, we have a lot of places with names that begin with Minne-), and my personal favorite because I was a chubby kid, Minnesota Fats. I tried to go by Eliza – a diminutive of my middle name – but no one would call me that. Even on the rare occasion that someone would call me Eliza, I didn’t respond; I forgot that was supposed to be me. It didn’t really fit me, but I didn’t want to be called Beth or Betsy or Liz either, because they were too common.  Even as a child I knew I was different, and that no ordinary name would do.

I reluctantly went back to Minna (really, the experiment lasted maybe a week), and when I hit St. Olaf College with all its Kirstie, Christie, Kirstin, Christine, Kristen variations, I became intensely glad that my name was distinctive and helped me stand out from the crowd. Well, being Taiwanese American in a mostly-white college was more than enough to help me stand out, but having an unusual name was an added bonus. From then on, I not only grew comfortable with my name, I embraced it. My name was like me – quirky, odd, and hard to get to know. I had grown into my name, and it suited me. Trust, however, that had I found a better name along the way, I would have snapped it up in a heartbeat, and to hell with anyone who judged me for doing so.

Taroko Gorge in Hualien, Taiwan. Image used with permission of author.

Fast-forward to the latest lament over women changing their names upon marriage.  This is a pretty standard old-school feminist stance, and as critics have pointed out, narrow, privileged, and Eurocentric. Here’s the odd thing – I agree with many of the basic premises –there still is an expectation in society that a woman will take her husband’s last name, that even though the choice is individual, there are societal pressures that influence said choice, and it’s still considered ridiculous for a man to take a woman’s last name. All of these are reminders of sexist attitudes that still exist – and yet, the argument often leaves me cold.

One illustration of why: when I first became a feminist twenty years ago, I had an old-school feminist (wearing bright pink lipstick, mind you) ask, “What’s a feminist like you doing wearing a miniskirt?”  I said to her, “I got out of the patriarchy because it was always telling me what to do. I’ll be damned if I let anyone else do it, either.” I told her that automatically rejecting everything the patriarchy demanded was allowing the patriarchy to control you just as much as if you did everything it ordered. As long as you were simply reacting, you were still granting the patriarchy all the power. Part of feminism, to me, was the freedom to choose for myself after carefully thinking out the issue, and I wasn’t going to cede that power to ANYONE, ever again. Besides, damn it, I had good legs, and I wasn’t above showing them off.

 But I digress, as is my wont.  Back to the argument about name changing. Feminists who criticize this practice often do so in a way that’s purely academic, not taking into account real-world feelings.  Or, when they do, they dismiss people’s reasons as insufficient and assert why their ideas are better. There are no reasons good enough, in this frame, for a woman to change her name upon marrying. What this tells me is that people making such arguments aren’t interested in a discussion – only in pontificating.

The older I get, the less interested I am in epistemological closure, especially from a group which is supposed to be about inclusion for women from varying backgrounds, thoughts, and beliefs.  It’s beyond tiresome to have to remind prominent middle-class white feminists that their definition of feminism is not sacrosanct. The fact that they write with complete confidence in their own narrow viewpoint is a reminder of how oftentimes the proclamations of Feminism with a capital F feel as condescending as do the societal norms said Feminism prides itself on dismantling.

Finally, I’m not married. I have no intention of ever marrying. I made the decision many years ago because I’m bisexual, and at that time, marriage equality was but a dream. My decision was political – if I couldn’t marry the woman I loved, then I wouldn’t marry the man I loved – but it morphed into a more personal decision over time.

As things stand now, I don’t see marriage as a palatable option for me (an essay for another time). So the discussion surrounding whether a woman changes her name or not upon marrying is simply not of interest to me. I’m not saying that an issue has to be personal in order for it to have meaning to me, but this stale framing of it has to be radically updated in order for it to have relevance. I am thankful for one thing that stemmed from this, however: it’s started an exciting, thought-provoking conversation among a diverse group of women as to the power of naming, and that conversation is one well-worth having.

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction with Flyover Feminism.

Let’s Talk About Names: Trudy is the previous post in the series.

Let’s Talk About Names: Marna is the next post in the series.

