Tag Archives: wedding

household economies [wedding post the second]

29 Tuesday May 2012

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UPDATE: Molly’s comment on this post made me realize I should make a point of saying that this post is about my own personal experiences and desires regarding shared finances, not meant to be a general statement about what “should” happen for couples, or what is morally “right” for all households, etc. Material security is a very, very personal thing. So all of the thoughts below are about me/mine — not meant as a judgment of anyone else’s life.

One of the first things Hanna and I did after we became a couple was go out and open a joint checking account.

Well, okay, it wasn’t one of the first things — but it was within a couple of months. And even though we’d been living together and sharing household expenses for a year and a half at that point, the shared account somehow seemed more possible, more right, to establish once we were in a sexually-intimate relationship.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t make any rational sense when I put it like that. But at the time, that’s how it felt. We were a couple, my logic went, and couples share material resources without keeping score. And the best, most efficient, way of doing that was an account to which we both had equal access.

And it’s worked for us since then. So much so that, as we move toward our wedding in the fall, Hanna raised the question of consolidating finances further — perhaps pooling our (frighteningly modest) savings, and more actively planning for a future down-payment or international travel. I agreed this sounded like a good move.

money love by cembas @ flickr.com

I got thinking about this last week when blogger blue milk put up a post about money and relationships, riffing on a New York Times piece on money-sharing in marriage. The comments on the blue milk post reveal a diversity of arrangements, and — to my mind — a surprising number of long-term couples whose financial resources are still fairly separate, or at least kept distinct.

It’s not that I haven’t known other options are out there for household finances, besides the single-financial-profile Hanna and I seem to be trending toward, but it’s fascinating to me how many people (women particularly?) feel strongly about maintaining their financial independence even within stable, long-term relationships.

Generally-speaking, there seems to be a lot of angst and anxiety these days about establishing household economies. Which (me being me) makes me reflect on why I don’t feel that level of angst and anxiety incorporating another person’s financial expectations and spending habits into my life (and trusting another person with my own income). Was it weird, at first? A little. It’s impossible to keep as tight a grip on the pulse of household spending when there are two of us — unless either of us were willing to spend a lot more time tracking trends (we aren’t). And I had to get used to Hanna making decisions with “my” money that I wouldn’t necessarily make vis a vis discretionary spending … but then again, she’s had to do the same. For the past three years, my paychecks have been automatically deposited into an account that Hanna has full access to, and that’s never really bothered me.

So the question becomes: Why? Why don’t I worry? 

I think it has something to do with how material resources and respect for individual decision-making and personal property (the things of our lives) were handled in my family of origin.

I grew up in a family where there was one main source of income: my father’s salary. My mother had done wage-work before we were born, and has picked up work-for-hire since we grew up and moved on, but didn’t work for pay while we were growing up. Yet regardless of the source of income, financial resources were consolidated: there was one checking account out of which bills were paid and daily expenses withdrawn. It had both my parents’ names on it. Their financial assets were theirs never “his” and “hers.”

Us kids all got spending money when we were small, and were taken to the bank to open savings accounts once we were earning pocket money (and later more significant income). So as kids, we had money that was separate from the family economy. We were also, correspondingly, expected to take responsibility for our own discretionary spending as we were able.

And I think almost more important than the specific, technical, details concerning the flow of cash, is the fact that we had confidence in one another to be financially responsible. My parents have confidence in each other as financial decision-makers, and helped us kids gain a basic understanding of our own finances so that as we moved from familial inter-dependence into adult fiscal independence (contrary to mythology, a gradual and far-from-decisive process) we were able to communicate about economic needs and desires without moral judgment. Resources were finite, true, but decisions about how to work within those material realities was always pursued collaboratively

Perhaps because of this model, I felt little discomfort in pooling our financial resources. 

Neither Hanna nor I enjoy book-keeping. So it’s way easier to have a single account for joint spending (virtually all our spending now) than it is to keep track of who’s paying what bills, buying what groceries, or who should be responsible for paying the tab for the rental car. Or, as I’ve seen some couples do, pay one another back via the monthly rent check or something similar.

OH MY GOD THAT WOULD DRIVE ME INSANE. Actually, it drove me a little bananas when we were doing that, or trying to, for the first year and a half of our relationship. The endless “Who’s turn is it to …” and “How much do I owe …” and “If I pay for, then you can get …” At which point pooling finances seemed like a simple expedient to cut out all the white noise of negotiation and haggling.

