Pololly: consider my last statement redacted.

But, like I said, this is Conversation # Infinity+1 following the same script, which is why people tend to grow impatient in these conversations — we’ve had them before, many times, and always with the same result — no matter what sort of tone/approach we take. So some of us decide not to spend the energy monitoring ourselves for tone and patience and “civility’ every single second of every interaction, because we didn’t have that energy to spend in the first place — or maybe we’d rather turn it inward and devote it to developing and refining our own communities, in exploring things in a depth that can’t happen when we are having to explain things to the satisfaction of outsiders at every turn.

So: no bad feelings, at least on this side. I’m sorry for the stress that seems to have resulted from this. But it can be a positive opportunity, too.

But don’t pretend that she sinned in some grand way that required a grand smackdown.

Nobody is. Maybe we could realize that we have this exact same conversation time and time again, though (as Anna and bint have articulated) and it always plays out the same way; oppressed person says “I am being oppressed”; oppressor cries out that is an unfair accusation on their character, and they demand that you prove that they are not Angry or Mean or Have An Agenda or Trying To Make Them Look Bad but are Patient and Civil and This Isn’t About You Oh No Of Course It Isn’t, and then they press you to explain this or that little detail that they don’t understand, before we can just accept the original statement: “I am being oppressed.”

I get just as annoyed by the “I am a WOMAN and I CHOSE this therefore it is FEMINIST” claims as anyone else, by the way, but I don’t seem to remember anyone making any such claims in this discussion (or the recent ones on other feminist blogs). What I see is a lot of people claiming, “You are presuming universal a framework that is largely irrelevant to a lot of other people in your community.” And maybe a little “You are refusing to acknowledge how your particular privileges shape your world and therefore your response to it, and to acknowledge that responses to worlds shaped differently by different combinations of circumstances will NECESSARILY be different.”

I find it ironic that you talk to Chally about “slamming the door” on discourse and erasing race when that is exactly what you did in your first comment to her. American issues of race are not the same as those issues in Australia, and American discussions of race can be quite confronting to Australian WOC. This is something that she has spoken about before.

And now I’ll shut up because thus is not a subject I’m particularly good at.

the fact that YOU may not have been able to grasp the meaning of what Chally and Amandaw wrote doesn’t mean that they (and others) have failed to make an effective point. See, it’s the people who claim to have the one true definition who have to prove that the rest of us are wrong. Why should any of us accept YOUR definition of feminism instead of the one(s) that make the most sense for us, given our backgrounds and experiences? What is so-oo-oo gosh darn special about your definition that it should trump all of the other alternative ones?

Chally has already responded to you, so I won’t talk about that. Just let me say that no one has said that any choice is feminist because it’s a choice. What people are actually arguing is that each situation is different, and what’s feminist for one might not be feminist for another.

At some point, I will probably take my partner’s last name. He’s changing his last name to his mother’s maiden name and then I will change my last name to the one that he’s adopting. See, what makes taking his name feminist is that I am defining what’s right for me instead of allowing other folks (e.g. white women & men, ableist TAB people, my biological family) to make the decisions for me. I am determining my own future.

See, taking my partner’s last name is a way for me to shed the identity Western society has foisted upon me. For me, keeping the surname that I have would be the least feminist choice. It’s not like my surname isn’t already a reflection of the power of patriarchy. Besides, I’ve never had much of an attachment to it. In fact, I associate it with many of the negative aspects of my past that I would prefer to put behind me. My partner’s identity is a part of my future. My father’s identity is just an indicator of my past, the part of my life that I had no control over. What in the world could possibly be feminist about keeping the surname that was forced upon me by my father?

Taking my partner’s last name will be symbolic for me. It means that his mother’s maiden name (which is distinctly related to their her maternal and paternal heritage) will carry over to another generation instead of dying out completely. Our daughter has her own last name (which is different from mine and his) and she will retain it even after I change mine. My mother-in-law has no other grandchildren and sans adoptions my partner and I will be the only living relatives she has with that name. I am really excited to be able to honor her in this way.

It seems that (more than) a few folks in this thread can’t imagine a world any different from the one they inhabit. The fact that the conversation devolved into tone arguments and policing is simply indicative of what white, Western, middle-class feminism looks like.

So, how about this: Why don’t you folks who think that you know the one true meaning of feminism live your life accordingly and leave the rest of us alone as we define it for ourselves? Many of us have had enough of your definitions and judgments and whiny tantrums. See, the patriarchy isn’t the only thing many of us are fighting. We’re also fighting YOU, more specifically, what you represent. You are standing in the way of equality just as much as all of the other forces you are willing to call out. While you’re fussing over which man’s name you’ll use, we’re fighting for our lives.