Traversing Race and Class by Typographical Error

Kristin Rawls. Image used with permission of author.

My last name – my father’s name – is Rawls. The first thing to know about it is that in the United States, the name is most common in African-American families. I think about this every time I have to give my name to a DMV worker or a Verizon representative or anyone else who needs to process my information in the course of any transaction. Anywhere in the country.

It’s a very frequent marker of the de facto racial segregation that persists in this country.

It goes like this, pretty much without fail: African-Americans hear me say it, and they get it right away. I don’t have to spell it or make sure they get “a as in apple” because it’s a name they know.

White people have a lot of trouble. “Ross?” “Rawiss?” “Royce?”

There’s one exception to this rule, and that’s white people who were philosophy or political science majors. They’re usually familiar with the late political theorist John Rawls. And since they usually ask, I’ll just state for the record: I’m sometimes tempted to make up stories about my “Great Uncle John,” but John Rawls is not actually a relative.

So, back to the vast majority of white people in offices throughout America who don’t know my name: I’ll spell it, and still they invariably miss or mess up some of the letters.

So, I have to say, “R as in rat, A as in apple, W as in water, L as in Laura, S as in Sam.”

It’s always a very big production, and then there’s awkwardness when they have to say it because they deem it almost unpronounceable. Usually it comes out in two garbled syllables and rhymes with the word “towels.”  It should sound a bit more like “walls,” but with a somewhat fuller middle sound because of the “w.”

***

When I have to give my first name, it’s often the other way around. White people almost always answer, “With an ‘e’ or an ‘i’?” End of story.

Black people sometimes hear it as “Christian,” and so ensues the awkward spelling process, this time with my first name. And there aren’t really any good “k” words. I’m forced to begin, “K as in, um, Kit-Kat” or “as in kleptomaniac.” Sometimes I’d peruse the dictionary before the first day of school to figure out a word I could use for one of those awkward name-learning games on the first day.

My parents probably didn’t think things would be this complicated when they named me.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

So, as a white person with a Black last name, you might think I hail from a big, wealthy plantation family. There is such a family in Franklinton, North Carolina, but we’re not related.

This is the next kicker: The only reason my last name is “Rawls,” is that my grandfather, who died before I was born, never bothered to correct his military discharge records after World War II. His real name was “Rawles” with an “e.” At least, I’m pretty sure this is what happened.

But other relatives say it was his birth certificate that was misspelled. This seems less plausible to me. I’m supposed to believe he lived his whole childhood with a name different from that of his parents?

This matter is probably not that difficult to settle, but for this side of my family, tall tales have as much currency as hard-nosed facts. I suspect that no one who hasn’t seen his birth certificate lately is quite sure what’s true. We just know that his last name should have contained an “e.”

My Rawls grandmother says “Rawls” without an “e” is the wealthy version of the name, at least among white people – the family name of those folks based in Franklinton. As far as I know, I am not related to them. If we were, I should probably have come into some of my inheritance by now. Of course, I’d be fine with a Jane Eyre situation and an inheritance from a long-lost cousin, but you know, I don’t think it’s likely.

My grandmother says “Rawles” with an “e” is the poor, white working class version of the name, the one taken by Rawles folks who hail from the Chesapeake area. I’ve never actually met a Rawles, so my grandmother’s parsing of the missing “e” remains unconfirmed.

***

There’s another Kristin Rawls out there. I know because I sometimes get emails meant for her from a cousin or uncle by marriage of hers. Last I heard, she was a Young Life leader. I’ve been getting her emails for years now, and I promise I’ve emailed the guy back many times to let him know. Now all I have to write back is “wrong Kristin!” and he knows right away. A couple of years ago, we finally discussed the name connection. And nope, it doesn’t appear that I’m related to the family Kristin married into either.

One day when I have time, I’ll scour court and city records to find out as much about my ancestors as I can.

I’m attached to my name because of the stories that come with it and because of the perspective they’ve given me on the world. Just as importantly, I am deeply averse to making more trips to the DMV and other record-keeping agencies than absolutely necessary. So I’m unlikely to ever change my name.

And I really hope no one ever assumes that I’m judging their naming decisions because I never change my name. For the record, I could not care less what you do with your name. That’s up to you.