Would I worry more about protecting my financial independence if I were in a heterosexual relationship? To some extent, perhaps. Like with marriage itself, I worry less about falling into heteronormative sand traps because our relationship is by definition already non-normative. I don’t have the fear, for example, that my husband will just fall into handling the finances because social expectation and pressure encourages him to do so. In a relationship with two women, there is no “obvious” partner to coordinate the household economy. Rather than having social forces relentlessly pushing us toward integration, we have to move forward with deliberate insistence that, yes, this is what we wish to do. This is how we wish to live.

Which is not to suggest that hetero couples aren’t making deliberate decisions. Just that the social pressure to fit heteronormative marriage ideals (male breadwinner, female home-maker) isn’t applied so heavily when it comes to people who aren’t in hetero relationships. We have to argue for the chance to engage in activities straight couples are pressured to do. So the experience of choice and agency is qualitatively different there.

Is part of my ease due to the fact that I am (though by a thin margin at this point) the primary wage-earner in our household? I don’t have a complete answer to this. When I wrote in comments at blue milk about the fact that I don’t resent the inequality in wage-earning because things even out overall in terms of domestic responsibilities, another commenter got on my case about the “regressive” nature of such an arrangement. She assumed that I was somehow implying that my wage-work was more valuable than Hanna’s, when in fact I’d been trying to argue that wage- and non-wage work that contributes to the running of our household counts equally as far as I’m concerned, and as I said in my response to the critique:

With two (or more) adults in a family, you spread both wage-earning and other responsibilities around according to who is available to do what, who has what skills, and what feels fair to all people concerned. Too often, mainstream media reduces equality (and power) in household relationships to income and ignores all of the other aspects of running a household to which everyone in a family contributes.

To my mind, part of being in a marriage (or non-marital long-term relationship) is the luxury of not keeping financial score, as it were. Obviously you still keep your fingers on the pulse of basic fairness, in the sense that you speak up if it starts feeling like you always end up stopping for groceries or your partner always gets to pick the Friday-night movie. But I felt very strongly, going into our relationship, that I wanted our household to be ours not “hers” and “hers” in a nit-picky material way.

We share books, clothes, food, bath and body products, we co-care for Geraldine. Psychologically and emotionally, I didn’t want to get into a situation where I started resenting that Hanna’s physical therapy bills were a significant monthly expense, or to start stressing about whether her decision to prioritize buying a new season of Supernatural was less justified than my decision to pre-order the latest Diana Gabaldon in hardcover.

Do I catch myself doing it sometimes? Sure. I’m as fallible as the next person. But I want to work toward a place where mutual confidence and trust is so normal that it’s unremarkable — dare I say nigh invisible?

‘the act of marriage’: ch 8-10 (when things go wrong)

21 Monday May 2012

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See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5, ch 6-7.

Welcome back, folks, to the ins and outs of Christian marriage and sexytimes. We’ve reached the middle of the book and it’s time to talk about sexual dysfunction. Namely: “the unfulfilled woman” and “the impotent man.” There’s not a lot for me to rate myself on here (“frigidity” isn’t a particular problem of mine, nor is impotence), so I’m going to set aside the Adequate Lady-Spouse Metric for the next three chapters and instead just make a few more general observations about how healthy, positive sex is construed in The Act of Marriage, what major problems the LaHayes encountered in their marital counseling, and what solutions they suggest for those problems.

Overall, we continue to have a number of … I’ll call them tensions in the text between the desire to understand sexual intimacy as normal and God-given, with a number of possible paths to sexual fulfillment, and as a site for self-improvement. A sort of moral and physical proving-ground. So The Act yo-yos back and forth between encouragement (e.g. pointing out that the majority of women labeled “frigid” will respond sexually in situations where they aren’t pressured to perform in certain ways) and a fairly narrow definition of what “the act of marriage” entails (e.g. penis-in-vagina intercourse following adequate foreplay). Trying to reconcile these two goals isn’t always an easy task, and sometimes leads to baffling or conflicting advice.

