PSA-What I am is what I am

And what I am not is Mrs Bob.

Don't get me wrong. I love my husband dearly, and am delighted to have taken his last name, mostly because in the time I've known him, he's done more for me in more ways than the father I never knew who saddled me with a name I know nothing about, a name that belongs to strangers.

But... When I get a piece of mail addressed to Mr and Mrs Bob, I get angry. It's the erasure of my identity as a person in that casual address, as if I am an adjunct to Bob and have no meaning or purpose without him. This is very much not the case. Bob and I love each other very much and are very much a couple, but we are not a single unit.

Women have been expected to disappear into how men define them for most of civilized history. I refuse this. Men are not compelled to discard their first or last names. Nor are they compelled to declare their marital status in their form of address, why should women have to do so? I am Ms Jamie, not Mrs. Bob. I will not be defined by any societal mannerism that diminishes me.

I took Bob's name because it was a way for me to both honor him and shed a name that that came to mean very little to me once my grandmother passed away. My father brought me nothing but pain and emotional damage. He ruined my ability to trust people, ruined my capacity for interacting with men in a healthy manner for most of my life, and ruined any chance of a normal, healthy relationship with his family. In fact, I feel his behavior robbed me of half my family. I was happy to get rid of his name and take the name of a man who loves and respects me, who would never abandon me, who treats me like a valuable part of his life and not like an unfortunate accident who should not exist.

(Plus, Bob's name only has one syllable, and I've always wanted a name with one syllable.)

So, if you're sending me a card this year, do me a favor, and address it to the people who live here, Bob and Jamie Fritz. It signifies that you acknowledge me as a person, and not just an extension of an admittedly wonderful man.

Thanks.

Relationship Notes from a Bus Ride

(I hope to have fiber content soon, my camera and my computer are having issues speaking to each other and my printer, the backup "unloading dock" for the camera card, is dead dead dead.)

There's a new organization in town called TWOgetherPgh. They're supposed to be "... a coalition of like-minded agencies and individuals who believe in the strengthening of marriages." They have hired the World's Least Clever cartoonist to do ads for them. These ads are all over the buses I ride. This is their story. (dun dun dun DAH)

This is the first one I saw. I kinda sat there the whole time looking at it going "Seriously? Seriously?????"


(In case you can't see it, it's two poorly-drawn guys with two poorly drawn women who look very unhappy in the background. And also, the one woman's neck is kinda frightening. Man A is saying to Man B "I always hold her hand at the mall. If I let go, she'll shop" Har, har har. That's a real knee-slapper there buddy. )

"Oh how I hate thee, let me count the ways."

1) Woman as willful, uncontrolled child who can't be trusted. Also, no agency. No ability or desire to make decisions for herself, dude is probably a total control freak who won't "let" her work outside the home and gives her an "allowance".

2) Shopaholic stereoptype. She'll just shop and shop and shop and shop and shop and keep shopping until we have no more room in our house and Clean House will have to come by and do a yard sale and we'll get yelled at by Neicy Nash and it'll be FOOLISHNESS.

2) I have to hold her hand! Otherwise she'll....spend MY MONEY. That I earned! Not hers! She has no money of her own and if she does, she has no right to spend it as she sees fit! I hold the purse strings in this family and boy howdy do I ever hold them tight. None of that shopping for you!

Why isn't she allowed to shop? Does he lock her in the house so she can't leave while he's off at work? Doesn't he trust her? And this is relationship ADVICE? (More on that later.) This is a sure-fire path to disaster, treating your spouse and partner that way. MARRIAGE FAIL dead ahead.

Ok, second ad.

(Dude to other dude, brandishing wallet.."Being a dad means carrying pictures where your money used to be.")

Dude #2 probably went right out and got a vasectomy. This comes across as some kind of "parenthood as deprivation" thing. It's not, really. I would have been poor with or without my kids, with the kids I was rich in other ways. This one also reinforces the "Dad as sole provider/spender/bacon-bringer" stereotype which is so much no longer true. I think more Dads would have pictures of their urban assault SUVs and vulgar-assed McMansions if they REALLY wanted to carry pictures of what makes them poor. Plus, maybe if dude let his wife out of the house now and then to SHOP she'd find a job and they wouldn't BE so poor. Right.

I really hate the direction these ads go in.

Here's the third one that I managed to snap.

(Woman on exercise bike says to other woman "there's somebody for everyone, mine just got lost and won't ask for directions")

OH HAR HAR HAR. HAR DE FREAKING HAR.

That's so funny. Men don't ask for directions! Therefore, men can't find us. Therefore WE SHALL BE LONELY AND SAD FOREVER BECAUSE WE LIVE FOR BEING FOUND BY THE MENZ. Sorry. This one pisses me off more than I realized.

Now, I am not sure if these are "WRONG WAY TO DO RELATIONSHIPS" ads but they really don't come across that way. There are others that I've seen that I don't have pictures of that are equally or even MORE problematic. A harried mother on the phone with a friend saying that "if the kids are alive when he gets home I've done my job" (!), a woman saying her life is just like a fairy tale and she's the wicked stepmother, and a priest or minister saying to a pair AT THE ALTAR that they have no idea what they're getting into.

This group is getting 8.3 million dollars over a five year period in federal funding.

Yes, it's a "faith-based program".

Yes, that makes me hate it even more.

How many shelters could be funded for 8.3 million dollars? How much day care could you provide for needy families for that kind of money? I'll give you a clue. A LOT.

