re: the Jane Collective

She said-Before 1973 (From “Jane: Documents from Chicago’s Clandestine Abortion Service, 1968-1973”)

“She gulped some water in the kitchen and said,  Oh thank you, you’ll never know what this means to me, thank you so much. I can’t thank you enough, I’m sure. I know some people say it’s wrong, abortion, that you shouldn’t take a life. And maybe you did take a life. But it’s all give and take, isn’t it? My mother always said that everything always comes down to give and take. So the baby, today, that was the taking-and me, me, my own life, I think that was the giving.”

This is from a pamphlet I found last week at Bluestockings,  a  feminist bookstore collective around these parts. Everyone should know the history of the Jane Collective, which was an underground abortion collective in Chicago in the pre Roe v. Wade era.

 

 

The Marriage Project, Reflection 62: “A kind of sexual partner in crime.”

B is 37 and lives in Pittsburgh.

Why did you decide to get married?

Once I came to the decision, I was very comfortable making a long term, permanent commitment to my husband. We genuinely enjoyed being with one another, we had good sex, we shared some important values, we mutually desired a lot of freedom to pursue our own interests, and we were able to have productive conflicts with one another that led to greater intimacy. All of those were my main requirements for a partner.

I chose to legally marry him because he was a little more traditional than I was, and I knew that getting married meant a lot to him. Even if we had not gotten legally married, I personally believe in the transformative power of ritual. I wanted to create some kind of ceremony to actualize a union, marking that we were taking on a commitment and making some kind of formal agreements and social statement about the nature of our relationship. I believe we were able to craft a wedding ceremony that was very meaningful and powerful in that sense, and we were really happy with it. From the legal side of it, I wanted the next of kin and financial stuff to be there, too.

Interestingly, in the 9 years since we have gotten together, my husband has radically changed his political views and now believes that the state should have no bearing on our relationship, and would not get legally married again. Ha! It’s so funny how things change.

 What did you think marriage would be like? 

I thought it would be a (hopefully) lifelong continuation and deepening of our relationship. That’s pretty much what it has been. We have continued to get to know one another, to develop trust, to learn how to be supportive to one another, and to be able to communicate about our difficult feelings and value conflicts in ways that really honor our differences. There have been times when we have had some unpleasant distances between us, but I think we’ve both come to trust that we will eventually find a way to reconnect and sort it out when things are weird and unpleasant between us.

I have been trying to get married since I was about 12. And by that, I don’t mean wearing a pretty princess dress and being a bride. I mean finding a man to be partnered with as a team, a kind of sexual partner in crime. I have always really gotten along with men/boys, and I very much enjoy being in intimate relationships with men. I grew up relocating frequently and I am an only child. I think one of the reasons that I have always been so interested in being partnered is that I spent almost all of my life being extremely lonely. It’s really difficult to lose one’s entire set of relationships (except one’s parents) every few years. It’s deeply nourishing to be able to count on having this other person there who enjoys me and who wants to help me develop myself to my utmost. It gives me great strength to be part of this kind of union. My husband does not complete me, but our permanent relationship provides a basic piece of social ground for me to stand on in a life that has had very little long term social bonding.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage? 

My parents have a pretty good marriage, they’ve been married for 46 years. There’s a lot of love, humor, and candor there, although it’s far from perfect…these days my parents are in their early 70s and I have given up hope on either of them going into therapy and working on some of their issues. Almost all of my parents’ friends and my extended family are married and have been married to the same people since the 1950s and 60s. My mother takes a somewhat traditional role but both my parents are politically progressive (albeit Republican) and she is not submissive to my dad. I have never personally been exposed to marriage relationships where the wife is supposed to be submissive or compliant.

Perhaps because of all of our relocations I really appreciated the stability of having an intact “good enough” nuclear family.

I lived in the Bay Area through my 20s and into my early 30s, and I was exposed to a variety of different kinds of sexual and partner relationships. I have been in successful open relationships. While my parents were monogamous, I don’t think that has to be a part of a good marriage/partnership.  My current marriage is “sort of”  or “mostly” monogamous–we are able to talk to one another about our loves for and sexual attractions to others, and it’s on the table for us to consider having relationships outside the marriage. It’s a lot of work, though, and we had one experience that was very unpleasant and almost led to divorce. Through that experience we both realized how much we valued our marriage and how important it is to nurture it.

Why did you make the decision that you made about your name (whatever the decision is)?  
 