Most notably, as I believe I’ve already pointed out, in the recognition that clitoral stimulation is necessary in most cases for women to experience orgasm while simultaneously holding up mutual orgasm during penetration as the sexual ideal for married couples. This, in turn, leads to a lot of paper and ink and effort spent on instructing couples how to practice just enough “foreplay” to push the woman toward orgasm while delaying male ejaculation so that (God forbid!!) he doesn’t come before penetration and/or before his partner. Because “lovemaking is impossible without an erect penis” (128).

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Let’s examine the main sexual woes of women and men in turn, and the solutions presented for each.

“The tragic tale of female sexual frustration winds its way through almost every tribe and people leaving literally billions of married women sexually unfulfilled” (103).

“It is safe to say that, except for Christians, the majority of women do not regularly enjoy orgasm in the act of marriage” (106).

The main sexual woe of women, according to the LaHayes, is Not Enough Orgasms. While “More Orgasms!” is a public health campaign I could totally get behind, the LaHayes give their own particular spin to the struggle of “unfulfilled” women in a couple of ways. The first, as the above quote suggests, is to try and argue that being a Christian will lead you to a better sex life. It’s unclear, as yet, why this is the case since they also illustrate this chapter with many examples drawn from pastoral counseling in which peoples’ beliefs about sexuality and Christianity are part of the problem, not the solution. But argue it they do: anorgasmia among women is at epidemic proportions, and the cure is a combination of religious faith, sexual education, and …  the all-mighty kegel.**

So, okay. Points for saying women can, and should expect to, enjoy wanted sexual intimacy. That’s the “yay for sex-positivity!” part. But then we get into the “ur doin’ it wrong” part of the section, in which women’s inability to come is largely attributed to her own moral, emotional, and physical failures. Yes, men are encouraged to slow down love-making and be attentive to their wives’ bodies (as well as to delay ejaculation; I’ll be getting back to this shortly) … but the majority of the burden falls on the wife. Which would be okay if the message was, “it’s okay to learn, and ask for, what you want in bed!” This is not what the LaHayes have in mind. Instead, they chastise women who don’t experience orgasm for experiencing negative emotions such as anger, resentment, guilt, and fear.

Reading “The Unfulfilled Woman” chapter, we learn that women who’ve experienced sexual abuse at the hands of their fathers should forgive the fathers (!!) in order to experience sexual satisfaction with their husbands. That women who are domineering (“choleric,” anachronistically enough), who feel guilty about premarital sex, who are passive, who are overweight, who are tired — all of these women may suffer from a lack of sexual fulfillment. And, basically, it’s the woman’s job to sort out her shit and get with the program.

While the kernel of truth in all of this is that each of us, individually, is responsible for exploring and communicating what we want sexually, the tone taken in The Act of Marriage is, well, preachy. And incredibly, incredibly callous toward people who have experienced sexual trauma. And in general absolve the husband of any responsibility to address relational issues (outside of the whole length of sexytimes/ejaculation thing) that might be contributing to sexual unhappiness — like, for example, a mother of young children who’s shouldering an unequal share of the parenting responsibilities, and is thus too worn out and/or alienated from her spouse to find much pleasure in sexual intimacy with same.

“After his fortieth birthday a man’s most important sex organ is his brain” (155).

“A rigid penis is absolutely essential for satisfactory consummation of the act of marriage” (157).

While the tragic dearth of lady-gasms can be cured with a combination of better sexual skill, physical self-improvement, and a judicious injection of Christian forgiveness-of-male-sins (and penitence for female ones),  the main struggle for married dudes is ejaculation: “premature,” “delayed,” or none at all. Like wives, husbands are counseled with a not-altogether-logical mix of “no matter how your body functions, you can still enjoy sex,” and “BUT YOU SHOULD REALLY BE FUNCTIONING IN THIS ONE SPECIFIC WAY.” While the LaHayes do emphasize that the majority of “impotence” issues stem from anxiety of one sort of another, rather than physical difficulties, they put men in a double-bind by basically increasing rather than decreasing, the cause for concern. To wit, in the section on the types of fear that contribute factor to impotence, they write:

(d) The fear that he will lose his erection. To a large degree, satisfying lovemaking is dependent on the husband’s ability to maintain an erection. A limp penis is unsatisfactory to both partners and humiliating to the husband (161). 

So basically, rather than offering reassurance that a “limp penis” can still experience pleasure and that partners can find alternate ways to engage in sexual intimacy, they just end up reinforcing the man’s fear that his ability to perform on cue is the linchpin of the entire experience.

