I was quite surprised that nobody asked me how writing about wedding planning fit into the broader mission of this blog. Why write about wedding planning on a blog called “Sex Ed Transforms,” created to promote transformative sexuality education for adolescents and young adults? The more I think about this question and reflect on the process, the more reasons there are. I’ll explain three of those reasons here.
1. For the teenagers.
Marriage is one of the organizing principles of sex education in our public schools. Abstinence Only until Marriage programs teach that sex and sexuality are only legitimate in the context of marriage. On its own, this concept means that sex is framed in the context of these traditional gender roles and capitalist pressures that accompany weddings and marriages. Even teenagers lucky enough to receive comprehensive sexuality education that focuses on how to form healthy relationships at any age are still exposed to the media. In magazines, TV shows, and movies, marriage is the ultimate point of reference for romance. And weddings are the climax of romance, the height of the love and drama. Not only does this perpetuate the idealization of weddings as perfect and beautiful, but it also fails to teach anything about healthy and happy marriages. If weddings are the height of romance, then what comes next? Rather than learning the skills they need to have healthy, pleasurable, and fulfilling relationships at any age and with any shape or size of religious, legal, or private commitment, teenagers are instead learning that they must get married and enter into this specific kind of relationship or else they will never have legitimate sex and they will never get to live out their dreams of true love. Which everyone should want. And if they don’t, they’re missing out on something that they should want even if they don’t want it.
2. For us, the young adults in our 20s and 30s.
Young adulthood, in our society, is stereotypically framed by the achievement of certain milestones that mark the transition from being a kid to having kids, including launching a career, getting married, and, well, having kids. In reality, however, so many young adults enjoy such varied paths, which can result in much success and happiness. It’s said that today’s young adults are more likely to explore multiple careers in their lifetime, to live with a partner without plans of marriage, and perhaps to choose not to have children. Unusual paths are becoming more, well, usual. Why, then, is marriage still this ultimate point of reference? Even for young adults who don’t get married, the weddings of their friends and siblings mark the calendar year with showers, bachelor/ette parties, and the big days themselves. The culture of weddings thus becomes an intricate part of the culture of young adulthood. The involvement of friends and family in the wedding process is also seeped in both patriarchy and materialism, perpetuating unhealthy gender roles for men and women. Although I didn’t write a lot about these particular influences on friends and family, I just need to say that it’s not only about the bride, it’s about how weddings are embedded in the broader culture and thus create problematic and, at times, quite detrimental gendered and classed power dynamics.
3. For the children. Do it for the children.
I’ll keep this simple. My thought is just that if wedding and marriage are drowning in patriarchy and capitalism, and people who marry later go on to have children, the messages sent to the couple about what marriage should be like and what they should care about are going to trickle into the foundation of their relationship. That, in turn, will affect the environment in which the children are raised and the implicit and explicit messages the children receive, thus perpetuating the patriarchy and burying us deeper and deeper in sexism.
All I’m saying is, all of this wedding stuff I wrote about does not just affect me as a bride. It affects our whole society and everybody in it. Another thing to consider is that most young brides are doing it for their first time. And after they do it once, they often don’t get a second chance any time soon, so the industry gets to remain very stagnant, constantly getting new clients without having to woo old clients back again. And that’s part of the reason I decided to speak up and say something. I don’t plan on having another wedding, but I do plan on sticking around and engaging in this society for a while more, and I think all of this stuff is still going to matter even now that my wedding is over. So, nobody asked, but these are my reasons. Now I’m asking you, what should we do about it?
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Detriment of Internalized Femininity
Planning that wedding woke me up. In addition to the wonderful sense of joy and community (and there was so much of that), I also experienced moments of deep despair, helplessness, and fear, in ways I never had before. But at none of these times was I unable to understand from where these emotions were coming. I knew.
Planning a wedding revealed to me places within myself still very much under the influence of patriarchal sexism. While working on my master’s thesis during this period, I came across Emily Impett and colleagues’ breakdown of femininity ideology (2006), in which they looked at how girls internalize the dominant messages in our society about how girls and women should behave. They breaks down femininity ideology into two pieces: body objectification and inauthenticity in relationships. Planning a wedding revealed to me in such a magnified and concise way how I am still affected by both of these elements.
Body objectification is perhaps the more obvious element, based on what I have written here so far. The entire wedding culture is premised on the idea that a bride will be utterly focused on losing weight and/or keeping her “figure.” As much as one year before the wedding someone commented that I must have turned down her offer of food because, she said, “you have a dress to fit into.” But body objectification isn’t about what other people say, rather, it’s about the internalization of these messages. It’s about how these ideas can creep into my own thoughts and twist and turn the way I feel about myself. Suddenly there was this whole element of the wedding that I had not anticipated, and that element was me, a specter of myself, sitting in the corner, looking at myself as a bride and judging whether or not I looked skinny enough, beautiful enough, bridal enough. I think this element has been re-triggered this week because we got the professional photos back, and I was so nervous to look at them. I was nervous not because I thought they would be bad or I thought I wouldn’t enjoy looking at them, but rather because ever since the wedding I had been able to dismiss those cries of self-objectification. Looking at pictures of oneself, it is hard not to ask oneself, “Am I beautiful?” However, one thing I can say happily and proudly is that on the day of the wedding, all my prep paid off, and I felt present and engaged, very much not the self-conscious wreck about which I had been so concerned. And that paid off when I then looked at the pictures – I look so ecstatic, both mouth and eyes wide open in almost every picture, and nothing else matters. Nothing besides that ecstasy, those looks of joy. Right?
Inauthenticity in relationships. Now this one is a little harder to explain, and I don’t think I wrote about it as much at the time. This concept is based on the idea that females are taught to be the ones to smooth things over, to make things better, to make things work. That girls and women are supposed to avoiding standing up for themselves, not speak up for what they want and need, and not cause problems. Being socialized in such a way strongly affects one’s relationships with others, in which assertive communication and clear expression of one’s thoughts and feelings help strengthen relationships and help individuals get their needs met. I had been working already on developing these skills and, in various capacities, teaching others these skills. But maybe this whole wedding planning challenge was just too much too soon. Planning a wedding involves so many different aspects, and so many details, and so many decisions that I did actually have feelings about (in addition to many I didn’t). I didn’t realize early enough how important it was going to be for me to speak up, express what I felt and what I didn’t feel, articulate my wants and needs, and assertively negotiate with my partner, our parents, and our friends. Most of all, I was not very practiced in this process and so, I am afraid, often I did not do it so nicely. Often panic, frustration, and inarticulate tears would seize me. Sometimes I would just say too little, too late. Sometimes I said nothing at all because I was too afraid of the consequences. And sometimes I definitely said too much, and I was too mean. However, sometimes it worked just right, and I owe much to my partner, our parents, and our friends for bearing with me (and each other) and for working through the process together. I learned a lot, and I believe that I experienced a lot of growth not only in my own communication repertoire, but more specifically in opening channels of communication in a few key relationships that I hope will stay strong the rest of my life.
These are just two examples of the ways in which I had to face the effects of sexism and patriarchy on myself, personally, through this process. In addition, as I have written about in other posts, the culture of wedding planning has in itself more elements of patriarchy than I had ever before directly encountered in my lovely, liberal, northeastern American world. The relevance of this process to my work of transforming sex education will be the subject of my next post.
Planning a wedding revealed to me places within myself still very much under the influence of patriarchal sexism. While working on my master’s thesis during this period, I came across Emily Impett and colleagues’ breakdown of femininity ideology (2006), in which they looked at how girls internalize the dominant messages in our society about how girls and women should behave. They breaks down femininity ideology into two pieces: body objectification and inauthenticity in relationships. Planning a wedding revealed to me in such a magnified and concise way how I am still affected by both of these elements.