I seriously considered taking his last name, but it just didn’t feel right. I kept my name and he was going to take my last name. Then, we found out that it was this whole rigamarole for him to change his last name, you had to go through all these hoops, it was going to cost some money, and neither one of us felt strongly enough about it to go through the process. So now we just have our own names.We don’t have any children and probably won’t, so we don’t have that issue. If we did, I’d want all of us to have the same last name.There’s a woman in my field (and my subdiscipline/area of theory) who is roughly the same age as me and has the same name as me. I’m considering hyphenating now because I’ve already been mistaken for her a couple of times at conferences. Regardless of whether I go that way, I need to make some kind of decision about how I’m going to distinguish myself from her before I publish any more.

How do you feel about the word “wife”? 

I love it.

 Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married? 

Absolutely. I think the main thing is that we have gotten to know one another more and we have strongly influenced one another’s growth and changes over the years. We have definitely learned how to communicate better and how to work together better. We have also learned better how to support one another’s freedom as well as play a supportive role by participating in one another’s activities/social worlds.

 What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married? 

There is a significant class and education difference between my husband and myself, and this has been an area that has been really difficult to work with both between us and in our social lives. He has a GED, was raised poor working class, and is not “ambitious” or really all that motivated to earn  a lot of money, although he’s very intelligent, lively, talented, and actively creative. I have a PhD, was raised upper middle class, and have a strong commitment to developing my career. I married him in part because almost nothing matters to me more than my work, and I knew my career would always be the lead career. I accepted the role of primary breadwinner, and this is much more anxiety provoking than I thought it would be, even though my husband is used to a much lower standard of living than I was and doesn’t put a lot of pressure on me.We have had to learn how to talk about the insecurities and hidden politics between us that come from the ways that we as individuals and as a married couple do not conform to gender and class norms, and this has been really difficult. We have been together nearly ten years, and it took us almost 8 years together before we could really begin to speak frankly about these issues without fighting. It has been an extremely worthwhile experience that has forced me (and him) to come face to face with some very basic beliefs and assumptions about what it means to be a person. We have learned so much from one another, and happily, it has ultimately brought us closer together. Neither of us will ever be able to seamlessly fit in with our respective classes of origin again, however.

lovely things

Source

this song. chocolate soy milk. reading outside. basements. iced lattes. clean dishes. snacks. very long tables. this tumblr and also this one. brooklyn. my ever-changing taste buds. bracelets. a short cut to the library. carrying my camera everywhere. air conditioning. everything here is the best thing ever, by justin taylor. this podcast. crazy rain. the note in my journal: “remember the sweet potato.” warm grass. stoop sales. clean hair. the white half of the black and white cookie. tights. second winds at 7.30 pm. third winds at midnight.

delayed

saturday

Yesterday I spent a while sitting near the fountain in Grand Army Plaza. I saw two couples taking what I think might have been engagement photos, and another with their wedding party. Also, I finished a book (The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose). I recommend it.

leggings are not pants, but I have been kind of mean and also sexist.

I have not made any secret of my disapproval re: the situation in which women wear leggings as though they were a pair of pants. (I once wrote a “song” about it. The lyrics are:  Leggings are not pants/Leggings are not pants/Leggings are a lot of things/But they are not pants.) I have less rage if you’re wearing a shirt that covers your butt, and also if the leggings are black and not, say, flesh colored, but none of this is the point.

A while ago on the Facebook, I wrote something to the effect of “Apparently folks have not gotten the memo about leggings STILL NOT BEING PANTS.” Various people agreed with me that it was a scourge upon society and should be dealt with harshly. Then, a friend of mine added, “Seriously, what is with the body policing? Why can’t people wear what they want?”

Well, shit. That’s a good point. What is my problem, anyway? It’s not like I care about fashion, which is evident if you’ve ever seen me, you know, wearing clothes. If it weren’t enough that the whole situation wreaks of the cattiness that women are set up for since birth (judge each other, sabotage each other,  don’t pay attention to or even see  the fact that equality continues to be denied to you because of your vagina), I’m not even being honest about the root of my Leggings Feelings. Sometimes I am jealous of the very long legs clad in the leggings and that causes resentment. Yes, I could also wear leggings in the manner of pants in public, but not without serious anxiety and scheduling an extra therapy session. Otherwise, I don’t actually care if you’re wearing leggings and whether or not they fall under the category of Pants or Not Pants.

