Am I a difficult woman? Helen Lewis has recently published a book, "Difficult women" that explores the history of women labelled difficult. Difficult doesn't mean being horrid, just complicated, and possibly not nice. Lewis writes about a host of complicated women, not all of whom are feminists, just awkward women, as Helen Lewis herself can be!
Recently to be a plethora of books about "Difficult Women", "Invisible Women" (Caroline Criado Perez), Bloody Brilliant Women"(Cathy Newman) have been published. And there's Yvette Cooper's "She speaks", Karen Brady's "Strong Woman" and Deborah Frances-White's "The Guilty Feminist". They cover the usual themes of power, getting to the top, trail blazing, being recognised despite being the second sex, the aberrant body of a male. These are good writers, expressing well ideas that many woman have but don't have the skill or the power to express.
Usually I don't identify myself with the women being written about, like I'm not at the top of my tree, or any tree! I don't trail blaze, am recognised for nothing. But, Lewis has picked on one thing I've done and when I did it, it raised a few eyebrows, caused a few comments. Lewis refers to Anna Coote and Tess Gill, and they influenced me. In the seventies, they wrote a small book that argued why women needn't change their name when they married. In the seventies, eighties, even the nineties women changed their surname. HR departments sometimes did it without permission - it was just assumed.
But when I married, I didn't change my name, but kept my father's. Yes, it's still the name of a male, but it was part of the identity I'd grown up with. When my mother and then my cousin asked if I was changing my name, I realised that some people important to me thought it was no longer absolutely essential to take your husband's. My less advanced-thinking to-be-MiL wailed, "But there'll be no second Mrs C!" "What nonsense!" I thought, and politely pointed out that her other son had already married, so she did have a second Mrs C. When I walked into the unemployment benefit office to tell them I was getting married (I thought they'd change or stop my benefit), they said they only needed my married name. Well why would they need that information?! I stated, "I'm not changing it!" and walked out - they hadn't been kind or helpful in there. I was happy to be awkward (difficult?) for that UBO. I guess it was trail blazing because no one else was keeping their maiden name in those days. So yes, sometimes I can be a difficult woman.
Thursday, July 30, 2020
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