Body objectification is perhaps the more obvious element, based on what I have written here so far. The entire wedding culture is premised on the idea that a bride will be utterly focused on losing weight and/or keeping her “figure.” As much as one year before the wedding someone commented that I must have turned down her offer of food because, she said, “you have a dress to fit into.” But body objectification isn’t about what other people say, rather, it’s about the internalization of these messages. It’s about how these ideas can creep into my own thoughts and twist and turn the way I feel about myself. Suddenly there was this whole element of the wedding that I had not anticipated, and that element was me, a specter of myself, sitting in the corner, looking at myself as a bride and judging whether or not I looked skinny enough, beautiful enough, bridal enough. I think this element has been re-triggered this week because we got the professional photos back, and I was so nervous to look at them. I was nervous not because I thought they would be bad or I thought I wouldn’t enjoy looking at them, but rather because ever since the wedding I had been able to dismiss those cries of self-objectification. Looking at pictures of oneself, it is hard not to ask oneself, “Am I beautiful?” However, one thing I can say happily and proudly is that on the day of the wedding, all my prep paid off, and I felt present and engaged, very much not the self-conscious wreck about which I had been so concerned. And that paid off when I then looked at the pictures – I look so ecstatic, both mouth and eyes wide open in almost every picture, and nothing else matters. Nothing besides that ecstasy, those looks of joy. Right?
Inauthenticity in relationships. Now this one is a little harder to explain, and I don’t think I wrote about it as much at the time. This concept is based on the idea that females are taught to be the ones to smooth things over, to make things better, to make things work. That girls and women are supposed to avoiding standing up for themselves, not speak up for what they want and need, and not cause problems. Being socialized in such a way strongly affects one’s relationships with others, in which assertive communication and clear expression of one’s thoughts and feelings help strengthen relationships and help individuals get their needs met. I had been working already on developing these skills and, in various capacities, teaching others these skills. But maybe this whole wedding planning challenge was just too much too soon. Planning a wedding involves so many different aspects, and so many details, and so many decisions that I did actually have feelings about (in addition to many I didn’t). I didn’t realize early enough how important it was going to be for me to speak up, express what I felt and what I didn’t feel, articulate my wants and needs, and assertively negotiate with my partner, our parents, and our friends. Most of all, I was not very practiced in this process and so, I am afraid, often I did not do it so nicely. Often panic, frustration, and inarticulate tears would seize me. Sometimes I would just say too little, too late. Sometimes I said nothing at all because I was too afraid of the consequences. And sometimes I definitely said too much, and I was too mean. However, sometimes it worked just right, and I owe much to my partner, our parents, and our friends for bearing with me (and each other) and for working through the process together. I learned a lot, and I believe that I experienced a lot of growth not only in my own communication repertoire, but more specifically in opening channels of communication in a few key relationships that I hope will stay strong the rest of my life.
These are just two examples of the ways in which I had to face the effects of sexism and patriarchy on myself, personally, through this process. In addition, as I have written about in other posts, the culture of wedding planning has in itself more elements of patriarchy than I had ever before directly encountered in my lovely, liberal, northeastern American world. The relevance of this process to my work of transforming sex education will be the subject of my next post.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Our Ketubah Text
A Ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract. Considered a legal document, it is signed by the couple and two witnesses on the day of the wedding. While the structure of this text is based on the traditional formats, we worked diligently to craft a text that would reflect our intentions for our marriage. We would love to hear what you think!
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On the 1st day of the week, the 1st day of the month of Tammuz, in the year five thousand seven hundred and seventy-one since “the creation of the world,” corresponding to the 3rd day of the month of July in the year two thousand eleven here in Massachusetts, the groom Matthew Lowe, son of Jeffrey and Fonda, and the bride Mimi Arbeit, daughter of Susan and Robert, entered into the Holy Covenant of Marriage. The bride Mimi said to the groom Matthew: "With this ring you are consecrated unto me as my partner according to the spirit of Miriam and the tradition of Moses and the Jewish people. I shall treasure you, nourish you, support you and respect you as Jewish adults have devoted themselves to their partners with love and integrity." The groom Matthew said to the bride Mimi: "With this ring you are consecrated unto me as my partner according to the spirit of Miriam and the tradition of Moses and the Jewish people. I shall treasure you, nourish you, support you and respect you as Jewish adults have devoted themselves to their partners with love and integrity."
They also agree to the following: Our partnership is invested with the vision of radical feminism, which guides us in queering structures of power and seeking justice for ourselves and others. We promise to try to be ever open to one another and to cherish each other's uniqueness: to comfort and challenge each other through life's sorrow and joy; to share our intuition and insight with one another; and, above all, to do everything within our power to permit each of us to become the persons we are yet to be. We pledge to establish a home that welcomes the spiritual potential in all life: a home wherein the flow of the seasons and the passages of time are celebrated through symbols of our values and our heritage; a home filled with reverence for learning, loving and giving. Through our partnership we will strive towards wholeness for ourselves, for one another, and for the world. And if a time comes that either of us chooses to end this marriage, we each pledge to act with integrity, respect, and compassion towards each other in civic and religious domains.
The groom and bride also accepted full legal responsibility for the obligations herein taken on, as well as for the various properties entering the marriage from their respective homes and families, and agreed that the obligations in this Ketubah may be satisfied even from movable property. Both the groom and the bride formally acquire these obligations to the other, with an instrument fit for such purposes. All is valid and binding.
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On the 1st day of the week, the 1st day of the month of Tammuz, in the year five thousand seven hundred and seventy-one since “the creation of the world,” corresponding to the 3rd day of the month of July in the year two thousand eleven here in Massachusetts, the groom Matthew Lowe, son of Jeffrey and Fonda, and the bride Mimi Arbeit, daughter of Susan and Robert, entered into the Holy Covenant of Marriage. The bride Mimi said to the groom Matthew: "With this ring you are consecrated unto me as my partner according to the spirit of Miriam and the tradition of Moses and the Jewish people. I shall treasure you, nourish you, support you and respect you as Jewish adults have devoted themselves to their partners with love and integrity." The groom Matthew said to the bride Mimi: "With this ring you are consecrated unto me as my partner according to the spirit of Miriam and the tradition of Moses and the Jewish people. I shall treasure you, nourish you, support you and respect you as Jewish adults have devoted themselves to their partners with love and integrity."
They also agree to the following: Our partnership is invested with the vision of radical feminism, which guides us in queering structures of power and seeking justice for ourselves and others. We promise to try to be ever open to one another and to cherish each other's uniqueness: to comfort and challenge each other through life's sorrow and joy; to share our intuition and insight with one another; and, above all, to do everything within our power to permit each of us to become the persons we are yet to be. We pledge to establish a home that welcomes the spiritual potential in all life: a home wherein the flow of the seasons and the passages of time are celebrated through symbols of our values and our heritage; a home filled with reverence for learning, loving and giving. Through our partnership we will strive towards wholeness for ourselves, for one another, and for the world. And if a time comes that either of us chooses to end this marriage, we each pledge to act with integrity, respect, and compassion towards each other in civic and religious domains.
The groom and bride also accepted full legal responsibility for the obligations herein taken on, as well as for the various properties entering the marriage from their respective homes and families, and agreed that the obligations in this Ketubah may be satisfied even from movable property. Both the groom and the bride formally acquire these obligations to the other, with an instrument fit for such purposes. All is valid and binding.
Monday, July 4, 2011
To my support network
I wrote this piece to share with several wedding guests who came to spend time with me in the hour before the ceremony, in a tradition called a tisch, which means "table."