It’s also worth noting that there is not a chart like the one at the top of this post for clothing that dudes wear, which includes a piece at the bottom that says, “Are you a lingerie model? –> No –> Please put on some pants.” That’s the only way we get to wear clothes, ladies-if we look like lingerie models. If not? You may want to consider not leaving the house, if not everyone finds your body pleasing,  you don’t deserve to be outside.

There’s enough being done to make women feel bad about everything we do, let alone getting dressed. Let’s not encourage the bullshit. 

 

 

lovelies

The Marriage Project, Reflection 61: “You just don’t know yet how it’s going to happen, or what that’s going to look like. And that’s okay.”

L is 28 and lives in New York.

Why did you get married?

I knew since I was maybe ten years old that I would get married young, and sure enough, at 22 I was one
of the first of my friends to get married. It’s hard to be clear-eyed about my reasons, and not bitter, but
certainly I was happy on my wedding day and secure in my decision.

I got married because I was looking for my partner, for stability, and to build a home. Though I was
mature in a lot of ways as a young adult, I was also very sensitive, very vulnerable; I felt emotionally
unsupported and alone, and needed a firm place to stand, which I thought meant having a partner by
my side. Navigating the world of college hang-outs and hook-ups and questions like “Is he just trying
to get into my pants?” had been terrifying, and I was also simultaneously becoming more and more
immersed in religious communities where it wasn’t unusual for a friend to not even touch his or her
partner until they were married. (These experiences and the tensions between them remain pretty
illustrative of the various worlds I’m a part of today.)

My ex and I had been on a marriage-track since almost day one of our relationship, though we didn’t
say that concretely until a few months in. We were of the mindset that if our relationship was at any
point no longer potentially headed towards marriage, it would be over. This made sense to me. I was
looking for love for the long haul. But after almost a year together, when engagement was on the
horizon, I began to freak out. Suddenly, even though I had been on board for marriage-or-bust since
the beginning, I had huge doubts. I felt too young. I wanted to live in an apartment with friends after
graduation, and have big dinner parties, and date around. That all seemed important somehow, and
was the main image that kept knocking around in my head… but I couldn’t parse why that image, that
hypothetical stage of my life was so compelling. It just seemed like I was getting cold feet because I
happened to be 12 or 24 months younger than I thought I should ideally be, which felt petty and almost
silly.

My ex was adamant about not dating indefinitely; he was adamant about getting married; he’s an
adamant guy. I trusted his feelings, in some ways, more than I trusted my own. I didn’t want to lose
what had been the best and most stable relationship I had ever been in—romantic or otherwise. I felt
sure that if we broke up, those 12 or 24 months would go by, and I would then be kicking myself for
letting him go. So I stopped freaking out and we got engaged. Again, please understand: I was happy on
my wedding day. Once I make a decision, I throw myself fully into it. But the circumstances leading up to
our engagement were rocky, and it’s still hard for me to look back at that time.

What changes have divorce/separation brought to your life?

(To be clear, I’m currently Jewishly divorced and civilly separated, with full intentions to become civilly
divorced as well; for the purposes of this interview, however, I’m going to just refer to myself as being
divorced.)

It’s easier to answer this question chronologically than psychologically; I’ll try both. In terms of the
timeline of my life, separation and divorce brought many changes into my life: I moved to another
borough and another Jewish community and lived with female roommates for the first time, I flailed
around madly in the midst of an intense religious crisis, I struggled with various bouts of illnesses I had
never had before from stomach stuff to anxiety attacks (which were probably not unrelated), I started
really writing again, I dated and got involved with new people for the first time in seven years, and I
changed jobs and careers. I would joke that my life had changed so drastically, I may as well also dye my
hair purple and get a bunch of tattoos—which, actually, sounds pretty good. Maybe I should look into
that.

Psychologically, though, it’s not so easy to outline the cause-and-effect at play in every case. In many
ways I was stifled in my relationship with my ex, which was an unhappy and accidental outcome of the
combination of our personalities and values. A big part of the reason for the separation and divorce
itself was that I was not the person I wanted to be—spiritually, creatively, romantically. A family friend
asked me later if my ex was “controlling”… he wasn’t. He never asked me to be someone different than
who I was, or to stop writing, or to stop exploring my religious path. But those things happened, and I
know that I played as big of a part, or bigger, in my suppression than my ex did (and that’s something I
need to understand and work on). Ultimately, when all of our cards were on the table and it was time
to see if I could truly be myself and still be with him, it sadly became apparent that I couldn’t. So the
changes were already happening; they just played out in a more public way after we got separated and
then divorced.