Mirroring their advice in chapters seven and eight, the LaHayes concentrate narrowly on men’s sexual skills and knowledge vis a vis their wives when it comes to maintaining a sexually-satisfying marriage (e.g. remember to stimulate the clit! don’t penetrate too quickly! ohmygod don’t come before she does!!***) while it falls to women to maintain the broader emotional-relational health of the marriage. In the chapter on male impotence, for example, women are admonished not to be “nags” or be “passive,” and not to have a “sagging vagina” (get on those kegels!).

Once again, I’m left with the impression that while both partners in the marriage bear responsibility for successful marital relations, the work of women is much more nebulous and therefore potentially vast in scope — while the work of men is physical and weirdly self-absent. Where, in this landscape of orgasm/ejaculation delay and carefully-scripted lovemaking is there time for guys to just be with their partners and enjoy — without the anxiety or performance — sensual contact?

Stop back in on Friday to check out what the LaHayes have to say about family planning (I think it might surprise you)!

*For example, their claim that “until around the turn of the century, millions of women each year were cheated out of the exciting sexual climax that most men enjoy regularly” is wince-ably inaccurate. While women prior to 1900 navigated a cultural landscape that treated women’s sexual arousal as a disease to be cured, I’m pretty sure lots of them got off in creative and satisfying ways. Likewise, it’s not like twentieth-century gals had it easy in the “take my sexual desires seriously” department. If we had, terms like “sex-positive feminism” wouldn’t be tossed around with quite such frequency.

**Yep, you heard me right. The reason women’s sexual dysfunction takes two chapters and men’s only one is that women get a whole chapter on the wonders of the kegel. While I’m all behind exercising pelvic floor muscles, I’m not sure kegels have quite the transformative properties The Act of Marriage seems to ascribe them. They end up sounding like you’ll be able to jet around like the elderly kegel-practicing ninja lady from American Dad‘s Live and Let Fry.

***And what ever you do, DO NOT MASTURBATE. While it may not kill you or make you grow hair on your palms, it’s clearly contra-indicated from a Godly perspective and will probably destroy your marriage.

‘the act of marriage’: ch. 6 and 7 (care and keeping of a wife)

14 Monday May 2012

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See also: intro, ch 1, ch 2-3, ch 4-5.

Following what I’ve come to think of as the “sexuality 101” chapters come two intriguingly-titled sections, “For Men Only” and “For Women Only.” Thus I was faced with a dilemma. The “For Men Only” chapter instructs one on the care and keeping of one’s wife, while the “For Women Only” chapter instructs one how to be a wife.

Since I’ll both have  AND be, well, I decided the best  thing was to read both chapters just to be sure I had all my bases covered. I have a few overall observations about the differences between the two sections and the overall assumptions being made about what makes for positive sexual intimacy and martial relations. But first, the nitty-gritty details (you know you want them!).

Here’s what one must do in order to sustain one’s marriage:

Husbands Wives
1 Learn as much as you can.
Quote: “Since skilled lovemaking is not instinctive, a wise husband will learn as much as he can from a reliable, Christian source.” (i.e. the last two chapters of this very book!)
Adequate lady-spouse metric (8/10): I love learning about sexuality, but I can’t say I depend very heavily on “reliable, Christian source[s]” so why don’t we say five out of ten for this one.		 Maintain a positive mental attitude.
Quote: “Three areas in a woman’s sexual thinking pattern are very important to her: (a) what she thinks about lovemaking; (b) what she thinks about herself; (c) what she thinks about her husband.”**
Alsm (10/10): Lovemaking = awesome, self = good enough to be getting on, wife = sexy, compassionate, smart, and kick-ass. Think we got this covered.
2 Practice self-control.
Quote: “Be careful not to overdo it, but concentrate on something that will delay your ejaculation and give your wife sufficient time for her emotional build-up.”
Alsm (2/10): I’m all for paying attention to where my partner’s at and making sure she’s enjoying  herself – but I’m not sure how that jives with delaying orgasm by thinking about football.		 Relax! Relax! Relax!
Quote: “It should come as no surprise that a virgin will be rather tense in anticipation of her first intercourse.”
Alsm (5/10): While I’ve got the relaxing bit down, I think I probably lose 50% for not actually being virginal on my wedding night.
3 Concentrate on your wife’s satisfaction.
Quote: “Since a woman’s orgasm is much more complex than a man’s, it takes her longer to learn this art.”
Alsm (5/10): With two complex lady-gasms to worry about, you’d think future-wife and I would have it extra hard! Maybe that’s why the fundies are against same-sex marriage — because they worry lesbians won’t achieve enough simultaneous orgasms?		 Chuck your inhibitions.
Quote: “Though modesty is an admirable virtue in a woman, it is out of place in the bedroom with her husband.”
Alsm (4/10): I’ve got the bedroom covered, but what about the living room or kitchen? And the whole we-aren’t-actually-technically-wedded-in-holy-matrimony-yet thing might move my lack of inhibitions from the “admirable quality in a wife” column to the “shameless hussy” column.
4 Remember what arouses a woman.
Quote: “Men are stimulated by sight whereas women respond more to other things — soft, loving words and tender touch.”*
Alsm (10/10): Not gonna be a problem, so much. 		 Remember that men are stimulated by sight.
Quote: “The sight of a bedraggled wife may engender sympathy (though it’s doubtful) but it will rarely inspire love.”
Alsm (0/10): Oh, god, I’m always bedraggled. Future Lady Spouse despairs.
5 Protect her privacy.
Quote: “Men are far more inclined than women to be sex braggarts.”
Alsm (5/10): Since I’m a woman, you’d think I have this covered but I write a blog in which I talk about stuff like orgasms and erotica and how much I enjoy both, which probably makes me a braggart on some level.		 Never nag, criticize, or ridicule.
Quote: “Nothing turns a man off faster than motherly nagging and criticism or ridicule of his manhood.”
Alsm (6/10): I agree that “ridicule” and treating one’s spouse as if they were a dependent to be controlled*** rather than a person to be respected as an equal it’s time to re-evaluate what you’re doing with this person as a spouse. But I don’t agree that avoiding confrontation, substantive argument, or asking for change is wrong.^
6 Beware of offensive odors.
Quote: “A thoughtful lover will prepare for lovemaking by taking frequent baths, using effective deodorant, and practicing good oral hygeine.”
Alsm (10/10): I have it on the authority of Future Lady Spouse that she is in favor of my odors.		 Remember that you are responder.
Quote: “Except for those occasions when a wife is particularly amorous and initiates lovemaking, a husband makes the first approach most of the time.”
Alsm (0/10): We don’t have a husband, so there’s a technical difficulty here. Oops!
7 Don’t rush lovemaking.
Quote: “The time spent lovemaking varies with the culture. Researchers have indicated that the average experience runs from two minutes in some cultures to thirty minutes in others.”
Alsm (10/10): I just gotta say I find it really amusing that “more is better!” is something that has to be spelled out here.		 Observe daily feminine hygiene.
Quote: “Every woman must be careful of body odors for two reasons: first, in some women the vaginal fluids … can emit a strong odor unless they bathe regularly; and second, she may become immune to her own smells.”
Alsm (8/10): While I’m a fan of the daily shower, and enjoy our wide and indulgent array of Lush products, I’m deducting points here on principle ’cause I think our ladybits smell just fine thank you.
8 Communicate freely.
Quote: “I have been appalled to learn that even well-educated people find it difficult to discuss their love lives frankly.”
Alsm (10/10): I hyperverbalize and I love sex … need I say more?		 Communicate freely.
Quote: “Unless a man has read the right books or sought knowledge in the right places, much of what he knows about women is likely to be wrong when he enters marriage.”
Alsm (10/10): <– See left.
9 [I guess men aren’t responsible for prayer?] When all else fails, pray.
Quote: “I’m convinced that God never intended any Christian couple to spend a lifetime in the sexual wilderness of orgasmic malfunction.”
Alsm (5/10): While I’m all for a pro-orgasm God, I … what? (Although bonus points for phrasing!)
Okay, so … lots going on here, but a few general observations.

Notice how the instructions for men involve practical things (keeping clean, gathering information, controlling ejaculation) and are largely confined to the specific situations of sexual intimacy. Men are encouraged to slow down their love-making, learn how their lovers bodies work, respect their partner’s privacy, and to communicate with their partners about sex. So far, so good! Except for what it leaves out: men’s emotional lives. Men are assumed to want sex basically whenever their wives take their clothes off, and all of the instructions in the husband’s section are geared toward getting him to control his bestial (physical) urges and pay attention to his partner’s needs.