I have been experiencing this wedding in three layers, three perspectives, three ways in which I understand and express my own story. The initial layer is the personal relationship I share with Matt. Hopefully, you will hear the meanings of this deep layer as you witness our marriage ceremony, right after this tisch. The second layer of my experience of this wedding is political. Throughout the last month, I have expressed many of these thoughts and feelings on my blog, so I will not repeat them here.
The third layer of my experience of this wedding was actually the key motivating factor in my decision to have a wedding and reception to celebrate the marriage that Matt and I are undertaking. This layer is what I would like to focus on now, because it is about you. It is you. To my family, my friends, my loved ones, and those who love Matt and are here because they are open to loving me, too… welcome. Thank you for being with us today and throughout our lives. We have put all this thought and energy into preparing for today because we wanted to share it with you. It was because of you that I wanted to have this wedding today.
I once had an assigned reading for a gender studies class in college that addressed the Wedding Industrial Complex and analyzed many problematic and patriarchal aspects of modern weddings. One part of the critique that really struck me was he role of the guests in the wedding process. The couple and their parents plan the wedding, then everyone rushes in to celebrate for a day or for the weekend, and then the couple is left alone. Sealed off and isolated as they begin their marriage. Where the struggles happen, where the hard stuff comes up.
I don’t want to do it that way. First of all, we haven’t done it that way so far. We have been so blessed to have the effusive love and collaboration of each other and our parents in planning this wedding, but it didn’t stop there. Our best friends, our new friends, our parents friends, our cousins, they all helped us in planning this wedding. And each offer of help, each volunteering to take on a task, meant so much to be. Because not only was it extremely helpful in terms of getting this thing to happen, but it also, to me, implied a willingness and perhaps eagerness to help us in the times that will follow this wedding, whatever those times might entail.
We need you. I need you.
Our relationship cannot thrive in isolation. We need your support, in times of struggle and in times of joy, to help us thrive and reach our potential as a couple. I want to take this opportunity to ask you for this support, and for your patience, compassion, and wisdom as we navigate the joint and individual challenges ahead of us and cope with what that means for our relationship with each other and for our relationships with each of you.
And in addition to your support, I want to offer you mine. In the theme of approaching my wedding day as a personal Yom Kippur, I will start with an apology. I am sorry for all the times I have hurt or offended you or others that you care about. I have been distracted, I have been careless, too fast to speak, too soon to leave, and I have been selfish. Please forgive me. Know on this day, as I renew my dedication to living a life in which my words, actions and relationships reflect my values and passions, I am committing to you as well as committing to Matt. I want to be there for you, and I will be renewed because of this day and because of the strength I gain from my relationship with Matt. Please know that as we solidify our relationship to each other, as we invite you here to celebrate our commitment and rejoice with us, we hope that you will find joy and comfort in welcoming us into your lives, as well. As I set many important intentions today, I take this moment to set the intention to be your friend, to deepen our relationship, and to support you with love and caring. And, I will need your love and care to nourish me as Matt and I pursue a partnership thriving with health, happiness, and the pursuit of justice.
I have been experiencing this wedding in three layers, three perspectives, three ways in which I understand and express my own story. The initial layer is the personal relationship I share with Matt. Hopefully, you will hear the meanings of this deep layer as you witness our marriage ceremony, right after this tisch. The second layer of my experience of this wedding is political. Throughout the last month, I have expressed many of these thoughts and feelings on my blog, so I will not repeat them here.
The third layer of my experience of this wedding was actually the key motivating factor in my decision to have a wedding and reception to celebrate the marriage that Matt and I are undertaking. This layer is what I would like to focus on now, because it is about you. It is you. To my family, my friends, my loved ones, and those who love Matt and are here because they are open to loving me, too… welcome. Thank you for being with us today and throughout our lives. We have put all this thought and energy into preparing for today because we wanted to share it with you. It was because of you that I wanted to have this wedding today.
I once had an assigned reading for a gender studies class in college that addressed the Wedding Industrial Complex and analyzed many problematic and patriarchal aspects of modern weddings. One part of the critique that really struck me was he role of the guests in the wedding process. The couple and their parents plan the wedding, then everyone rushes in to celebrate for a day or for the weekend, and then the couple is left alone. Sealed off and isolated as they begin their marriage. Where the struggles happen, where the hard stuff comes up.
I don’t want to do it that way. First of all, we haven’t done it that way so far. We have been so blessed to have the effusive love and collaboration of each other and our parents in planning this wedding, but it didn’t stop there. Our best friends, our new friends, our parents friends, our cousins, they all helped us in planning this wedding. And each offer of help, each volunteering to take on a task, meant so much to be. Because not only was it extremely helpful in terms of getting this thing to happen, but it also, to me, implied a willingness and perhaps eagerness to help us in the times that will follow this wedding, whatever those times might entail.
We need you. I need you.
Our relationship cannot thrive in isolation. We need your support, in times of struggle and in times of joy, to help us thrive and reach our potential as a couple. I want to take this opportunity to ask you for this support, and for your patience, compassion, and wisdom as we navigate the joint and individual challenges ahead of us and cope with what that means for our relationship with each other and for our relationships with each of you.
And in addition to your support, I want to offer you mine. In the theme of approaching my wedding day as a personal Yom Kippur, I will start with an apology. I am sorry for all the times I have hurt or offended you or others that you care about. I have been distracted, I have been careless, too fast to speak, too soon to leave, and I have been selfish. Please forgive me. Know on this day, as I renew my dedication to living a life in which my words, actions and relationships reflect my values and passions, I am committing to you as well as committing to Matt. I want to be there for you, and I will be renewed because of this day and because of the strength I gain from my relationship with Matt. Please know that as we solidify our relationship to each other, as we invite you here to celebrate our commitment and rejoice with us, we hope that you will find joy and comfort in welcoming us into your lives, as well. As I set many important intentions today, I take this moment to set the intention to be your friend, to deepen our relationship, and to support you with love and caring. And, I will need your love and care to nourish me as Matt and I pursue a partnership thriving with health, happiness, and the pursuit of justice.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Why I will wear white
I originally imagined that I would wear blue jeans and a pink tank-top for our wedding. It’s my favorite outfit! And I wanted to wear something that would allow me to be and feel like myself. Upon further consideration of occasion and dress code, I considered a flowing skirt and a tank top. Seemed reasonable.
I simply could not stomach the associations I had with the white bridal dress. The association with virginity and the implication of purity are not ideals that I seek to embrace and support. I have discussed with other women who are both sexually active and getting married how it feels insincere to get married in a white dress that implies virginity.
I’m not getting married to make myself into “an honest woman.” I have been honest all year, living with my partner, making a life together, and enjoying each other both emotionally and physically. I think both our past and our future are part of the process that we will celebrate on our wedding day.
As we started to talk more and more about our wedding, I learned a little more about the Jewish wedding ceremony. Matt mentioned his hope that he would be able to fast (not eat) the day of the wedding, as is tradition. I attended other Jewish weddings and saw the grooms don kittels, white robes. I found out that Jewish tradition considers one’s wedding day as if it were a personal Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year. Both fasting and wearing white are elements of Yom Kippur that symbolize renewal: seeking forgiveness, separating oneself from past transgressions, and getting the opportunity to earn life anew. One element of Yom Kippur that I always appreciated as a child is the way in which it acknowledges error as inherent to human life. The central prayer of the service on the eve of Yom Kippur is Kol Nidre, and it declares that all vows made in the year to come shall be considered void. This prayer is a legal process in which Jews, together, declare and embrace their human weakness. Although they will spend the day ahead of them fasting and repenting for what they and others in their community have done wrong, they are not expected to become perfect in the year to come.
I felt really drawn to this imagery because it focused on process, on improvement without perfection, and on the wedding as a day on which to renew oneself and one’s life intentions.