How has divorce/separation changed your view of marriage?

Divorce hasn’t changed my view of marriage in a general sense; I’m glad that people choose to get
married, and hope that one day soon same-sex marriage will be par for the course everywhere.

But…

Do you think you’ll get married again? Why or why not?

I think I’ll probably get married again, but the idea scares the crap out of me. When my gun-shy, freaked-out brain is in charge, I think that I got one free pass in terms of being divorced—that being divorced once is acceptable, but that I better be damn sure the second time around. I worry that I will continually make commitments to partners and then those commitments will fall to pieces again, that I will keep inviting my family and friends to ceremonies that they’ll attend wondering, “Will this one last?” I worry that I’ll stand under the chuppah and wonder that, too.

The problem with will-this-last thinking, though (and as I think Dan Savage says), is that you basically won’t know if your relationship was a “success”—by that metric—until one of you is in the grave. Other than that, at any moment, the other shoe might drop and you could be looking back at a, say, fifty-year marriage and four children and think, “Damn, it didn’t work.”

I am trying to tie my thoughts together here, and I can’t. I am of two minds.

Cynical self: If a successful relationship can only truly be measured in the moment, why bother to make a false promise to love each other forever, when that can’t possibly be upheld in advance? Maybe meaningful relationships are meant to last as long as they are meaningful. Marriage is an inorganic institution, after all, and it’s simply unreasonable to expect to share an entire lifetime with another person.

Romantic self: I want to try marriage again. I think I can love and be loved better. I want to find that imperfect someone who wants to be with imperfect me. Even if lifelong commitment really is impossible, I want to be with someone who wants us to give it a whirl together.

(I recognize that there’s a fallacy here, an assumption that one has to get married to make a lifelong commitment to a partner. I don’t actually think that’s true—but for better or worse, that seems to feel true in my own case.)

What advice would you give to women who are going through a divorce/separation?

I actually have a draft email in my inbox with the subject “various lessons learned”, which are all from the year since my ex and I split up. Here is one of the last and biggest ones, added only a few months ago:

Maybe you just don’t know… and that’s okay.

You might be trying so hard, as I did, to figure everything out. Your living situation, your boundaries,
your rules, your identity, your future, your past, your career, your relationships, your dating life, your
sex life—all at once. And honestly, maybe you just don’t know the answer to everything right now…
and that’s okay. Really. It’s okay. Just sit in the not knowing. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be
happier. You just don’t know yet how it’s going to happen, or what that’s going to look like. And that’s
okay.

these are my busy pants.

When I first moved to New York, I went to an event at an Upper West Side apartment on Jewish continuity. It was a small group  discussing the degree to which we as young folks are responsible for the Jewish future. (Do I even need to mention that Chanel now would stay far, far away from such a situation? She would.)

The facilitator began the conversation by asking if anyone in the room did not want to have children. I almost didn’t raise my hand, but then I thought about the people who might want to raise their hand but didn’t want to do it alone, and also the fact that it was important for me to represent myself. It turns out that I should have left my hand down, because the facilitator turned to me, her jaw hanging open, and said, in front of the entire gathering, “You don’t want to have children? Why?” I don’t remember what I said after that, just that  I wanted to disappear into the well manicured carpet. (The fact that I still remember it so many years later is evidence that it was slightly traumatic and that I am bad at letting things go.)

I’m thinking about this now because of this week’s episode of Opinionated, in which Samhita, Amanda and Ann Friedman discuss the “women having it all” issue. You should go and listen to the whole thing, but one of the best parts, as far as I’m concerned, is the conversation around what it might mean to have it all when you don’t mean babies.

The “Busy Trap” piece in the New York Times last week about how no one has any time also ties into this conversation. I’m not going to summarize it here, but as someone who is often busy doing things that people don’t always understand as being work, it’s pretty clear that we live under a microscope (which varies according to race, class, gender, etc) in regard to how we spend our time.

The irony is that while caring for other people is also not valued work (thanks, capitalism!), and the majority of people doing that caretaking are women, a woman who doesn’t  have children whom she will then take care of  is still considered strange, suspicious and even dangerous.

Do we get to demand work/life balance when our lives don’t look the way everyone expects them to? The answer, of course, is yes, but I suspect there’s a question not so deep below the surface of what women do if they don’t eventually have children. I mean, what will you do if you don’t have tiny time suckers running around, right? (Calm down, I’m sure your tiny time suckers are adorable.)