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction with Flyover Feminism.

Let’s Talk About Names: Laura is the previous post in the series.

Let’s Talk About Names: Trudy is the next post in the series.

Natalie Reed. Image used with permission of author.

It’s interesting to question what we, in contemporary western culture, tend to consider to be our “real” names, and what we don’t. I’m not sure too many cis people have experienced this, but I’ve had people at parties, immediately after I introduced myself, ask for my real name. You know. The REAL one. That matches their assumptions about my anatomy and birth. That someone ELSE decided.

That’s not an innocent, or culturally or politically neutral, question. No matter how many “What do you mean that’s offensive? I’m not a bigot! I have lots of ‘LGBT’ friends!” responses are offered.

Generally speaking, the name that’s held as most natural, sincere, or most our own, is the one that was assigned to us as birth. Mainstream Western feminism, in attempts to address the patriarchal practice of a heterosexual wife assuming the surname of her husband, frames her prior name as sincere and “hers” and relatively above patriarchy’s treatment of gender (with the exception, perhaps, of sometimes considering the patrilineal traditions for the passing of surnames to children). What often goes uninvestigated is how our “real names” (our birth names) reflect cultural notions of gender themselves…for instance, the strict and binary categorization of “boys’ names” and “girls’ names”, with only a small set of unisex outliers (Terry, Robin, etc.)

When the new pope declared that he’d be taking the name Francis, a slew of cissexist, binarist (and subtly misogynistic) jokes flooded my social media feeds, concerning the (mistaken) notion that Francis is a “girl’s name.” (Strictly speaking, FrancEs is the name conventionally given to girls, but that’s sort of besides the point.) This idea of “boy names” and “girl names” is so pervasive that it tends to create an artificial ignorance even of how these gendered distinctions shift from culture to culture.

For example, I had an embarrassing moment recently where I mistakenly assumed a writer was male because she had the name Ariel, which is often gendered male or neutral in Spanish or Portugese speaking nations, having momentarily forgotten how it’s gendered in my own culture and language. I’ve enjoyed the comic I, Vampire quite a bit over the past year, and didn’t realize until recently that the artist, Andrea Sorrentino, is a man (Andrea is gendered male in Italian and several other romance languages). I make those kinds of mistakes despite being pretty invested in the importance of not making gendered assumptions about people. And where I grew up, in the Celtic-informed culture of rural Nova Scotia, names like Ashleigh, Robin and Leslie were common to boys. But people ignore this, and consider their domestic, culturally-specific gendering to be not only universal, but inherent, as though the name has an intrinsically “masculine” or “feminine” quality.

Painted Desert, Arizona. Image used with permission of author.

It’s also interesting to note that throughout history, and cross-culturally, the trend has always been for “boy names” to gradually be given to girls, and over time come to be understood as “girl names”, whereas the reverse process does not occur. We can even observe this in the contemporary USA, in names like “Jesse”, “Devin” or “Tristan.” But a boy named Sue still lives a tough life. This reflects the disparity in the viciousness with which gender non-conformity in people assigned male at birth is punished relative to gender non-conformity in people assigned female at birth, which itself is indicative of the widespread, usually subconscious, misogynistic treatment of femininity as inherently inferior, weak, shameful and a “step down” relative to masculinity, which can be interpreted as a “step up.”

My point here is that the assigned name, the name we’re “given” (or, if you’ll permit the bitter vitriol: “coercively shackled to”) at birth, is no more “real”, and no less a reflection of socio-cultural norms and conceptions of gender, than any future decisions about our name we make at an actual age of consent, whether or not those latter decisions are informed by patriarchal “tradition.”

A woman taking the name of her husband is making a choice. Her agency informs that. And the choice may be made for a wide variety of reasons. Absolutely, yes, it may be made as an act of conformity to patriarchal traditions. Sure. But it may also be an act of love, or an act of asserting independence from her family and moving forward into her own life (especially if she views her choice of partner as something very much her own, and an extension of her agency), or even just part of a desire for a “newness” in identity, an opportunity to symbolically move forward into a new sense of self and how she fits into the world. All of those are understandable reasons. The thing is that this act of naming is, at least, most likely an act of her OWN rather than act of someone else. Even as a concession or surrender, it’s her own. She can have reasons. She can have agency. No such possibility is permitted in the assigned name.

