Sexism part 3 - insidious and unrecognized

Mary Chapin Carpenter - "He Think's He'll Keep Her" 

Preface: I only recognized the below later in life. If my engineering near-marriage experience had gone through, I'm sure we would have followed the normal script. (In part because she had a worse last name than me, believe it or not.) 

But once we know better, we should do better.

And yes, the below isn't universal. However, it is common and generally unquestioned.

In my review of Bryan Caplan's Don't Be a Feminist, I listed things that women couldn't do in the United States within my lifetime:

• Get a credit card in their own name.
• Be guaranteed that they would not get fired for being pregnant.
• Serve on a jury everywhere.
• Fight on the front lines.
• Go to any Ivy League school.
• Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment.
• Decide not to have sex with their husband.
• Marry whomever they chose.
• Take the birth control pill regardless of where they lived.

(And of course, even today, men will force raped 10-year-olds to carry the pregnancy to term and bear their rapist's child.)

But now, laws have changed. So aren't women now equal?

Think about the life of an "average" female. When they're born, they are given their father's name, even though the woman risked her life to construct the baby and give birth; she often feeds the baby from her own body. (When they found out EK had Anne's last name, multiple women asked Anne, "But how will people know who the father is?" WTF??)

Then the baby is treated differently than a boy from the time they are an infant. As a young woman, she is often referred to as "Miss," because her marital status must be conveyed to everyone -- if they are currently owned by a husband is the important information. (When working in the local school district, Anne has had kids insist they have to call her either "Miss" or "Missus."*) 

If she gets married to a man, her father (!) "gives her away" to the husband. She then takes the man's name to convey the change in ownership from father to husband at the moment when another man says "I pronounce you man and wife."

If you really think about it, this is totally fucked up. 

Three things:

1. As said, with a very small change, I would have followed the standard script. My kids would have my last name and Diane would probably have gone by "Mrs. Matt Ball."

2. This isn't the worst thing in the world; your average woman in the United States has it better than most people in the world, especially women in patriarchal societies. But when you have Tangerine-Palpatine-endorsed Republicans saying publicly that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, how different are we from the Taliban, really?

3. I'm not as angry about this as this series implies. Bryan is just following his sexist programming and is playing to his angry, incel audience. (Not that they are all incels, but pretty much no one calls Bryan out. So he does what gets him positive feedback.)

Much, much more: 10,000 Years of Patriarchy. 

*One little girl asked Anne, "Why do you wear boy shoes?"