Friday, December 16, 2011

On being a partner, not a wife

Having been with my partner for almost 12 years now, I can honestly say intimate relationships are great. They are not without their ups and downs, of course, and certainly not without considerable effort from both parties, but, ultimately we have the same rights as married couples (having lived together for 3 years) and we, to a large extent, live the same sort of life as a married couple (whatever that might involve..). So it’s all pretty sweet really, as one half of a hetero, de facto couple. Except for dealing with society’s reactions to our relationship status. And by society I mean family, friends, colleagues and anyone else who thinks it’s their business. So, in this blog post, I make the issue of de facto relationships your business, because the one thing I’ve found increasingly irritating over the last nearly-12 years is society’s perceptions of people in de facto relationships and I do feel the need to discuss this topic. I will briefly outline what has irked me and why it’s irked me. Yes, this is not teaching-related, but it’s the holidays, so indulge me.

But every little girl wants to be a princess!

Right from the point where my partner and I realised we wanted to stay together, we decided we didn’t want to get married (for many, many reasons, but that’s a whole other blog post/10,000 word essay). So, the first annoying comments I remember were in response to me politely saying we wouldn’t ever get married. “Oh you’ll change your mind when you’re older”, “but everyone wants to get married!” and “are you scared of commitment?” were commonly directed at us (me in particular, being the female half of the couple, and obviously some sort of freak). Well, no I haven’t, and no I didn’t, and no I’m not. We’d made a decision to stay together but not to get married; this decision undoubtedly involved some/a lot of thought, discussion and commitment, so surely it shouldn’t be met with disbelieving or condescending comments. I mean, how rude and stupid would it be if someone announced their engagement and I was all, “Oh, you’ll change your mind in the next 6 months”..? Fortunately, most of my harassers have given up on this tack, which is just as well because I couldn’t handle a lifetime of it.

Won’t somebody please think of the children!

The second annoyance is possibly the most offensive:
“But what about when you have children?!”
Er, yeah…what about it? Firstly, that’s a massive assumption in itself, but how would not being married actually affect the children? That’s my response question. Very few people answer. The few answers have gone something like this: “But how will you choose whose surname they get?” and/or “They might get bullied at school”. On reflection, these are responses are rather amusing, if offensive. Choosing a surname for a child is not going to be the biggest challenge of parenting. I mean, they can have one, or the other, or both. And if they don’t like one, or the other, or both, they can change it when they reach 18. And whilst bullying in itself is definitely a concern, I doubt that ‘unmarried parents’ is a pressing social issue in East Christchurch that leads to bullying in the school playgrounds. I live in a street surrounded by decile 1 and 2 schools; my future children (assuming I have any) are not going to be bullied because their parents aren’t married. And let it be noted that I’m not even convinced that children are bullied for such pathetically upper-middle class reasons, but if they are, and if I lived in a more affluent area, I wouldn’t ever send my children to such a school – any school that couldn’t deal with such things would no doubt be both elitist and negligent. Also, bullying of any sort is unacceptable, not just bullying because of parental relationship status.

And now for the more minor quibbles I have with people’s assumptions and attitudes about defacto relationships. These tend to be more semantic, but still have a veneer of sexism/hierarchy…

It’s hard to explain this one without revealing names, so I’ll use pseudonyms instead. The de facto couple (my partner and I) are named Mr Stripey Tiger and Ms Spotty Leopard, respectively. As Ms S. Leopard, I receive at least one phone call a week (often from telemarketers, although recently had one from EQC...just as well I was in a forgiving mood or I might never see any work done to my house) that goes like this:
Caller: “Hi, is that Mrs Tiger?”
Me: “No sorry, there is no Mrs Tiger at this house.”
Caller: “Oh, um…what about a Mr Leopard?”
Me: “No sorry, there is no Mr Leopard either.”
…and then…
Me (if I’m in a forgiving mood): “But there IS a Ms Leopard or a Mr Tiger here.”
Why on earth would anyone make the assumption that I’ve taken my partner’s name? We are not married and this is very clear in everything we do as individuals, and in all documentation, including the white pages! And even if we were married (which we never will be, but just to illustrate my point), who’s to say I’d take his name?! It’s not the freaking law that the woman has to take the man’s name. It’s not the 1950s any more; women are allowed to keep their original identities once they’ve been married (albeit that our surnames often come from our fathers, blergh). Ultimately, there never has been a ‘Mrs Tiger’, and there never will be!