As a trans woman, yeah, I kinda have a bit of resentment towards the assigned name. And as someone also typically working under a pseudonym (which has sort of annoyingly decided to usurp the bulk of my life and relationships from my actual name… Natalie Reed is a bit of an imperialistic li’l bitch), the entire concept of the name has become a complex and emotionally, politically charged thing for me. But honestly? If there’s a single name that feels the least “real,” the most connected to social structures, cis-het-patriarchy and its assumptions, it’s the one I was given at birth. I had no say in it, and it wasn’t “my” name, it was the name of the expectations dumped on me, the presumed narrative of my life and gender, the costume handed to me before I could even say “no”… fuck, before I even had a conception of self with which I could contrast “costume” to “self”!

That name, my dead name? It had nothing to do with me (technically “I” didn’t even exist yet, given how I barely had a brain), and consequently was NOT something sacred, or special, or personal, or “mine”. It was fundamentally and deeply impersonal. It had everything to do with my parents, with my society, with my culture, with its attitudes of gender, with the assumptions that were attached to the external appearance of my genitalia… with everything everyone else thought or wanted or expected me to be, their idea of my identity. I mean, for fuck’s sake… that name just cold meant “man”/”masculine” in its original language!

None of this is to say that the debate of the patriarchal implications of women taking their husband’s names is irrelevant or misplaced. It’s an important conversation. But I defs bristle at the implication that the assigned name is more real or personal or significant that anything that follows.

And fuck anyone who ever puts a name in scare quotes.

xoxo
Natalie?… um… Reed?

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction with Flyover Feminism.

Let’s Talk About Names: Gaayathri is the previous post in the series.

Let’s Talk About Names: Laura is the next post in the series.

My Married Name And Feminist Sexism

Andrea Plaid. Photo used with permission of author.

I have a confession to make: the last name many people know me by is my married name, though my ex-husband and I dissolved our marriage about a decade ago.

And even at that, my last name is my ex’s stage name, a moniker he picked up during his fronting-a-punk-rock-band days. He legally changed his name to “Plaid” just before we married; he hated his original surname, partially because it was difficult to pronounce and also because he resented his father. My own resentment towards my neglectful father made happily choosing to take my husband’s chosen last name that much easier.

When I dissolved my marriage and was facing the decision to take back my maiden name, I just couldn’t do it. After all, if I wanted to get really feminist about it, it was my father’s name, an indication of patrilineality – which gets read in my family as my mother marrying the father of her child and, ultimately, upholding respectability politics. I thought about taking on my mom’s maiden name, but didn’t want an ideological fight about matrilineality with my mom. Taking her former name may have been read as delegitimizing her “duty” as a “proper Black woman.”

So, I made a very simple decision: I asked my ex if I could keep his name. He agreed. With that, I settled into and sallied forth with my punk-rock-by-marriage surname.

But see, reasons like mine were invisible in the latest kerfuffle about women in straight relationships not needing to change their names when they marry – or claiming their married names for reasons like, say, music tours. No, in these discussions, those of us who take on our husband’s names or even flaunt our married monikers are simply making unfeminist choices and possibly outright suckers for the patriarchy.

These arguments flatten the complex history of marital name-changing in the U.S. They don’t acknowledge, for example, that while a majority of women do adopt their husband’s last names, some women have passed on their “maiden” names to their children as middle names. This was a not-unheard-of practice, especially with white Baby Boomer names and in previous generations, mostly from the American South (e.g., President Lyndon Baines Johnson) and upper-class families in the Northeast (Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy).

They forget that, at one point, just about the only women who society “allowed” to keep their last names – be they maiden or made-up – were actresses, like many-times-married Elizabeth Taylor and Rita Hayworth.

They fail to acknowledge the cumulative fight that allows non-thespian women today (though not all) the right to choose to change or keep our names as a reflection of our married status, though the social attitudes about women changing our names lags far, far behind the choice. This fight occurred right about the time of women fighting for the marital-status neutral title of “Ms.”

