Quiet in a Noisy World

Rats, it's April!  What happened to my promise to myself to blog at least weekly?

Well, ironically when I have been massively busy, I haven't really felt like I have very much to say.  I've been doing all sorts of wonderful things in the real world, spending time with good friends, dearly-loved family, going on country walks, eating a lot of good lunches, making it to my dance class for a change, running my book club, going to Moviebar.  I haven't seen any films to make me angry about their gender politics (we'll gloss over 'Dr Strangelove') although I did get into a brilliant Bechdel Test debate with my chum Ash - proof that people really are reading my blog and paying attention, thank you!  Maybe I have already changed the world a very tiny bit.  This makes me happy.

But none of that is very exciting in the blogosphere.  I drafted a blog about how much I love people - I really do - but the moment passed and although I still love people, I sort of lost the feeling that prompted me to write it so that'll stay on the backburner until I love people so much I have to revisit it.

I drafted a blog about how, Mr Writer by Night, I don't have a feminist blog, thank you very much. I sometimes write about feminist things.  I also sometimes don't, as seen here, here and here.  It was going to be a long, self-examining post but really, as I said when I started this, I'm not going to declare a blogging manifesto.  I'd rather let my posts speak for themselves.

I baked some fairy cakes and I have made a resolution to do more knitting again.  I'm a process knitter.  I'm really bad at finishing things, I just love the therapeutic rhythym and the magic of seeing a piece of fabric take shape with my hands.  I don't care for making-up and precision knitting so that sleeves fit into armholes.  This is why I mainly knit scarves and other rectangular things.

Talking of which, I read this not long after I wrote my marriage post and I found it really interesting.  As I said at the time, I don't have a feminist argument for marriage and I can think of many against it.  Broadly speaking, I think of my marriage in and of itself, nothing to do with anyone or any history or politics other than my husband and I, just a promise we made to each other.  I don't disagree with all of Jaclyn Geller's arguments against marriage, but what I do disagree with is her assertion that not only are women still getting married, they are 'manicuring to hyper-perfection the very domestic idyll their mothers rallied to escape', and quoting among other things the resurgence of knitting as an example.  Among pretty much all of the young married women, and men, I know, I cannot think of anyone who can be accused of such un-feminist behaviour as doing unreasonable amounts of housework and I think (do correct me if I'm wrong) I'm the only married knitter I know.  I don't think knitting makes me a bad feminist.  I suppose it might if all I knitted was clothes for my husband but as he never wears the scarf I knitted him once, I haven't bothered since.  I knit for the sheer low-tech pleasure of the activity, not because I'm married or I confuse it with domestic goddesstry.  One of my most outspokenly anti-marriage friends has this fantastic recipe blog, and I don't think it undermines her arguments against marriage or her personal politics, she just likes to cook.  I think arguments like this (and I do accept that the journalist could be paraphrasing and generalising) damage feminism because they refer back to the outdated image of woman and domesticity bound up as one, rather than acknowledging that the two are separate, with a perfect right to both exist in the same person if that is what she chooses.  The same goes for the reaction to Natalie Portman's Oscar acceptance speech.  She's about to give birth.  No wonder she regards motherhood, right now, as being the most important thing in her life.  Does that make her unfeminist?  I don't think so.

Oops, I accidentally wrote a feminist blog again.  Maybe the Writer by Night has a point after all...

I forgot to make a book recommendation last Feminism Friday.  You can belatedly have my all-time favourite book, Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.  I have read it at least 10 times.  Everything I know about life, I learnt from this book.

The Circle Game

I have just passed an enjoyable few days in the Midlands culminating in my big sister's wedding in Birmingham .  The sister in me is thrilled and excited and happy and hungover; but I'm surprised to find in all these weddings there is also a feeling of having come full circle somehow.  I thought this was from my wedding last year, but then I started tracing that circle back through my life and I'm still not sure where it starts. I keeping finding circles within circles, tiny circles around my finger and massive drunken staggering circles kicking each other in the shins while they bawl 'New York, New York' and that mystical, mystifying, enchanting circle of two that doth a marriage make. 

I'm not sure exactly why I believe in, support or endorse marriage, in all honesty.  I don't have any particular religious beliefs although I would describe myself more as agnostic than atheist.  In many ways it's a fairly outdated institution, the customs of which work mostly against my feminist principles, and in the 21st century there is simply no excuse for its exclusion of couples of the same gender.  It is normal social practice for couples to live together outside marriage and have children outside marriage and I have never felt pressured to marry for moral reasons, either for myself or even within my family or social circle.  It just isn't necessary, and in fact there are many good arguments against it. 

When I talk about marriage here, it's kind of code for a life-long, committed relationship.  But I have to say, before I married I would have said I was in one of those; and yet I have definitely crossed some kind of other threshold.  The thing about a marriage is you have to say it out loud.  I heard a writer talking recently about what a momentous occasion it is when as a writer you say 'I am a writer, I am writing a novel' out loud; that however much you've wanted or hoped for that secretly, you don't dare to say it, and then one day you do and it doesn't necessarily make you a better writer, but something changes anyway.  I continue to be surprised that marriage does change something.  It feels like casting spells, setting aside the time and space, saying the words and knowing them to be true has, for me at least, had a little bit of magic in it.

My first memory of wanting to be married was shyly confessing that feeling to my First Boyfriend at the age of fourteen.  He laughed at me and we never mentioned it again, but this week he proposed to his beautiful and high-achieving girlfriend who wisely and bravely accepted and I'm thrilled for them both.  Another circle closes.

I don't want to induce any vomit so I'll leave it there.  I'm not going to bore you with our wedding details but I'd like to give a big shout out to the Offbeat Bride Tribe which provided space to think about all the big things whilst also dealing with all the little things as we planned our wedding; if you are planning yours I highly recommend you pay it a visit.  One of my friends on there has now started her own wedding website and she profiled our wedding here.