Upon discovering this association between one’s wedding and Yom Kippur, I said to my partner: I’ll wear white if you wear white. Let’s both wear white. Let’s have ourselves our own Yom Kippur. And he said yes!
(Note: our wedding takes place on Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the Jewish month, on which fasting is prohibited, so we will not be taking on that element of repentance.)
When I put on a white dress this Sunday morning, I will make no claim to virginity, or purity, or perfection. Rather, it is a move in which I will be reckoning with my own imperfections, failures, and weaknesses. It will be a statement in which I declare my intention to enter the wedding with a sense of repentance and renewal. I have erred in the past—in this relationship, in other relationships, and in other areas of life—both intentionally and unintentionally. On Sunday, I will seek forgiveness, and I will seek a new start. When I approach my beloved under the chuppah (wedding canopy) and see him, too, wearing white, I will know that he also seeks forgiveness, and that he also loves himself and me as imperfect beings. We will both make mistakes in the future—within our marriage, with our management of our household, with our other relationships. And the commitment we make to each other in the wedding ceremony includes standing by each other through those future mistakes.
The white we wear symbolizes the freshness of our relationship, the pursuit of personal improvement, and our celebration of our own and the other’s human fragility. For the wedding ceremony itself, we will emphasize this symbolism through putting on the ceremonial white robes. Throughout the rest of the day, our white outfits will communicate that we take this day to pause for renewal and celebration amidst a long and complex process of partnership.
I simply could not stomach the associations I had with the white bridal dress. The association with virginity and the implication of purity are not ideals that I seek to embrace and support. I have discussed with other women who are both sexually active and getting married how it feels insincere to get married in a white dress that implies virginity.
I’m not getting married to make myself into “an honest woman.” I have been honest all year, living with my partner, making a life together, and enjoying each other both emotionally and physically. I think both our past and our future are part of the process that we will celebrate on our wedding day.
As we started to talk more and more about our wedding, I learned a little more about the Jewish wedding ceremony. Matt mentioned his hope that he would be able to fast (not eat) the day of the wedding, as is tradition. I attended other Jewish weddings and saw the grooms don kittels, white robes. I found out that Jewish tradition considers one’s wedding day as if it were a personal Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year. Both fasting and wearing white are elements of Yom Kippur that symbolize renewal: seeking forgiveness, separating oneself from past transgressions, and getting the opportunity to earn life anew. One element of Yom Kippur that I always appreciated as a child is the way in which it acknowledges error as inherent to human life. The central prayer of the service on the eve of Yom Kippur is Kol Nidre, and it declares that all vows made in the year to come shall be considered void. This prayer is a legal process in which Jews, together, declare and embrace their human weakness. Although they will spend the day ahead of them fasting and repenting for what they and others in their community have done wrong, they are not expected to become perfect in the year to come.
I felt really drawn to this imagery because it focused on process, on improvement without perfection, and on the wedding as a day on which to renew oneself and one’s life intentions.
Upon discovering this association between one’s wedding and Yom Kippur, I said to my partner: I’ll wear white if you wear white. Let’s both wear white. Let’s have ourselves our own Yom Kippur. And he said yes!
(Note: our wedding takes place on Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the Jewish month, on which fasting is prohibited, so we will not be taking on that element of repentance.)
When I put on a white dress this Sunday morning, I will make no claim to virginity, or purity, or perfection. Rather, it is a move in which I will be reckoning with my own imperfections, failures, and weaknesses. It will be a statement in which I declare my intention to enter the wedding with a sense of repentance and renewal. I have erred in the past—in this relationship, in other relationships, and in other areas of life—both intentionally and unintentionally. On Sunday, I will seek forgiveness, and I will seek a new start. When I approach my beloved under the chuppah (wedding canopy) and see him, too, wearing white, I will know that he also seeks forgiveness, and that he also loves himself and me as imperfect beings. We will both make mistakes in the future—within our marriage, with our management of our household, with our other relationships. And the commitment we make to each other in the wedding ceremony includes standing by each other through those future mistakes.
The white we wear symbolizes the freshness of our relationship, the pursuit of personal improvement, and our celebration of our own and the other’s human fragility. For the wedding ceremony itself, we will emphasize this symbolism through putting on the ceremonial white robes. Throughout the rest of the day, our white outfits will communicate that we take this day to pause for renewal and celebration amidst a long and complex process of partnership.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The beginning of the rest of our lives
Another guest post from my partner. Check out his writing on secular spirituality at his blog, The Empty Throne.
My wedding will happen in 21 days. But as far as I’m concerned personally, the beginning of the rest of my life began a little over a year ago, when my partner and I began living together. That was the day my bachelorhood ended, even though I am still technically a bachelor today. We moved in together after getting engaged six months earlier, so the domestic move was not one of trial, but of commitment. So, for me, all of the major life changes that come with marriage began on that day, not on the upcoming day of my wedding.
The above sentiment has greatly affected my hopes and expectations for the wedding. And it leads to an interesting riddle I’ve been thinking about—will I cry at the wedding?
My money is on yes. I think of myself, watching my one and only person walking down the aisle to me (walking down to a song that I also know will make me cry); I imagine myself, standing under the chuppah, looking at my life partner looking at me, surrounded by our family and friends… I tear up now thinking about it. And I know, I just know, that many times during the ceremony, I will think about how real this all feels. Real—meaning, this is happening, this is it, this is that transitional ceremony, that threshold I step through with my partner, into the adventure of life together. This is real life happening before one’s eyes, major life moment, check.
The irony should be obvious—real life is not standing under the chuppah. Transitional rituals work by serving as a discontinuity, a moment in which we mark life change by stepping out from everyday life. But “real life happening before one’s eyes” is what happens every day. The process and substance of partnered domestic life—that is the adventure of life, and I have been watching and participating in it for over a year now. Throughout the wedding planning, one of my favorite lines to repeat to my partner is that the wedding will change nothing. That the wedding, rather than move us from unmarried to married, will simply be a party we throw to celebrate something that happened last year, when our lives began again. So why this crying about the beauty of “real life” at the wedding?
The answer has to lie in the public nature of the event. If, as children, we gain our sense of self from experiencing the gaze of the other, this is surely a life-long human phenomenon. While my partner and I live day-to-day in the reality of our love and the new life together it has produced, we are almost always the only ones watching it happen. Our engagement was also something conducted privately, announced to a (mostly) unsuspecting family ten minutes later. But, when I think of the wedding, my goodness, all those faces watching us “become partners”! Nothing like an audience to make you very self-conscious. Our life together happens every single day, and I feel that reality every single day. But the wedding day is the day that our life together has its biggest audience. And, especially in our media-mediated reality, that will make it feel more real. There is just so much focus at a wedding, and the ritual, along with the gathering of family and friends, will invariably heighten our sense of life. Everyday life includes my commitment to my partner, the love and happiness, joy and excitement that life with her brings. But the wedding day— that seems to be a day solely dedicated to all this love and happiness, joy and excitement. This focus, and the step away from mundane reality that is necessary to keep such a focus, will impress the reality of it all upon me. So I expect to be crying.
Just to clear up the blind-spot lurking in this post, the wedding (with the consequent official legal/religious status of our marriage) will, indeed, change my life. When I say it will change nothing, I am thinking of life in a very small, private sense, of my day-to-day interactions with my partner. But just as the wedding holds meaning as a public event, legal/religious marital status greatly affects our experience as public individuals, which will also have its effect on us in our private lives.
My wedding will happen in 21 days. But as far as I’m concerned personally, the beginning of the rest of my life began a little over a year ago, when my partner and I began living together. That was the day my bachelorhood ended, even though I am still technically a bachelor today. We moved in together after getting engaged six months earlier, so the domestic move was not one of trial, but of commitment. So, for me, all of the major life changes that come with marriage began on that day, not on the upcoming day of my wedding.