The Marriage Project, Reflection 60: “I don’t believe in marriage. I believe in family and friends.”

Thema is 43 and lives in Atlanta.

How did you arrive at the decision to not get married? How firm are you in this decision?  

Making a decision not to get married is the product of a lengthy and amorphous process, as I caromed off the idea of marriage multiple times during many relationships. When I was 19, I became engaged to a man a few years older than myself. I was happy about his proposal, and phoned all my relatives to inform them of the news who all responded happily. We were living together, and began making wedding plans but the relationship ended after about a year. I realized I was too young – I was still forming myself as a person and the two of us were growing apart as I continued to change as an individual. What followed after that was a string of serious relationships with boyfriends I was in love with but none of which lasted more than two to three years. These relationships occurred during my education at University, through graduation, to my first professional job – all throughout casually discussing the idea of marriage but, really, we just enjoyed our time together. More recently, as I reached the age of twenty seven, my boyfriend and I seriously began to talk about marriage. He was supportive either way – married or not – but it seemed like the next logical step for us both. It was only after deep introspection and contemplation on marriage that I realized I loved him, but I was not in love with him. I quickly ended the relationship; as I did not believe he was “the one” and have not spoken with him since. And now, in the present, my boyfriend and I are happy and have been deeply in love for three years. This relationship solidified my decision, and it is firm: I will never get married. I am a relativist who has faith in change, as change is inevitable. There are no guarantees in love, so why worry about getting married? Never being a religious person, I don’t see the need to pay homage to our love with a ceremony in a public display of affection asking for free gifts from my closest relatives and friends. Nor do I believe in selling out and getting married so the government can give me my husband’s social security check or health care benefit. I have designated those most important to me in my living will and Healthcare POA, so why can’t I do the same with my SS and healthcare benefits? We should be able to form our own decisions and relations which should be respected by those closest to us and the government without the need for marriage contracts.

Where did you get your narrative about marriage? 

At first, my visions of marriage as a ceremony came through media and American culture: Bridal magazines, reality wedding shows, and the marriage services of many family members and friends. The allure of a marriage ceremony as once-in-a-lifetime special day event slowly rusted and eventually became a symbol of shallow self-interest. I’m not interested in all that attention. Forming my own thoughts on marriage as a commitment, a lifelong journey, and symbol came from my own chosen values as well as what experiences I have with family and friends. My personal choice is in long term, monogamous, heterosexual relationships. There is no denying that marriage is an ongoing process of hard work. I am not afraid of commitment; I have twice been in long distance relationships that lasted years – that was work. The concept of marriage as a symbol of unity is beautiful. But there are other symbols of unity besides marriage. Coincidentally, my mother and father – who divorced each other when I was five – have each been married three times. Both sides of my grandparents have been together for more than fifty years. As for my friends – many are single, some are married and others divorced, only one is re-married. Regardless, my family has always been supportive of my choices and I hear them approve whenever I show them I am a strong, smart, and independent woman. Now that they don’t expect my future marriage to occur – they are looking to me to choose motherhood.

What do you say to folks who ask you when you’re getting married? 

It took time, but by slowly developing my own security, confidence, and self-worth I am able to say to others “I don’t believe in marriage. I believe in family and friends.” This usually prompts in acquaintances a quick expression of confusion followed by a quick cessation on the topic of marital conversation. I do not understand why choosing to be unmarried is so taboo? Once when I traveled to Eastern Tennessee for work, I had a lunch with a few clients. A casual mention that I was unmarried and living with my boyfriend, prompted a woman to state that I was “living in sin.” And, I have previously been told by a male co-worker that I am “too much for one man” – how degrading!

Why do you think there’s such a stigma against women who aren’t married/choose not to be married? How do you think this stigma has affected you?

From the religious perspective; it’s not a traditional role for a woman. This can stir up feelings of judgment and probably fear. Unwed women are purportedly mocking the values of the traditional family and also imposing an alternative lifestyle that could be seeped into the minds of their own families or children or communities. Otherwise, I believe an unmarried woman is a target of jealousy and a scapegoat for misplaced anger.

What are your feelings on the word “spinster”? 

Honestly, I recall only recently becoming aware of the word “spinster”. I was watching a Korean soap opera online and used the dictionary to look up the term. I feel that since it took so long to truly recognize the term’s existence it has become an archaic word, at least in the Midwest where I am from. I have never been called a spinster, but I would have words with anyone who did.