Now notice how much emotional work is expected from women. First on the list is the admonishment that women get into the right headspace for sex, which in the chapter involves three sub-sections worthy of discussion. Women, not men, are expected to have emotional baggage around sex being shameful, their bodies being shameful, and their partners being undesirable. In addition to basic bodily hygiene, women are expected not to look “bedraggled,” not to “nag,” and to pray (attend to the spiritual health of the couples’ relationship) when all else “fails.” Men have no analogous last-resort advice.

Finally, although none of these specific points touch on it, I want to recall from chapter five the argument that the best lover is an unselfish lover who attends to their partner’s needs and desires above their own. I think this assumption continues to play out in chapters six and seven: Husbands are instructed to subordinate their physiological response to the course of their wife’s arousal, while wives are instructed to tidy up all messy emotional and psychological issues so their husbands will be able to love them. While mutual empathy is, obviously, a major indicator of any successful relationship (sexual or otherwise), there’s a serious case to be made for the notion that selfish sex is the best kind of sex. That is, learning and owning what you enjoy, how your body responds, and how to communicate your desires, is key to pleasurable sexytimes. While focusing on your partner’s pleasure is laudable, knowing what you want and need and how to ask for it is equally important. And that’s one of the key pieces I see missing in The Act of Marriage.

IN SUM:

Ability and willingness to fulfill the duties for having a wife: 60/80 = -20
Ability and willingness to fulfill the duties of being a wife: 48/90 = -42

Chapters 6-7: -62

Chapters 4-5 score: +30
Chapters 2-3 score: -33
Chapter 1 score: -50

Cumulative ALSM Score: -115

*Having experienced first-hand what seeing my wife’s nakedness does to stimulate arousal, I’m baffled by this assertion.

**Aren’t these a good rule of thumb for anyone in sexually-intimate relationships, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, or gender?

***This isn’t the place to unpack the “motherly nagging” assumption, but if you’re treating your kid through passive-aggressive control and shaming ridicule, you’re doing it wrong.

^See also.

guest post @ the last name project

11 Friday May 2012

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I have a guest post up at from two to one today as part of The Last Name Project (co-hosted by Danielle of from two to one and Shannon of The Feminist Mystique). The Last Name Project profiles “an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry. The goal is to explore how individuals make decisions about their last name, and to highlight the many possibilities.” For my contribution, I wrote about the decision Hanna and I made to combine our middle names when we register our marriage:

This solution felt right to us because it doesn’t privilege either person’s family name. It adds to, rather than erasing any aspect of, our (linguistic) identities. As a feminist and queer woman, I think extensively about mainstream notions of marriage, family, and identity, and I knew that I wanted a way to honor my individual self and family history alongside incorporating my partner into who I am and will become. Weaving Hanna’s middle name together with mine feels like a positive way to entwine our individual selves together without losing those other strands of who we are and have been.

Check out the whole piece over at from two to one.

minimalist wedding plans [installment the first]

08 Tuesday May 2012

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While I loved to dress up and play princess or flower fairy in my babysitters’ hand-me-down prom dresses as a child, I don’t remember having much of a thing for weddings. Even my princess games tended toward the “orphan princesses run away to the magic forest to set up housekeeping together in the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse” feel to them (who me, pre-adolescent passionate friendships? what?). So I can completely and entirely, without any regret, say that I’m thankful beyond belief that Hanna isn’t interested in a bells-and-whistles wedding.

About a month after we decided we were getting hitched on, like, a particular date, the major decisions have been made and the pressing details ironed out. Everything else is just icing-on-the-cake details. (Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago what kind of cake we were going to have and I was like, “Oh, that’s right! An excuse for cake!”)

For folks interested in the process of minimalist wedding planning, here’s what we’ve got sketched out so far.

1. Ceremony. It’s going to be a civil ceremony (neither of us are active in a church/religion), performed either out-of-doors or at the office of the Justice of the Peace we’ve hired for the occasion. The state of Massachusetts requires paperwork to be filed three days in advance of the license being issued, so we’ll be heading down to City Hall to do that together at some point the week before the wedding. As I mentioned already, Massachusetts is one of those easy-peasy states where the fact we’re both women is neither here nor there as far as the bureaucracy is concerned. (Thanks to GLAD for the legal overview; PDF)

The vows are still a work-in-progress, though we’re shooting for impersonal-formal without saying shit we don’t actually believe in. This is harder than you might think.