The above sentiment has greatly affected my hopes and expectations for the wedding. And it leads to an interesting riddle I’ve been thinking about—will I cry at the wedding?
My money is on yes. I think of myself, watching my one and only person walking down the aisle to me (walking down to a song that I also know will make me cry); I imagine myself, standing under the chuppah, looking at my life partner looking at me, surrounded by our family and friends… I tear up now thinking about it. And I know, I just know, that many times during the ceremony, I will think about how real this all feels. Real—meaning, this is happening, this is it, this is that transitional ceremony, that threshold I step through with my partner, into the adventure of life together. This is real life happening before one’s eyes, major life moment, check.
The irony should be obvious—real life is not standing under the chuppah. Transitional rituals work by serving as a discontinuity, a moment in which we mark life change by stepping out from everyday life. But “real life happening before one’s eyes” is what happens every day. The process and substance of partnered domestic life—that is the adventure of life, and I have been watching and participating in it for over a year now. Throughout the wedding planning, one of my favorite lines to repeat to my partner is that the wedding will change nothing. That the wedding, rather than move us from unmarried to married, will simply be a party we throw to celebrate something that happened last year, when our lives began again. So why this crying about the beauty of “real life” at the wedding?
The answer has to lie in the public nature of the event. If, as children, we gain our sense of self from experiencing the gaze of the other, this is surely a life-long human phenomenon. While my partner and I live day-to-day in the reality of our love and the new life together it has produced, we are almost always the only ones watching it happen. Our engagement was also something conducted privately, announced to a (mostly) unsuspecting family ten minutes later. But, when I think of the wedding, my goodness, all those faces watching us “become partners”! Nothing like an audience to make you very self-conscious. Our life together happens every single day, and I feel that reality every single day. But the wedding day is the day that our life together has its biggest audience. And, especially in our media-mediated reality, that will make it feel more real. There is just so much focus at a wedding, and the ritual, along with the gathering of family and friends, will invariably heighten our sense of life. Everyday life includes my commitment to my partner, the love and happiness, joy and excitement that life with her brings. But the wedding day— that seems to be a day solely dedicated to all this love and happiness, joy and excitement. This focus, and the step away from mundane reality that is necessary to keep such a focus, will impress the reality of it all upon me. So I expect to be crying.
Just to clear up the blind-spot lurking in this post, the wedding (with the consequent official legal/religious status of our marriage) will, indeed, change my life. When I say it will change nothing, I am thinking of life in a very small, private sense, of my day-to-day interactions with my partner. But just as the wedding holds meaning as a public event, legal/religious marital status greatly affects our experience as public individuals, which will also have its effect on us in our private lives.
Monday, June 27, 2011
How not to start a fight, even when you really, really want to…
In the last week before our wedding, there are still several loose ends. Several decisions that still need to be made, several details we overlooked, and without doubt, many, many last minute changes. In the midst of all this stress, these conflicting values, and these deep and diverse desires, how will I maintain my sanity, pursue my vision for this event, and maintain my relationships with all my co-planners and other invested parties?
In this post, I list some advice to myself regarding how not to start fights this week, even when it seems like the obvious thing to do (as in, even when I feel frustrated, aggravated, or threatened).
1. Self esteem: Not starting fights is even more challenging in light of my last post, regarding my apparently plummeting self esteem. However, this week I will consciously try to access my calm and confidence. A wise friend gave me this advice: Take a moment every day to find the part of you that feels thoroughly strong and good. Although I haven’t been able to follow her advice as a daily practice thus far, I will try again this week.
2. Deep breathing: A pause. A moment. An interruption of the panic that can begin any time. Deep breathing is the link between #1 and #3.
3. Quiet voices: Once I take a breath and access my inner strength, I can then lower my voice. When I lower my voice, it often also means I say things that are less defensive. When I feel the need to defend myself, I speak loudly and authoritatively. But lowering my voice signals to myself, and hopefully to the person I address, that I am willing to let down my defenses, to share and listen to personal thoughts and feelings, to be vulnerable, and to compromise. I find even the slightest hint of increased harshness or increased volume in someone else’s voice to be particularly triggering during tense interactions, so I find it useful to take control of changing the literal tone of a conversation.
4. Check your assumptions: I have actually managed to address several conflicts in the past few weeks by doing the simple exercise of sharing assumptions. Once a conversation has been calmed down, I can take a step back and say, “This is how I am seeing it. Are you seeing it in a different way? Please help me understand.” This basic show and tell is essential to working through a conflict in a way that feels good and satisfies the most number of people.
5. Explore your flexibility: We have less than a week left. We cannot fix everything perfectly at this point. Furthermore, I do not intend to be a perfect person or have a perfect life, and I certainly do not need a perfect wedding.
6. Prioritize: Once I establish that I am flexible, I then have to determine what I need in the situation at hand. In what ways will the outcome affect me? What kinds of reflection, validation, or explanation do I need from the other person? How will the final decision reflect the meaning of the wedding ceremony, or my opportunity to celebrate and rejoice with so many loved ones? Identifying and expressing these priorities is not always something I can do the first time a conflict arises. I may need to take some time to reflect and then bring up the conversation again. Alternatively, I may want to enlist the other person’s help in thinking through my priorities. Either way, honestly and accurately identifying the relevant priorities is essential to finding a solution that feels good.
7. Make a decision: And stick with it. I am trying to close as many open ends as possible. I want as few details up in the air, or rattling around in my head, as possible. Conversations this week should be at least temporarily definitive. I want to make decisions, stick with them, and live with them through the wedding process. If there are any particularly strong conflicts with family or friends that I want to address later in July for the purpose of checking in and making sure our relationship is still strong, I may do that. But for now, I am here to commit, and I mean it.
If I raised my voice at you, responded harshly to something you said, or inexplicably started crying during a phone conversation with you, I apologize. And if I do so within the next week, I apologize ahead of time. I hope we can work it out. Let’s give it a try.
In this post, I list some advice to myself regarding how not to start fights this week, even when it seems like the obvious thing to do (as in, even when I feel frustrated, aggravated, or threatened).
1. Self esteem: Not starting fights is even more challenging in light of my last post, regarding my apparently plummeting self esteem. However, this week I will consciously try to access my calm and confidence. A wise friend gave me this advice: Take a moment every day to find the part of you that feels thoroughly strong and good. Although I haven’t been able to follow her advice as a daily practice thus far, I will try again this week.
2. Deep breathing: A pause. A moment. An interruption of the panic that can begin any time. Deep breathing is the link between #1 and #3.
3. Quiet voices: Once I take a breath and access my inner strength, I can then lower my voice. When I lower my voice, it often also means I say things that are less defensive. When I feel the need to defend myself, I speak loudly and authoritatively. But lowering my voice signals to myself, and hopefully to the person I address, that I am willing to let down my defenses, to share and listen to personal thoughts and feelings, to be vulnerable, and to compromise. I find even the slightest hint of increased harshness or increased volume in someone else’s voice to be particularly triggering during tense interactions, so I find it useful to take control of changing the literal tone of a conversation.
4. Check your assumptions: I have actually managed to address several conflicts in the past few weeks by doing the simple exercise of sharing assumptions. Once a conversation has been calmed down, I can take a step back and say, “This is how I am seeing it. Are you seeing it in a different way? Please help me understand.” This basic show and tell is essential to working through a conflict in a way that feels good and satisfies the most number of people.
5. Explore your flexibility: We have less than a week left. We cannot fix everything perfectly at this point. Furthermore, I do not intend to be a perfect person or have a perfect life, and I certainly do not need a perfect wedding.
