Who gives this woman

No frills with me. Happy new year to you. And on with the show.

Perhaps a strange beginning after a Christmas/new year absence (a whole month, soz), but most of my posts tend to be triggered by certain conversations.

And I had one today at a very chill, quiet party full of old people: a lady telling me about a friend’s daughter who got proposed to while diving on a reef, all sounded super idyllic, guy hiding the ring at great lengths and going down on one knee on the sea bed etc… “And he asked her dad for her hand in marriage first!” the lady added, eyes shining, as though this multiplied the cuteness factor by a thousand. I was fully playing along until this point – it did sound pretty adorbs – but here I was like ‘Whoa not cool.’ she was like “What? It’s traditional and caring and creates a good relationship and,” she jokes, “keep the dad onside hahaha!”

Omg stop.

So much. Start from the top.

I would be offended if my partner asked my dad for my hand in marriage, ok. Firstly, I’m not his property; I have a brain and a will, and if I’m in love then nothing is going to stop me from saying yes and if my dad tried then he would be putting our (as in mine and my dad’s) relationship at risk, to be honest. Treating me like property, or something to be cossetted and gently handled, as someone who can’t make their own decisions, someone who as an adult needs their father’s permission to do frankly anything, is a sure fire way to get me very pissed off. Also a person with the above listed personality traits would not make a good partner, let’s be honest. Secondly, I want to be the first to know I’m getting married. That’s my (our) news to tell. I do not want my dad to be like ‘oh yeah we know he asked me first lol’. I would be maaaad.

Next: is tradition a good reason to keep something with negative connotations alive? No mate. This brings me back to a recent conversation I had with my boyfriend, where I brought up this nugget (not like right out of the blue. There was context): “I will not be given away at my wedding.” My boyfriend was like WHY??? All offended. Like ‘it’s tradition, it’s not a bad thing’ etc. etc. I was like ‘Er, do you want your dad to GIVE YOU AWAY? Like you’re property?’ And he did not. Because this is what it comes down to. You wouldn’t keep a reference to slavery in your wedding vows because it was traditional, would you? (I bloody hope not.) Well… half the population was effectively enslaved by the other half for literally most of human history. That’s the root of that little ‘tradition’. I would belong to my father, to do with what he will, until the moment of my marriage whereby he would pay a dowry to my husband for taking me off his hands, so that this new man could do with me what he will (see marital rights, marital bed, childbearing, child marriage, marital rape, domestic abuse, etc. etc.) because I was PROPERTY. Not a person. I would not have rights. I would not even own anything – everything I had been given or earned up to that point, until remarkably recently, would become my husband’s, and I was not even allowed to form my own opinions.

To me, that little ‘who gives this woman’ line smacks of all that bullshit. It’s like the obey line that has been mercifully omitted from vows now (only since 1922! – or rather, it became optional in 1922; it can still happen and was commonplace long after that). Er, no, mate. Did you know that the Equal Rights Amendment HAS STILL NOT PASSED in the US? (it was first proposed in 1923). Yep. Even in the (supposed) Land of the Free (hahahaha such bollocks, it’s so not, but that’s another post), women don’t have equal rights.

And that last bit of the lady’s argument: Keep the dad onside. That ‘Your dad will need his shotgun’ shit. Yes, because daddy is afraid this boy will treat you the same way he himself treated women?? And violence is the answer? I bloody well hope my partner has a good enough relationship with my dad that asking his f***ing permission to marry me is not even on his radar… and that my dad would never, ever even THINK any threat against my boyfriend for no reason other than he was going out with me. Or want him to feel like he needs permission. Anyway I’m losing the will to live, basically this is all disturbing.

I’m also going to choose now to have a little bellyache about the shit I’ve put up with from my dad for my entire life along the lines of ‘You’re never going to leave home are you? You’re daddy’s little girl. You’re never going to be interested in boys are you? You’re going to stay at home with daddy forever.’ Some people – like my dad, obviously – think this is cute. I can tell you that all it produced in me up until recently was chronic embarrassment and a total fear of ever bringing up even the subject of boyfriends (or indeed girlfriends). I DON’T BELONG TO YOU. You may have brought me up, but in doing so, you taught me to think, I learned to feel, I have a brain and rights and you don’t own me, whatever you think I ‘owe’ you (shudders) – like sure, I probs owe you some, like you fed me for 20 years and stuff, but I don’t owe you with my actual life, otherwise your reasons for having kids are pretty damn messed up. Now, I see these comments in a different light, too: ownership, influence, exercising a right over my body and future that he doesn’t have, teaching me that daddies own their little girls (yeah, cos he never said this to my brother!), that girls belong to men, that the only way I could leave daddy would be if another man took me away but THAT WASN’T GOING TO HAPPEN. There’s so many layers of screwy in here, I’m probably doing a really bad job of explaining, but I can’t be the only one who sees it?!