2. Witnesses. We aren’t required to have witnesses, here in the state of Massachusetts, but we’re talking about who we want in attendance. One problem is that the short list is scattered across at least four states and multiple time zones. So the question of who will be with us on the day, if anyone, is still under discussion and advisement. We do have a work-around in mind we’re pretty happy with; more on that soon.

3. Rings & Things. We’ve decided to have rings, a matching set from an artist in Spain who sells through Etsy. She’s engraving the rings with our new middle names (see below). We fussed a bit about the font for the text before deciding to supply her with the names written in our own hands.

“Sunday best” will probably be in order, just to spruce ourselves up a bit, though neither of us are inclined to spend the time or money necessary for the wedding clothes we might — in our ideal fantasy headspace — enjoy dressing up in (hint: there has, in the past, been talk of knee-high boots, corsets, and waistcoats).

4. Names. We’ve been going back and forth about this for about as long as we’ve been talking about getting married, and finally decided that since children aren’t in the picture and there’s no elegant way of combining Cook and Clutterbuck, we’d go with combining our middle names instead. Hence our new, legal, middle names: Elisabeth Jane.

5. Tattoos. Wedding tattoos, I know. But we’ve both got ink already and since my ability to wear jewelry consistently is a bit dodgy we decided ink was a more permanent way of marking the transition to being wives. Drawing on Hanna’s Buddhist practice and our English-Scottish roots we decided we wanted a knotwork design, and chose the eternal or endless knot. We’re going to have my dad work up some different options incorporating colors we’re both drawn to, including browns, purples, blues, greens, and grays.

6. Announcements. We’re asking our friend Diana to design us letterpress announcements to mail out to family and friends. Photographs of any kind are still under negotiation, but a wedding portrait of some kind may or may not be included.

7. Honeymoon. This part actually came first! Our original plan was to spend a week’s vacation on Cape Cod this fall (our first honest-to-goodness vacation that doesn’t involve travel for professional development or family visits) and it was in planning that vacation that we decided the time was ripe to get married. So we’re renting a tiny studio cottage on the ocean for a week and planning to spend lots of hours wandering around the national shoreline, hanging in coffee shops, reading, watching Supernatural and Stargate: Atlantis, cooking, wading in tidepools, and all the other things one does on a vacation-honeymoon with one’s wife.

8. Family. With my family scattered across the U.S. from Michigan to Texas to Oregon, we’re still working out the details of how to mark the occasion with family members. There’s talk of celebration dinner with the parents of the brides, or a “grand tour” to visit the siblings … basically, we’re not sure yet. Time and money being what they are, a unified family-and-friends gathering probably just isn’t in the cards.

9. Larger Meanings. Getting married. Being a wife. Having a wife. As an historian with an interest in sexuality and gender, and as a queer feminist, I’m obviously acutely aware of the historical specificity of what we’re doing here. It’s living in this time, in this place, that’s making it possible for Hanna and I to conceive of ourselves as being in a relationship that falls within the purview of marital relations — and then makes it possible for us to act on that self-understanding. Without fear of losing our jobs or being shunned by friends. Quite the opposite, in fact: our friends and family have celebrated with and for us, and when I told my colleagues about the nuptials I got a hug from my boss.

There have been other times when, there continue to be other places where, and other couples for whom, this manner of openness, legality, and celebration is not an option.

I’m also aware, and in political sympathy with, many of the people who decry the way the institution of marriage, however equal, has become the gateway to a whole host of civil rights, responsibilities, and benefits — from parental leave to retirement benefits and everything in-between. The navigation of private meaning and personal choices as they interact with and help to shape public dialogue and structural inequalities, for better or worse, is something none of us can escape. Writing about what we’re doing, and why, is part of my commitment to thinking about how the personal and political interact in myriad ways.

10. Cake! When I was a child, my default celebration cake was chocolate chip pound cake; these days I’m a fan of red velvet (is there a better mode of cream cheese frosting delivery? seriously). Clearly important decisions must be made.

