What do you do when your partner is an asshole? Not a dyed-in-the-wool jackass, but on those off days, or more likely in our culture, in those frequent nearly subliminal ways that undermine you. Does he readily blame conflicts on your feminist leanings? Does he make casual sexist remarks out of habit or social indoctrination? Since marriage and/or kids, does he find it easier to discount your intelligence? Is his work or activities de facto more important than yours, or when your views differ, do you notice that the burden of proof is always on you to justify your perspective? When you start to look, even the healthiest and happiest relationship turns out to be a warren of inherited sexism. Left unreflected on, even for the footloose and childfree, the matrix of attitudes and assumptions that crop up in the average Western/American heterosexual partnership, especially marriage, can grind a woman down. Younger women can be particularly vulnerable. On the flip side, these things are pervasive and insidious, trying to root them out can turn into a death struggle. You can easily become so fixated on the smallest expressions of these problems that your nitpicking (it can feel like nitpicking, even to the blamer) takes over your home life. To some extent, I'd guess all women have to weigh up these low level conflicts, but once again, maternity ups the stakes.
If you were raised like me, you are operating under the double disadvantage of the United Front meme. In brief, the United Front mentality maintains that Mom-and-Dad must present themselves as being of one mind before the children at all times. They must never publicly disagree about childrearing decisions and certainly never make any kind of negative or correcting remark about one another in front of the children. We are told that violating this sacred code will be disastrous for the little ones, it will undermine their trust in the world and cause nonspecific mental illnesses. I was raised with the old fashioned form of the United Front, which made clear that "the one mind" Mom and Dad were supposed to share was Dad's. I knew that the aim of the United Front was to maintain his authority and our respect for him even in his prolonged absence. I heard some Biblical rationale for it when I visited my maternal grandparents and heard from multiple sources, specifically in reference to feminism, that "when push comes to shove, someone has to have final say in the family." In the quasi-religious atmosphere of our family, we didn't shy away from naming the result of breaking the taboo: your boy could like boys. Nowadays, the United Front is still out there, only now the goal is to have endless heart-to-heart talks in coffeehouses prior to reproducing, which will provide you with a solid shared basis to work from. Or else your kid will grow up with some vague mental disorder. But, honestly, the best plans fall apart at the first sign of battle. Mom and Dad will disagree, they'll even have criticism of one another, under the old system this was a one way street, under the new system it's a highway in the air that goes nowhere. The same old assumptions underpin the whole monstrosity.
But when it comes down to calling my partner on his shit, I stall. No feminist superwoman, I. Suddenly, when it matters most to me to provide my daughter with a woman-friendly home and a good example of a committed relationship, I begin to second guess myself. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Will she think this is such a big deal? Where do I draw the line? I would love to hear from others coping with the same dilemma at home. How do you know when it's time to draw the line?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Mothers & Daughters: The United Front.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/8829
Thanks for posting this - it's a dilemma I'm facing myself. I'm not yet wanting to have kids but I know that my partner, a usually very kind, caring man, has said some things that make me reconsider having kids with him, such as "childrearing is best left to the women" (THE women...hrm), and calling breastfeeding demonstrations "cute little love ins". He is more of a feminist than he give himself credit for but yet when I take the same qualities he cherishes (being critical of media, not taking for granted what culture tells us about ourselves) and turn it to focus on women for a moment (because I AM a woman so I'm speaking from my own position) suddenly it's very trivial.
Our relationship works quite well at the moment but I worry that as soon as I have children I will become more political and he will belittle me further.
It IS so insidious. When bringing up little points about say, harassment in the street, he and his friends don't believe me or think I'm being too sensitive. Bringing up any points (using sexist/racist language for example) gets the "oh you're being such a PC feminist" look.
It's at the point now where every time he says something like that I say something like "I would like to note an objection to x" and he says "objection noted" and I don't think it sinks in. Part of me wants to always bring it up so he can see how often he does these little things but the other part of me doesn't want to nag or nitpick and just gets EXHAUSTED trying to highlight it.
What to do???
Well, now I'm calling him on his crap for an audience. As much as I second guess myself, the fact that his ideas might go unquestioned into our little girl's head has cut out a lot of self doubt. The new threshold for what's a big enough deal to speak up about is "do I want my baby talking/thinking/acting like this?" Works like a charm.
Thank you. I appreciate this post.
I agree the "United Front" is a bit unrealistic, and can hurt parents and their relationships, usually silencing the mother.
On the other hand, I grew up in a household where the parents were /very/ combatitive, and that was awful. I think the best solution is to marry someone whose ideas are very close to your own. But, I'm a long ways from thinking about such things myself, so I'm basically just a dreaming kid compared to someone who's actually considering getting married.
I will say, though, that I'm currently kind of interested in a man who is smart, cute, has other qualities I appreciate, in addition to genuinly listening about, believing, caring about issues of street harassment, domestic violence, etc.
I mean, I don't think things are perfect. But then, I don't know any women who are perfect feminists either. But I'm convinced there are guys out there who /would/ be good, nonsexist fathers for little girls...
This post is great! You do a great job of describing the insidious pressure of sexism in modern heterosexual relationships. We feel this every day, so it's very hard to put into words.
I've felt this a lot, even though my fiance is surprisingly open to feminist arguments/theories, considering his pretty awful childhood and lack of a strong mother figure. The occasional piggish comment seeps through his natural open-mindedness every once in a while. The dangerous thing about privilege, after all, is that it's invisible from the inside.
I've learned to pick my battles. In general, I think that's a very underrated skill. I mean, it would be great if we could be feminist superheroes all the time, but that's just impossible. Forgive yourself for missing an teaching opportunity (rather, for not being perfect) and move on. Figure out some good responses to your strongest triggers; be confident in them, and then respond only to those. Honestly, why tire yourself out chasing every little evil? If you do that, when something truly evil hits you, either you can't respond or (even worse) they've stopped listening to you.
Another thing that usually works with my fiance is talking about how rigid traditional gender stereotypes can limit men as well as women. I'll comment on sexist images of women, for example, but also make a point to think/talk about how "tough, muscled guy" images are limiting to men. Some feminists might call that pandering, but it gets him to listen and to think about things rather than just shut down and dismiss what I'm saying.
Actually, now that I mention it, being reacted to in a dismissive manner is probably my #1 complaint with him. That's the BS I call him out on EVERY time. And he's pretty good on accepting constructive criticism by this point. Hopefully because I've learned to pick my battles.
My latest way of dealing with this kind of thing is to state my case and then, when he tries to dismiss it, I respond as blandly as possible with something like "this is important" or "don't dismiss me." When he tries to deny it, I stand my ground. Even if he doesn't come around, he seems to see my stubbornness on the issue as some indication that it really is important, at least to me, and he is good enough to believe that things that are important to me should be important to him, too, if only just because they are important to me.
I think a lot of times, we women for some reason think that we have to actually convince someone of our view in order to fully justify our beliefs (at least, I do; maybe you don't), which can actually make our arguments less convincing because it can seem like it depends on the other person's affirmation.
On this point:
I think a lot of times, we women for some reason think that we have to actually convince someone of our view in order to fully justify our beliefs... which can actually make our arguments less convincing because it can seem like it depends on the other person's affirmation.
I think that as women, we are *conditioned* to have our viewpoints affirmed by others or they will be invalidated and we will officially be "delusional".