6. Prioritize: Once I establish that I am flexible, I then have to determine what I need in the situation at hand. In what ways will the outcome affect me? What kinds of reflection, validation, or explanation do I need from the other person? How will the final decision reflect the meaning of the wedding ceremony, or my opportunity to celebrate and rejoice with so many loved ones? Identifying and expressing these priorities is not always something I can do the first time a conflict arises. I may need to take some time to reflect and then bring up the conversation again. Alternatively, I may want to enlist the other person’s help in thinking through my priorities. Either way, honestly and accurately identifying the relevant priorities is essential to finding a solution that feels good.
7. Make a decision: And stick with it. I am trying to close as many open ends as possible. I want as few details up in the air, or rattling around in my head, as possible. Conversations this week should be at least temporarily definitive. I want to make decisions, stick with them, and live with them through the wedding process. If there are any particularly strong conflicts with family or friends that I want to address later in July for the purpose of checking in and making sure our relationship is still strong, I may do that. But for now, I am here to commit, and I mean it.
If I raised my voice at you, responded harshly to something you said, or inexplicably started crying during a phone conversation with you, I apologize. And if I do so within the next week, I apologize ahead of time. I hope we can work it out. Let’s give it a try.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
How my Self Esteem Plummeted during Wedding Planning
I can’t exactly identify when it happened, but I’m sure it was sometime this spring semester. I hadn’t had this experience since about fifth grade, so I didn’t recognize it at first. But it kept happening. More and more. And I still can only guess at why: My self-esteem had plummeted.
I blame the wedding planning. But of course, there are some other confounding factors, the most obvious one being my first year of graduate school. Does graduate school make someone’s self esteem plummet? Since I had never had that experience before in my many other academic and professional endeavors, and since I basically feel okay about how I am doing in school, I am going to continue to attribute this phenomenon to the wedding planning process.
It’s a strange sensation, because rationally I still know that I am a great person in a lot of ways. But there is something about the social, emotional, and commercial challenges of this process that really got to me. As an attempt to dissect what happened, I am going to use the break-down for “Confidence” that we use in our research on adolescent development.
Confidence in Physical Appearance: I started out with loads of this, but I have to admit the constant focus on the details of my appearance during this one day are making me much more self-conscious than I enjoy. How will my dress fit? Will there be any blemishes on my face? Will my legs be adequately smooth, my fingernails properly groomed, and my hair not too flat and not too frizzy? I think a lot of my approach to dealing with my appearance is to wear bright colors. Since deciding to wear white, my usual strategy for telling myself I look stunning has been taken away. At least I will be wearing a kittel (ceremonial robe) during the wedding ceremony, so my attention will be completely taken off my appearance for the most important part of the day.
Confidence in Peer Acceptance: I usually have loads of this, also, but the contradictions in wedding planning mean that with every decision I make, I know there is someone who disagrees with me. I know there are people I love and respect that would have wanted me to make the other decision. Also, the more and more that I argue with people, disagree with people, fail to compromise with people, and am unable to give other people what they need from me, the worse and worse I feel about myself. A large part of my identity is based on my ability to nourish my relationships and to contribute flourishing friendships. The more conflicts I have with friends and family around the wedding ceremony, the more my self esteem plummets. And it is a vicious cycle, because with low self-esteem, I find it thoroughly difficult to hold my own when I experience tension with loved ones.
Confidence in School: As much as I hate to admit it, planning this wedding definitely affected my performance as a student and as a budding professional in my field. At the same time as I find this fact difficult to accept, I rationally believe it is completely understandable. I think it is incredibly important to strike a balance between one’s personal and professional lives. But when the wedding itself is already making me feel like I just can’t do things right, going to school and struggling there because I am overwhelmed, exhausted, and overcommitted makes me feel even worse. I gain a lot of confidence and self-respect by excelling as an educator, researcher, and activist. Scaling back from those activities this year, and performing slightly worse on the activities I did do, made me feel bad about myself.
Confidence in Area of Interest: I think the main reason that wedding planning led my self-esteem to plummet is that I didn’t feel like I was good at it. I didn’t have a real vision for what I wanted before I started, so that meant each detail was a new thing to navigate. I also haven’t been part of planning a lot of weddings previously, so a lot of conflicts were completely unanticipated. And sometimes I would come up with my own answer to something, and I would just be told that I was wrong. Most of those times I really was wrong—I didn’t really know what I was getting into and thus couldn’t really imagine what I needed. So a lot of the time I just didn’t feel competent. With the tasks for which I had no interest and no talent—such as selecting flowers—I just delegated completely (thanks, Mom!). However, sometimes I really did want to be part of the conversation, I just felt unprepared for the tasks at hand. Spending such a great amount of time and energy doing work in an area in which I felt truly unskilled really hurt my self-esteem.
I want to add something about the Wedding Industrial Complex, too. Because the Wedding Industry is just that, an industry and a business, it is set up to make you feel you lack something, or have specific needs, so that you will go out and buy something or hire someone to make everything better. The wedding industry is designed to kick-off this self-esteem plummet. However, the self esteem is then supposed to be rescued through purchasing and hiring. I really tried to hold myself back from extra expenditure, so I do not know how I would have felt if I had been more commercially-oriented. Or, on the other hand, I don’t know how I would have felt if I had fully committed myself to an anti-commercialist wedding.
In conclusion, I have this to say: last weekend was my bachelorette party. Two of my best friends in the whole world threw me an absolutely fabulous celebration full of surprises. I had friends present from childhood, high school, college, and these post-college years in Boston. If all of those totally fabulous, smart, caring, and fun people chose to spend a weekend celebrating with me, then there must be something good going on with me. The weekend reset me, centered me, and built a foundation for my self-esteem. I am feeling a little more ready to go into the last stretch before the wedding knowing that I am a good person, I have tried really hard to go through this process with integrity and care, and many outstanding people will be there to celebrate with me. I know my self esteem will continue to grow and get stronger, and I actually think the wedding is going to help, in the end, because of all the people that will be there.
I blame the wedding planning. But of course, there are some other confounding factors, the most obvious one being my first year of graduate school. Does graduate school make someone’s self esteem plummet? Since I had never had that experience before in my many other academic and professional endeavors, and since I basically feel okay about how I am doing in school, I am going to continue to attribute this phenomenon to the wedding planning process.
It’s a strange sensation, because rationally I still know that I am a great person in a lot of ways. But there is something about the social, emotional, and commercial challenges of this process that really got to me. As an attempt to dissect what happened, I am going to use the break-down for “Confidence” that we use in our research on adolescent development.
Confidence in Physical Appearance: I started out with loads of this, but I have to admit the constant focus on the details of my appearance during this one day are making me much more self-conscious than I enjoy. How will my dress fit? Will there be any blemishes on my face? Will my legs be adequately smooth, my fingernails properly groomed, and my hair not too flat and not too frizzy? I think a lot of my approach to dealing with my appearance is to wear bright colors. Since deciding to wear white, my usual strategy for telling myself I look stunning has been taken away. At least I will be wearing a kittel (ceremonial robe) during the wedding ceremony, so my attention will be completely taken off my appearance for the most important part of the day.
Confidence in Peer Acceptance: I usually have loads of this, also, but the contradictions in wedding planning mean that with every decision I make, I know there is someone who disagrees with me. I know there are people I love and respect that would have wanted me to make the other decision. Also, the more and more that I argue with people, disagree with people, fail to compromise with people, and am unable to give other people what they need from me, the worse and worse I feel about myself. A large part of my identity is based on my ability to nourish my relationships and to contribute flourishing friendships. The more conflicts I have with friends and family around the wedding ceremony, the more my self esteem plummets. And it is a vicious cycle, because with low self-esteem, I find it thoroughly difficult to hold my own when I experience tension with loved ones.