Oh and I also got SOOO pissed off recently – despite me being 23, my dad also has an obsession with my giving him hugs and kisses. Again, ‘daddy’s little girl’. I’ve never liked this – not because I don’t want to hug or kiss my dad but because I want to CHOOSE, I hate being railroaded into it  – and I’ve literally put my finger on what the issue is here right as I wrote that sentence!! – anyway, and he tried to get me to kiss him recently and did that stupid thing where he proffers his cheek and I went, reluctantly, to kiss it and he whipped his head round so I planted one on his lips, and he went away belly laughing and left the house for work while I literally got raving mad about it. HE HAS NO RIGHT. It’s stealing a kiss by deception. How’s that any better than a guy forcing me to kiss him in a club? You took away my right to choose. I don’t want to kiss my dad on the lips. These lips are not his for kissing. I CHOOSE!! Or, I’m supposed to. It’s just wrong. He shouldn’t want to kiss me on the lips. And quite apart from it being weird, it just shows he has absolutely no respect for my wishes or boundaries. It really upset me to be honest. You can say that I am overreacting – but that doesn’t change how I feel, and saying that is just an attempt to trivialise my feelings or make them seem inconsequential. If you hurt a person, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t. If you call the overreaction/can’t take a joke/banter cards, you’re part of the problem, because instead of addressing the problem, you’re reflecting it back to us and DOING NOTHING ABOUT WHY WE’RE UPSET (whether you think we overreacted or not!!)

Oh yeah – and my mum wasn’t given away at her wedding either, but for quite a different reason: her dad refused to give her away because ‘she’s my little girl’ and instead said my dad could ‘just borrow her.’ My mum relates this story as if it’s the most adorable thing since giant panda babies in nappies, but I just see, again, that dads think, still, that they own their daughters. Not their sons – the sons are always left to their own devices, it seems, to go and steal a girl from another old guy who feels exactly about their daughter as they do. It’s like a man war. Who has to give up their women first? F*** I literally think it’s so screwed up.

So my BF thought I was well overreacting about the not being given away thing so I wrote this as an attempt to straighten out how I feel about it. Unsuccessfully. It’s not exactly clear and succinct, sorry. But nobody owns me. Not you, not my dad, no-one. I choose what I do with my body and who shares it with me, thanks. Or, at least, I should. But I’m literally fighting against it all the time. So forgive me if I don’t want a reminder of how I’m second class and subject to the patriarchy on my wedding day. (I do understand the basic root of marriage was a supposed guarantee of the paternity of an heir, in effect, and is therefore a patriarchal construct designed for the control of women; however, I have also chosen to believe that marriage has actually evolved into a worthwhile statement of love by two people, a promise to love and cherish and honour on both parts, a relationship of freedom, trust and mutual support, and is therefore now a good thing to work towards – unlike the ‘who gives this woman’ and ‘obey’ lines, its definition and purpose has, I believe, changed with the times…)

Also, finally, I’m not being ‘given away’ as property with the connotation of you ‘taking me off my dad’s hands’… I’m amazing. You’re bloody lucky to have me. You’re welcome.

Yours bullshit-freely,

Georgie.

In Other News: Gunged

Went to visit grandma in her Home, with my dad and grandad. Grandad sits in a chair with its back to the door. Grandma wandered out in search of cake and came back empty handed, pauses behind Grandad, takes a deep breath, and ejects forth a juicy sneeze that would probably have registered on the Richter scale… All over the back of my Grandad’s shiny bald head.

I got those giggles that involve crying and high-pitched hysterics. Grandad didn’t even react. I wonder whether it is not the first time…

Shhh

Hello friends

I got a quick one here that JUST happened and it’s infuriated me so here I am.

Discussion re: some family matters. Dad completely dominating convo and shouting over me and my mum. Dad is a man-of-the house type guy. Feminism infuriates him because ‘you already have equal rights’ lol. He expects his meals cooked without even registering there’s an expectation, you know? He’s great and everything but he has work to do. Anyway.

He’s saying, “Because YOU need to understand how I feel, right now, right from the beginning, or X is going to change…” Not listening to our attempts to deflate the situation (oh hello, something all women have waaaay too much practice at…)

I said, “And vice versa.”

He said, “What?”

“And vice versa. You need to understand how Mum feels too.”

At this my dad looked completely outraged, raised his finger to his lips and said, “Shhh.”

Cannot express how much this pissed me off.

Mum said, “That’s really rude.” Dad said, “It’s nothing to do with her, this is how I feel, she has no right to an opinion.”

Staggered by his rudeness, (EXCUSE ME), I managed to ignore this slight on my reasoning capacity, and said, “What about how Mum feels?” Bear in mind me and my mum have done ALL negotiations on this situation and are a) better informed and b) infinitely more tactful and c) COMPLETELY UNHEARD.

He did the Shh thing again and I had to leave because I was so f***ing angry.

Moral of the story should be: Listen to us and don’t shout us down because your feelings and opinions are not more important or more valid than ours.

Moral of the story as it probably is: Men will shout you down, belittle you, and you’re still the one to clean up the mess. And even if you get to say your piece you might be forced to leave because you’re unwelcome. Even in your own home.

Feeling really top right now. Cheers.

For the first time ever, I’m not doing an In Other News because I’m too angry.

And now sad because next week my brother and girlfriend are crashing mine and my boyfriend’s ONE WEEKEND A MONTH that we spend together and I guess I will have to do my goodbye with an audience and there is a 99% chance of tears.

Thanks for reading.

Yours,

Georgie