"New Woman" Not So New Anymore
S's moved to Ottawa. It's tough but the thought that I'm going to be there soon makes it easier to bear. I hesitatingly brought up the subject of moving there to my parents, and once again they surprised me with their coolness with the whole deal. Sometimes I want to ask them, are you guys sure you're brown, like are you sure you're cool with this? The question on everybody's lips these days seem to be, OK, enough already, so when are you two getting married?
It gets to me, this question. As I mentioned to a friend a few days ago, I don't believe in the institution of marriage. Every other relationship is founded naturally. Friends find and then gravitate towards each other, you're born to your brothers, sisters and parents. Why is it that the one relationship that most of us idealize and search for is the one that's ultimately forged? No other relationship needs this kind of stamp of approval. I don't need someone to wave a wand over my head and pronounce me and a bosom buddy "friend and friend". If I know someone loves me and I love them, and we hope to grow old and find a way of seeing it all, that should be enough. Interestingly though, a part of me is still pleased that people acknowledge S and my relationship enough to ask such a question. Despite myself, at weaker moments it almost validates us to me and I think that's sad. My mother popped the question yesterday and I said, well mom it doesn't really matter to me but it will happen when it happens because it has to happen since I don't live in a cave.
Someone said something to me a few weeks ago, that a woman is not complete until she has a kid. This bothered me on so many levels. Is it that the woman is not complete, or the man's image of what the woman should be incomplete? It irked me to be told this by a man. I don't know if I want kids. Right now I'm leaning towards no. How can life be incomplete when there are so many things to love, learn and experience. If childbearing and rearing isn't for me I don't think it will make me any less of a woman. Mind you this doesn't mean I hate kids, or that I wouldn't be an effin awesome mother-I would probably win contests as mom of the year, but I might choose not to do it anyway. And if I do choose that, as much as people might think I am incomplete, I don't think I will feel it that way.
It's also sad that we've yet to reach a time when women don't have to justify these choices, of not wanting to get married, or having kids. Just like men, we are finally curing deseases, leading prayers, writing poetry and being recognized for it... isn't it about time people stopped defining us by just one of our roles?
posted by goBgoB at 1:54 p.m.
7 Comments:
Oh dear God. Somebody said "a woman is incomplete without a child" and you managed not to punch him in the face?! I applaud your self-restraint. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it's almost 50 years after the true golden age of North American feminism (the Second Wave), people are still attached to such dunderheaded notions. I have a lot more to say about marriage and motherhood as institutions and experiences (not so much from personal experience, of course, more from an academic pov), but I'll stop flooding your journal with my feminist rants.
2:17 a.m.
You're moving to Ottawa!?!
I hope you'll be happy there, but also that we'll get the change to meet again.
I totally agree with you on the marriage/children issue. I don't want those things either, and the worst thing is when my mother insists that I'll "grow up and eventually want them."
6:34 a.m.
Q: I have a tendency of being so flabbergasted when such things are said, that once my outrage has caught up with me it's often too late... to my increasing annoyance *sighs*
V: I am! I am? Yes, I am! It's still a pretty new development so it's taking a bit of getting used to...
Well the 4th installment of the Odissi Mahabharata saga is coming up in 2 weeks--maybe I'll see you there? :)
10:09 p.m.
Marriage forces people to make more relationship specific investments and alleviates the issues of post-investment holdups that can happen with short-term or less meaningful relationships.
1:12 p.m.
Good for you! i know what you mean about all you mention in this post. i don't know if ill want kids - right now i feel i won't - but i can't see my family being very cool about it. they'd be like//.but why!! and the thing is i've seen all around me all these women who complain how their kids have 'ended their life' etc. etc. in front of their children! if im going to feel like that why have kids and then make them feel bad? Anyways. the other thing i was thinking was your point about the institution of marriage - absolutely as you say. the annoying thing is the social and legal legitimacy attached to this institution. i have these friends who didn't get married for the 10 years they were together, they've got a little girl, but this march he got a job in the States and guess what they had to get married. it was fine while they lived in the same country but when they wanted to go to some other country, to get a spouse visa..you had to be a spouse! its silly they don't recognize long term parnters but there you go.
4:08 a.m.
AB b-school is surely addling your brain, what a throughly depressing desc. of marriage!!!
sonia, thanks for visiting. what a great example of how/when we're socially forced to do this marriage thing!!
7:41 a.m.
I have heard that "you are not complete without a child" bullshit phrase before, it makes me want to puke. It's not that I don’t want children, I do, some day maybe, but I know I am not ready now, I would never want to bring a child into the world that's not ready for them yet. I often think about how much life can change with a baby and it's mind boggling...
About marriage, it's a contract, that's all it is, and then that contract aspect of it got jumbled up with some cultural hojpoj and traditional bullshit, and now we have to validate love thought it...
8:45 a.m.
Post a Comment
<< Home