I wrote them back when I saw the first ad. It took them almost three weeks to get back to me. Here's the email exchange. (Names redacted)

From: Buttercup
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 12:13 PM
To: 'xxx@TWOgetherPGH.org'
Subject: Bus ads



I have to admit, I’m a little bit horrified by the one “cartoon” I saw on the bus yesterday. In it, a man confides to another man about his wife. “of course I hold her hand in the mall, otherwise she’ll shop.”



I hope this cartoon is subtly saying that this is the wrong way to go about an adult, responsible, mutually respectful relationship. I’m sure you’re aware that men who treat their wives like children who can’t be trusted around shiny objects are pretty much doomed to relationship failure, in the long or short term. Such behavior is dysfunctional and infantilizing to say nothing of disrespectful of the partnership that a successful marriage implies.



I hope you’ll consider discontinuing use of that particular “cartoon”, as it sends a very disturbing and wrong-headed message.



Buttercup

The reply:

From: xxxx@twogetherpgh.org
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 11:56 AM
To: Buttercup
Cc: axxx@TWOgetherPGH.org
Subject: RE: Bus ads



Buttercup

Thank you for your email. Please see the following message from Terry Mann, the Project Director for TWOgether Pittsburgh:

Regards,

Ann L. Bxxxxxxxxx, Assistant to the Project Director

(Forwarded attachment. Dude can't use email himself? J)

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. While it is never our desire to offend anyone intentionally we recognize that there are times when marketing to tens of thousands of individuals that this is going to occur.


The ad you referenced is one of 14 different ads that were designed by our ad agency. They were distributed with my full approval. The ads were designed, written and conceptualized by professional women, so I am sure no intention to offend was in mind. When dealing with comedy, caricature and generalization is how you make impact. While the overwhelming majority of our responses have been extremely positive, we are very sorry you were offended; it was never our intention, and I am sorry for any undue stress it has caused you.


If you desire you can write me a letter at the address below and I will forward it to our ad agency.


Terry Mxxx

Just before my head exploded, I sent this.

From: buttercup
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 7:24 AM
To: 'xxx@twogetherpgh.org'
Subject: RE: Bus ads



Ann (and Terry)

It’s not a matter of being offended. It’s a matter of projecting the wrong message about what makes a successful, equitable relationship. I’m not offended, I’m concerned for the couples you’re encouraging to see this sort of controlling, abusive behavior as “normal.”

Buttercup

Haven't heard back since, and I'm not really surprised.

Thoughts?

What happens when women are property

A deranged man went into a health club in Pittsburgh last night with four loaded guns. He walked into an aerobics class, turned off the lights, and unleashed an estimated 50 rounds, killing two women (a third would die en route to the hospital) before killing himself. Nine other women were injured.

Make no mistake, he targeted women exclusively. A (pdf, some graphic and disturbing content)diary or log, posted online some time before he left his home to murder people he didn't even know who had done him no harm, showed that he had planned this act since at least last November. In this diary, he refers to women repeatedly as "hoez". Over and over he bemoans that they have rejected him. Time and again, for years they have rejected him, even though there's nothing wrong with him. He's perfectly normal. He takes care of his skin, his teeth, he works out, he's fit and trim. He doesn't understand why he is not automatically entitled to one of his estimated "thirty million desirable women".

This man was sick. Of that there can be little doubt. But his sickness was projected onto the screen of a patriarchal society that teaches men that women are acquisitions, are property, are prizes. It teaches men that if they do all the right things, say all the right words, have all the best jobs, and hang out at all the right clubs and bars and fitness centers, one of those prizes will be his. No matter how deranged, disturbed, creepy, or insane he is.

George Sodini, thankfully, is not typical of lonely men. But some of his mindset is very typical of a patriarchal power structure, a power structure that he desperately wanted a place in, and believed he was entitled to enjoy.

He refers to women as "edible". Not human. He was incredibly self-centered. Incredibly hateful. This is the monster that can live inside men. And I think most women he approached saw that monster and ran as fast as they could. The ones he killed and injured last night could not run fast enough.

Another side of this is the controversy surrounding Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Realistically, there are only two people who know whether an assault on his accuser happened that night, and I do believe Roethlisberger is convinced he is innocent, that he did no wrong. Legally. There is no criminal case, and Roethlisberger's defenders disingenuously ask why she did not file charges at the time if something untoward in fact happened. In fact, rape is the only crime where the victim is put on trial. Most rapes go unreported for this reason. It wasn't even a whole day before the woman bringing the civil charges was pilloried left and right on websites everywhere.

I really want to believe there was no assault. I want to believe that Ben did no wrong, and any sexual acts were completely consensual, not implicitly but explicitly consensual. But the part of me that has walked this earth as a woman, some of the time as one of the "30 million desirable women", understands very easily that there is a fine line between strong coercion and assault. There is a fine line between force and "come on baby, please baby, do it for me, just this time, come on, it won't take long, come on baby, please please I promise I'll pull out, I promise it'll be over soon, I promise I won't hurt you." And while there is no explicit threat, there is most certainly an implicit one. Ben Roethlisberger is 6'5" tall, 241 pounds. He is a professional athlete. He is a celebrity, and she was told to entertain him.

I believe there was coercion. I don't know if it could be assault in a court of law, and I'm guessing no. But there are few women in this world who are not familiar with that implicit threat, with that fear, with knowing that you could be hurt, physically, emotionally, professionally, by someone with that much power over you. In the alleged victim's case, that threat could have come from Roethlisberger and her employer at the same time. After all, her value was in the entertainment she could provide for a celebrity guest.

She was property.

This is what a patriarchal society does. This is the devaluing of half the human race because of gender. This is relegating half the population to a sex class, only valuable as receptacles for men's lust. This has to stop.