“But ‘partner’ doesn’t sound very romantic.” OK, well, I like it, and isn’t that the main thing? To me, it implies a long-term, permanent relationship (unlike ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’ which seems more temporary to me – I know some long-term partners who do use these terms though and that’s cool), it implies equality, and it doesn’t have the historical connotations that the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have. I do suspect that some people (ie. homophobes) don’t like the word because they associate it with gay couples, although I doubt anyone I’m even vaguely close to would actually come out and say this to me. Most people know that prejudice is up there with war, the term ‘PC’, and Tony Blair, on my list of ‘things I hate’.

So other than the above (and most likely a few other social annoyances I can’t think of right now as I write this…), de facto partnerships are pretty sweet. So come on society, show us a little respect!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

It was to be a post-election, post-marking dissection, but I'm way too tired and munted to not write a post....


So the election results were predictably horrid; why on earth anyone living in a household earning under $100,000 a year would vote for National is beyond me... But I know that electorates and countries swing back and forth between the left and the right, and that turnout was low, and I know that an ‘attractive’ personality is pretty important to many people, and that national disasters and World Cups can have interesting effects on the general populace’s voting behaviour, so I can accept the results, as vomitous as they might be. But I must admit, I didn’t anticipate the recent announcement that the government is keen to give charter schools a go; I have been anticipating National Standards at years 9 and 10, as well as pay disputes, resourcing cuts etc. etc….but oh how generous I was with my expectations of the Nat/Banks/Dunne government; they are obviously much meaner than I could ever have imagined.

I was planning to wait until I’d finished my marking before I made another blog post, but I’m there’s some scary stuff being proposed by the government. So, instead of dissecting the bollocks that was the election results and the horrors of marking hundreds of papers in a short space of time, I’m simply going to make a quick post centered around why charter schools are not a good idea. In fact, I’m not even going to discuss much, as my two cents is really more like 0.002 cents because so much has been said by teachers, principals and the general public over the last 24 hours or so. I guess I’m more spreading the word in this post, than creating it.

Charter schools are, to summarise, private schools that are state-funded yet have the freedom to teach their own curriculum and hire and pay teachers based on their own standards. They can be started by any community group, including businesses, and they’re allowed to raise funds however they want. There’s been a lot of good discussion amongst my friends, and their friends, on Facebook about how they work and how (in)effective they are, so I’m reluctant to explain things when someone else can do it so much better. So, check out these links:

Action:
Reaction and analysis:

It can be argued that integrated schools in NZ are not entirely dissimilar to charter schools in terms of the amount of freedom they have to do whatever they want. But as far as I can tell, charter schools are yet another step along that path to a teacher-hating, student-mind-numbing path of ‘education’. And as a resident of East Christchurch, where Banks and Key want to ‘trial’ these schools, I’d have to say, the whole thing is scary and crazy, but not unpredictable in hindsight.

You don’t have to be a genius (whatever that might involve; I’m thinking it might involve being taking lots of IQ tests) to figure out that charter schools are not going to ‘fix’ low-performing schools in low socio-economic areas. You don’t have to be a genius to see how they could become severely corrupt institutions. But obviously, Trevor McIntyre, principal of Christchurch Boys’ High School and Thomas Proctor, principal of Christchurch Rudolph Steiner School believe that for-profit companies can provide a better education for people than the state can. I, as well as thousands of other education professionals up and down the country, seriously doubt that belief because there’s no real evidence to suggest it’s true: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10771435

So it’s a big BOOOOOOO to those two principals from me..

Anyway, I’m looking forward to my next PPTA meeting. I trust my union to fight this rubbish and I urge everyone to be ready for a fight (although the whole thing seems so ridiculous, I know…). I encourage any new and/or non-member teachers to join the union. Interesting times are ahead.

Also, I strongly recommend at this point watching episode 19, season 6 of The Simpsons (‘Lisa’s Wedding’), again, for light relief. There’s a Simpsons line for every occasion and a Simpsons line always lightens the mood. I fear I may be watching that episode (amongst numerous other scenes set in Springfield Elementary School) over and over again for at least the next three years… No change there then…

My first journal publication

Kia ora! I'm not sure anyone really follows my blog anymore - it's been a couple of years since I last posted. Having a second chi...