And they forget how utterly heterosexist and transphobic this argument is, as queer people have melded and molded, kept and pitched their last names to reflect their committed relationships in light of – and in resistance to – legal rulings about their relationships; as participants in ball culture adopt the name of the “house” they belong to, names that not only tell other voguers who participants represent on the dance floor, but often also indicate, the name of the “house mother” who is helping provide their material needs; as trans* people are fighting for the legal right – among so many others – to have the name that reflects their true gender.

The Women’s Building, the first women-owned and -operated community center, in San Francisco. Image used with permission of author.

In these efforts to make decisions about married-last-names a litmus-test of feminism, I see a nasty underbelly turning over once again. These admonitions really say that, for all our struggles and triumphs, we don’t believe in our own feminist victories in working towards a world where we can all make our own life choices. While we’re demanding that women be treated equitably in this society, we’re saying that it’s up to women — still — to make the “proper” choice, like not taking their husbands’ names, to legitimize feminism.

Even more insidiously, these admonitions really say that feminists really don’t trust women to make their own decisions about the mundane aspects of their lives, like their own names and how they wish to convey their (hetero) partnerships to the world. In other words, these admonitions are really exercises in sexism under the guise of feminism.

As fellow feminist thinker and writer Tami Winfrey Harris says, “Taking on your husband’s last name may not be an explicitly feminist act, but are we wasting a discussion on these small personal actions instead of having a larger discussion about the power structure of traditional marriage and gender and ‘ownership?’” In the process, these admonitions keep some people from taking on the name of “feminist.”

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction withFlyover Feminism. Each essay includes an image of a place that holds personal meaning for the author.

Let’s Talk about Names: William is the previous post in the series.

Let’s Talk about Names: Gaayathri is the next post in the series.

Flavia Dzodan is a South American writer and media maker living in Amsterdam. She usually blogs at Tiger Beatdown and keeps a personal blog where she aggregates the different places that regularly publish her articles. She can also be found on Twitter.

Dying with no name, the Nomen Nescio of Europe

Flavia Dzodan. Image used with permission of author.

I used to hate my name. Not the name per se, but the way it was used against me, to admonish me, to tell me how I was bad. Inherently bad, Flavia es una hija de puta, he, they, many said. I was then my mother’s daughter. The daughter of. I hated the sound, I hated being named, I hated the way my name was pronounced to imply discipline, to coerce, to subdue.

My surname, though, I always associated with a lineage of hatred. The violence that ran in so many men in my family, the inheritance of rancor and clenched teeth and fists. I wanted nothing more than to change it. I wanted to be someone else, the one who did not belong to the violence, the one who managed to escape it through another name.

I got married and I desperately wanted to have my husband’s name. I had not met my father-in-law (it was a long and painful story of family separation for my husband), so his name came to me without the burdens of personal history. Here was this kind man, here was his name, and I could see myself as part of it.

The Dutch state does not allow the legal change of name through marriage, though. I could use his name if I wanted to, but no I.D. or paperwork would reflect this preference. It would be a mere pseudonymous choice without any legal repercussions as to my identity. My passport would remain the same, my ID would remain unchanged, my health insurance would be as it was before the marriage.

For a while, I tried to use it. I thought of myself as new. A new person, shedding what I perceived to be a legacy of violence. Then, every time I had to renew my residence permit or present proof of identity, I was reminded that I was going to remain who I was. I could pretend to change my name, but the intricacies of State bureaucracy would make sure I always had my heritage in mind.

One day, a few years ago, while dealing with the painful impact of my past as an undocumented immigrant, I came across the list of the dead. It was a harrowing file that detailed each death either in a European detention center or while in transit attempting to enter the European Union as an undocumented immigrant. I still remember my reaction when I first saw the list. More than 16,000 people had died either in the care of European States, or because of Europe’s neglect to protect undocumented migrants on its coasts. More than three quarters of those listed are simply N.N. The Nomen Nescio, as it is called in Latin. Literally translated, “I do not know the name”.