Confidence in School: As much as I hate to admit it, planning this wedding definitely affected my performance as a student and as a budding professional in my field. At the same time as I find this fact difficult to accept, I rationally believe it is completely understandable. I think it is incredibly important to strike a balance between one’s personal and professional lives. But when the wedding itself is already making me feel like I just can’t do things right, going to school and struggling there because I am overwhelmed, exhausted, and overcommitted makes me feel even worse. I gain a lot of confidence and self-respect by excelling as an educator, researcher, and activist. Scaling back from those activities this year, and performing slightly worse on the activities I did do, made me feel bad about myself.
Confidence in Area of Interest: I think the main reason that wedding planning led my self-esteem to plummet is that I didn’t feel like I was good at it. I didn’t have a real vision for what I wanted before I started, so that meant each detail was a new thing to navigate. I also haven’t been part of planning a lot of weddings previously, so a lot of conflicts were completely unanticipated. And sometimes I would come up with my own answer to something, and I would just be told that I was wrong. Most of those times I really was wrong—I didn’t really know what I was getting into and thus couldn’t really imagine what I needed. So a lot of the time I just didn’t feel competent. With the tasks for which I had no interest and no talent—such as selecting flowers—I just delegated completely (thanks, Mom!). However, sometimes I really did want to be part of the conversation, I just felt unprepared for the tasks at hand. Spending such a great amount of time and energy doing work in an area in which I felt truly unskilled really hurt my self-esteem.
I want to add something about the Wedding Industrial Complex, too. Because the Wedding Industry is just that, an industry and a business, it is set up to make you feel you lack something, or have specific needs, so that you will go out and buy something or hire someone to make everything better. The wedding industry is designed to kick-off this self-esteem plummet. However, the self esteem is then supposed to be rescued through purchasing and hiring. I really tried to hold myself back from extra expenditure, so I do not know how I would have felt if I had been more commercially-oriented. Or, on the other hand, I don’t know how I would have felt if I had fully committed myself to an anti-commercialist wedding.
In conclusion, I have this to say: last weekend was my bachelorette party. Two of my best friends in the whole world threw me an absolutely fabulous celebration full of surprises. I had friends present from childhood, high school, college, and these post-college years in Boston. If all of those totally fabulous, smart, caring, and fun people chose to spend a weekend celebrating with me, then there must be something good going on with me. The weekend reset me, centered me, and built a foundation for my self-esteem. I am feeling a little more ready to go into the last stretch before the wedding knowing that I am a good person, I have tried really hard to go through this process with integrity and care, and many outstanding people will be there to celebrate with me. I know my self esteem will continue to grow and get stronger, and I actually think the wedding is going to help, in the end, because of all the people that will be there.
Friday, June 17, 2011
What’s in a Name? Identity, family, and figuring it out
Getting married raises question of whether one or both of us will change our names as an indication of this union. My partner and I, along with numerous other couples in this and previous generations, recognize that the traditional practice of a wife taking on a husband’s last name comes directly out of a patriarchal tradition in which the wife, upon marriage, is considered property of the husband. She is leaving her father’s house for the house of her new husband, thus she leaves behind her father’s name (which her own mother had taken upon marriage) and she takes on the name of her husband, which she will then pass along to her children, and so on.
We are very lucky to be getting married at a time when couples find many creative alternatives to this patriarchal tradition.
On the one hand, names are very tied up with our identity as individuals. I want to use a name that feels like mine, that feels like all of me, that feels like a celebration of my agency as an individual and does not reduce me to half of a partnership. I feel strongly connected to the name I have used for all my life, in both its full and shortened forms.
On the other hand, we grew up in a culture in which the concept of “family” generally implies a shared family name. My childhood family is “The Arbeits”: we are a unit in many ways, including that we shared the same last name. Now, my partner and I are forming our own family unit. We associate names with family designations, and thus we desire to use the process of (re)naming to demonstrate this formation of our new family, our new household, while at the same time honoring our own and each other’s family of origin.
We gave ourselves time and space to find a solution to this complex question. We did a lot of brainstorming, a lot of careful and gentle playing around with different options, a lot of sharing and listening to each other’s feelings. In addition to our commitment to queering structures of power and carefully working through patriarchal pressures, we wanted to attend to our personal preferences and desires:
1. We didn’t want to combine our names. I remember one g-chat conversation in which my partner and I went back and forth with different unpleasant-sounding combinations of our two last names. Besides, we both love our families and the connections that our family names give us to our parents and siblings, and weaving together the syllables of our names would not address that desire to explicitly stay connected by keeping our family names in their shared forms.
2. I wanted to keep my last name (Arbeit) professionally. My mother kept her name professionally, and I always really liked that idea. Furthermore, starting work as a research assistant last summer taught me something: it’s nice to be easy to find on Google. My last name happens to be much less common than my partner’s. (If you’re looking for our registries, search using my name!) Plus, I have already started my career with the name Arbeit—teaching, blogging, starting graduate school, serving as a coauthor on presentations and publications—and I would like to continue my career with this name. I mess around with my first name enough (Miriam v. Mimi) and I would prefer to keep my last name consistent.
3. I felt pretty open to using my partner’s name in certain social situations and, specifically, having members of his family refer to me or address me using their family name. As mentioned above, I consider sharing a name to be an exciting element of family membership. I am very excited to be a member of his family, to be one of the Lowes.
4. My partner’s middle name happens to be very similar to my last name, so he had the idea of changing his middle name to my last name, so that my last name would be his new middle name.
At first, #4 led us to the idea that we would both be Arbeit Lowe, as two family names sitting next to each other. Arbeit (my family name) came before Lowe (his family name) because of his idea of making Arbeit his middle name. I would keep Arbeit as my “first” last name and take Lowe as my “second” last name. As per #2, I still wanted to use Arbeit professionally, with no Lowe involved. However, if professionally my name ended with Arbeit, in what capacity would I add on Lowe as my second last name? We did not address this question until a few weeks ago when we went to City Hall for our marriage license. The forms required us to indicate what our last names would be after marriage. Not our entire names, but just our legal last names.
I realized, at this somewhat inconvenient moment as we stood at City Hall, that I wanted to keep my own last name as my legal surname. It felt important to me as an indication of my continued existence as my own independent entity, connected to my past as well as to my present and future, particularly in official contexts such as law and vocation. My partner agreed, and we filled out the forms accordingly.
But later, my partner commented, “If you aren’t changing your name legally, maybe I won’t change mine either.” Wait! I felt confused. I felt that changing a legal surname and changing one’s middle name had quite different implications. I realized that there were a lot of aspects of this decision that we had not yet discussed, and a lot of options we had not yet explored. So we discussed it in more detail, and eventually came to a solution that we both really love, that embraces our personal identities and symbolizes our integration into each other’s families as well as our formation of a new family unit. I am feeling quite excited for when we implement this decision after our marriage, through venues ranging from legal documents to Facebook.
We are very lucky to be getting married at a time when couples find many creative alternatives to this patriarchal tradition.
On the one hand, names are very tied up with our identity as individuals. I want to use a name that feels like mine, that feels like all of me, that feels like a celebration of my agency as an individual and does not reduce me to half of a partnership. I feel strongly connected to the name I have used for all my life, in both its full and shortened forms.
On the other hand, we grew up in a culture in which the concept of “family” generally implies a shared family name. My childhood family is “The Arbeits”: we are a unit in many ways, including that we shared the same last name. Now, my partner and I are forming our own family unit. We associate names with family designations, and thus we desire to use the process of (re)naming to demonstrate this formation of our new family, our new household, while at the same time honoring our own and each other’s family of origin.