I’ll keep you posted!

live-blogging ‘the act of marriage’: part the first

02 Wednesday May 2012

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this is the cover art on my edition

When Hanna and I were on our trip to Michigan back in early March, I picked up a vintage copy of The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love by Tim and Beverly LaHaye (Zondervan, 1976). Y’all probably know the LaHayes for their right-wing political organizing and Tim LaHaye’s phenomenally popular Left Behind series. Bet you didn’t know the couple are responsible for one of the mid-twentieth-century’s ground-breaking Christian sex manuals.

Yeah. I’ll let that one sink in for a minute.

And of course I bought it. Duh. Because it’s a perfect confluence of all the shit I’m interested in: sex and Christian evangelical fundamentalism and heteronormativity and the 1970s and sex. All in one book.

This was before Hanna and I decided to get married, but now that we’ve set a date and all, I decided I should probably study up on my wifely duties. The introduction to The Act of Marriage specifically instructs that it “should only be read by married couples, those immediately contemplating marriage, or those who counsel married couples.” I told Hanna over coffee this morning that, since I now fall into category #2 (although does “engaged to be married” count as “contemplating marriage”?) I can safely read this book without jeopardizing my bridal purity.

She looked at me like I’d just turned into a hedgehog and went back to her Spanish latte.

I’ve only read the introduction so far, but two things:

1) Tim assures the readers of TAM that Beverly’s presence as one half of the writing team preserves the respectability of their project — and simultaneously assures his audience that Beverly herself was not harmed in the writing of this book. It’s a fascinating use of ministers wife as moral shield. Sort of like having one around is the equivalent of a personal shield emitter. Haha! You think talking about sex is dirty and un-Christian? Well, you see, I have a minister’s wife on hand to protect me!

2) The introduction puts forth the assertion that Christians have better sex than non-Christians. This is hardly the first time I’ve heard this argument made (and, to be fair, feminists also made the case for better fucking … though I doubt their definition of “better” is the same as the one at chez LaHaye). I’m promised survey data latter in the book that will support this thesis and, frankly, I can hardly wait to find out what they asked the couples they counseled and what “secular” data they compare and contrast their results with.

I’m looking forward to my lunch break so I can see what Chapter One has to offer. Stay tuned for more!

a wee bit of news we’d like to share

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in our family

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“Never will I take for granted in this world your generosity of exploration, how you have listened to my body and found what you could do.”
~Joan Nestle, “Our Gift of Touch,” in A Fragile Union (144).

It’s my parents’ thirty-sixth wedding anniversary today, so it seems somehow appropriate to take this moment to make this particular announcement.

Hanna and I have decided to get married. It was one of those gradual processes that doesn’t really have an event of engagement attached to it — we talked about it, and then talked about it some more, until at some point it felt true. That at some point we would be married. Eventually.

And then, back in early April, I came home late from work one night to find Hanna reading in bed.

“Hey,” I said, “I’ve brought you a present.” It was a mint chocolate chapstick I’d seen that morning at Whole Foods that had made me think of her.

“I think we should get married when we go on vacation this fall,” she answered.

I admit, this wasn’t quite the response to the mint chocolate chapstick I was anticipating, but hey! I was willing to go with it.

At which point sleepy, comfortable, familiar, probably Not Safe For Work, kissing commenced.

these two mugs are getting married!

Happily, we’re in Massachusetts where legal marriage is a boringly normal option for us. Believe me, there’s a real thrill to be had from anticipating the moment when I can say phrases including the words “my wife” and experience precisely zero negative ramifications as a result.

Or, at least, if anyone does push back we have the backing of the law to tell them where to shove it. (Yes, I get a certain satisfaction from knowing this. No, it doesn’t make me a particularly charitable person.)

We’re getting married on September 14th. Our “to do” list for the wedding currently has a decidedly underwelming nine items, including three that are more properly related to vacation planning than the wedding itself. And half of them are already taken care of! There’s a lot to be said for going the minimalist route.

What strange things we humans do. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts as the season approaches.

Meanwhile, I am so very, very thankful, every day, that Hanna has chosen to build a life with me. There’s no one I’d rather have here, at my center-space. No one outside my family of origin who so immediately and irrevocably meant home and safe as Hanna did. I know she doesn’t fully understand why I feel this way, or always believe it to be true. Yet she’s willing to take the risk anyway — and that makes her one of the bravest people I know.

Wherever we travel from here, I’m glad we’re a team. I think we make a pretty damn good one.