07/05/09 1 N.N. (49, woman) Tunisia suicide in the detention centre of Ponte Gallera, in Roma (Italy)

19/10/08 1 N.N. (60, woman) France suicide, set herself on fire to protest against the deportation of her Armenian partner

08/05/06 1 N.N. (57, woman) from China, suicide, hung herself in fear of deportation in a detention centre in Neuss (Germany)

I look at the ones that died on a day in March, like today, while I write this:

27/03/11 308 (yes, that’s 308 in a single occasion) N.N. unknown feared drowned, boat of 335 left Libya for Italy had been missing for 2 weeks, in spite of the fact that NATO helicopters were patrolling the Mediterranean.

27/03/02 1 N.N. unknown nationality died in minefield near river Evros (GR) trying to cross the Turkish-Greek border

I immediately thought of the mass graves of Argentina’s dictatorship, the thousands of Nomen Nescio political dissidents buried by the military, their bodies never meant to be found, to be forgotten, no heritage, no legacy, no place to be mourned. Just like those N.N undocumented immigrants, their bodies never claimed, their loved ones without a place to remember, without the possibility of tribute.

There is a long history of using N.N burial sites as a way to erase identity and dehumanize victims. Mass graves with unidentified bodies have been used by the Nazis to erase people and their identities. Enslaved Africans were buried in mass graves, as N.N., reduced simply to bodies and disposed of without ritual or care. In Guatemala, paramilitary squads interrogated, tortured and secretly executed dissidents, many of them indigenous people, their bodies dumped in remote sites or buried in mass graves as N.N.

Beach at Hoek Van Holland. Image used with permission of author.

Names have a distinctive function in contemporary Western societies, our names are seen as having the dual character of denoting the individuality of the person, and also marking social connections. Our names mark kinship, and the ways in which names can be, and are, used to map family connections as well as to identify unique individuals. We exist in the context of our names. These thousands of N.N dead on Europe’s footsteps, removed from the kinship, denied of the family connection and the community than comes with it. A nameless corpse, a victim of European State violence.

It was then that I realized that my name didn’t matter. I realized that there was privilege in the fact that I was afforded a name at all, that I could be named by my loved ones, that people could use my name and know who I was. It was then when I became comfortable with my name, because I realized I could have easily been deprived of it.

This post is part of an on-going roundtable on naming that AWH is doing in conjunction with Flyover Feminism. Each essay includes an image of a place that holds personal meaning for the author.

Let’s Talk About Names: Kristin is the previous post in the series.

Let’s Talk about Names: William is the next post in the series.

Photo Credit: benzpics63, CC license.

Via Colorlines, an interesting quote from Bruno Mars on why he stopped using his Puerto Rican father’s last name and took a stage name instead:

Mars was born Peter Hernandez twenty-seven years ago to a Puerto Rican Jewish percussionist from Brooklyn and a singer and dancer from the Philippines who met in Hawaii, and he landed the nickname Bruno as a toddler, supposedly because as an infant he looked like a famous wrestler, Bruno Sammartino; the surname Mars would only come as an adult. The most famous fact in Bruno Mars’s biography is that by the age of 4 he was appearing onstage in his father and uncle’s Hawaiian variety show impersonating Elvis Presley. “I don’t remember much,” he says. “I probably couldn’t even speak that much.” A grin. “But I was fucking great at it.”

Against that, school paled. “And then you’re going to school and learning about fucking Christopher Columbus and stuff…” says Mars. It was hard to care. All day he would be thinking how he couldn’t wait to go and perform that night. “It was like turning into Batman. I’d go to school and kids are calling me Peter and we’re playing baseball and kickball and shit, and then—‘All right, guys, I’ve got to go!’—you put on a sequined jumpsuit, and all of a sudden you’re Bruno, the world’s youngest Elvis impersonator!”

Whatever wisdom he assimilated back then, his talent still took time to congeal. After Mars moved to Los Angeles at 17, there were various misfires—a contract with Motown, a spell with Will.i.am’s management—and a few years in the wilderness. One problem was his name. He parodies the kind of response he would get: “Your last name’s Hernandez, maybe you should do this Latin music, this Spanish music…. Enrique’s so hot right now.” He shakes his head. Eventually he sidestepped the issue by adopting the name Mars, perhaps figuring that the best way to avoid being stereotyped by race is to sound as though you come from a different planet altogether.

The rest of the interview is at GQ Magazine.