We gave ourselves time and space to find a solution to this complex question. We did a lot of brainstorming, a lot of careful and gentle playing around with different options, a lot of sharing and listening to each other’s feelings. In addition to our commitment to queering structures of power and carefully working through patriarchal pressures, we wanted to attend to our personal preferences and desires:
1. We didn’t want to combine our names. I remember one g-chat conversation in which my partner and I went back and forth with different unpleasant-sounding combinations of our two last names. Besides, we both love our families and the connections that our family names give us to our parents and siblings, and weaving together the syllables of our names would not address that desire to explicitly stay connected by keeping our family names in their shared forms.
2. I wanted to keep my last name (Arbeit) professionally. My mother kept her name professionally, and I always really liked that idea. Furthermore, starting work as a research assistant last summer taught me something: it’s nice to be easy to find on Google. My last name happens to be much less common than my partner’s. (If you’re looking for our registries, search using my name!) Plus, I have already started my career with the name Arbeit—teaching, blogging, starting graduate school, serving as a coauthor on presentations and publications—and I would like to continue my career with this name. I mess around with my first name enough (Miriam v. Mimi) and I would prefer to keep my last name consistent.
3. I felt pretty open to using my partner’s name in certain social situations and, specifically, having members of his family refer to me or address me using their family name. As mentioned above, I consider sharing a name to be an exciting element of family membership. I am very excited to be a member of his family, to be one of the Lowes.
4. My partner’s middle name happens to be very similar to my last name, so he had the idea of changing his middle name to my last name, so that my last name would be his new middle name.
At first, #4 led us to the idea that we would both be Arbeit Lowe, as two family names sitting next to each other. Arbeit (my family name) came before Lowe (his family name) because of his idea of making Arbeit his middle name. I would keep Arbeit as my “first” last name and take Lowe as my “second” last name. As per #2, I still wanted to use Arbeit professionally, with no Lowe involved. However, if professionally my name ended with Arbeit, in what capacity would I add on Lowe as my second last name? We did not address this question until a few weeks ago when we went to City Hall for our marriage license. The forms required us to indicate what our last names would be after marriage. Not our entire names, but just our legal last names.
I realized, at this somewhat inconvenient moment as we stood at City Hall, that I wanted to keep my own last name as my legal surname. It felt important to me as an indication of my continued existence as my own independent entity, connected to my past as well as to my present and future, particularly in official contexts such as law and vocation. My partner agreed, and we filled out the forms accordingly.
But later, my partner commented, “If you aren’t changing your name legally, maybe I won’t change mine either.” Wait! I felt confused. I felt that changing a legal surname and changing one’s middle name had quite different implications. I realized that there were a lot of aspects of this decision that we had not yet discussed, and a lot of options we had not yet explored. So we discussed it in more detail, and eventually came to a solution that we both really love, that embraces our personal identities and symbolizes our integration into each other’s families as well as our formation of a new family unit. I am feeling quite excited for when we implement this decision after our marriage, through venues ranging from legal documents to Facebook.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Why are we getting married? Accepting privilege while wanting it eliminated
Having reached the midway-point of this June journey of wedding-prep, I will take a break to reflect on why I’m even doing this—having a wedding—in the first place. And to address the question of why we are having a wedding, I really need to address the question of why we are getting married.
Deciding to get married: Over two years ago, my partner and I expressed our mutual desire to embark upon a lifelong partnership together. A lot of our decision to get married came from our desire to demonstrate our investment in this partnership and celebrate our joy with friends and family. That said, why the marriage license?
In college, I became ardently against the institution of marriage as it now functions in the United States. See http://beyondmarriage.org/ for some activism that has informed my beilefs. The basis of this stance is that the benefits and protections afforded to married couples should be restructured so that all people can access them. This position grew out of a radical response to the same-sex marriage movement.
I believe that the same-sex marriage movement and the beyond-marriage movement are both extremely important. I believe we must restructure the legal institution of marriage to incorporate same-sex couples, as well as couples in which one person is genderqueer or intersex. In addition, I believe that our country must engage in the long-term work of restructuring our many systems of social and economic privilege so that all people can access these cares and protections.
Legal protection: Beginning to intertwine my life with someone else’s is really exciting, and it is also really risky. Both in Jewish and American law, getting married means taking on certain responsibilities and gaining a degree of legal protection. As we share living quarters, a bank account, and possibly offspring, our marriage license gives us access to a plethora of legal back-up options should something happen to one of us individually or to our relationship.
Tax breaks: Married couples get tax breaks. As a Massachusetts resident at least I know that my married same-sex partners do have access to at least some of the privileges of legal marriage. However, since the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages, legally married Massachusetts residents do not receive the federal tax break if they are in a same-sex marriage.
Health care: While on a personal level I am excited and relieved by the prospect of being able to put my partner on my health care plan or vice-versa, I also think that health care should be available to everyone. Married, single, healthy, unhealthy, employed, unemployed, old, young, everything. Everyone should get health care. Health care is a right, not a privilege.
On the one hand, I have listed and explained some of my reasons for getting married. On the other hand, many of these same reasons inform my belief that the legal institution of marriage should be eliminated.
I look at it this way: I recognize that for myself and my partner, access to health care, tax breaks, and legal protection will improve our lives. We have the privilege of signing a marriage license and thus enjoying these benefits. However, it also seems obvious to me that if everyone’s lives would be improved by such access, and making a lifelong commitment to someone of the opposite sex does not make me better or more deserving than other people, I should not have access to these resources while others do not. The institution of marriage in our country needs some radical restructuring.
Deciding to get married: Over two years ago, my partner and I expressed our mutual desire to embark upon a lifelong partnership together. A lot of our decision to get married came from our desire to demonstrate our investment in this partnership and celebrate our joy with friends and family. That said, why the marriage license?
In college, I became ardently against the institution of marriage as it now functions in the United States. See http://beyondmarriage.org/ for some activism that has informed my beilefs. The basis of this stance is that the benefits and protections afforded to married couples should be restructured so that all people can access them. This position grew out of a radical response to the same-sex marriage movement.
I believe that the same-sex marriage movement and the beyond-marriage movement are both extremely important. I believe we must restructure the legal institution of marriage to incorporate same-sex couples, as well as couples in which one person is genderqueer or intersex. In addition, I believe that our country must engage in the long-term work of restructuring our many systems of social and economic privilege so that all people can access these cares and protections.
Legal protection: Beginning to intertwine my life with someone else’s is really exciting, and it is also really risky. Both in Jewish and American law, getting married means taking on certain responsibilities and gaining a degree of legal protection. As we share living quarters, a bank account, and possibly offspring, our marriage license gives us access to a plethora of legal back-up options should something happen to one of us individually or to our relationship.
Tax breaks: Married couples get tax breaks. As a Massachusetts resident at least I know that my married same-sex partners do have access to at least some of the privileges of legal marriage. However, since the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages, legally married Massachusetts residents do not receive the federal tax break if they are in a same-sex marriage.
Health care: While on a personal level I am excited and relieved by the prospect of being able to put my partner on my health care plan or vice-versa, I also think that health care should be available to everyone. Married, single, healthy, unhealthy, employed, unemployed, old, young, everything. Everyone should get health care. Health care is a right, not a privilege.
On the one hand, I have listed and explained some of my reasons for getting married. On the other hand, many of these same reasons inform my belief that the legal institution of marriage should be eliminated.
I look at it this way: I recognize that for myself and my partner, access to health care, tax breaks, and legal protection will improve our lives. We have the privilege of signing a marriage license and thus enjoying these benefits. However, it also seems obvious to me that if everyone’s lives would be improved by such access, and making a lifelong commitment to someone of the opposite sex does not make me better or more deserving than other people, I should not have access to these resources while others do not. The institution of marriage in our country needs some radical restructuring.
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