Wise Words from a French Socialist

While thumbing through Bartlett’s Quotations a couple of weeks ago (yes, in search of wedding ceremony material), I came across a quote by Léon Blum, from a work of his called On Marriage:

Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages
at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in
the courage of making a choice.

Over the last two weeks, as I’ve mulled over some of the major decisions before me (which law school to attend; whether to buy a used gasoline-powered car now or wait until we can afford a hybrid, whenever that might be), I’ve thought of Blum’s quote again and again. In some ways, he makes a simple point, but it’s helped me realize that when a choice confronts me, my first impulse is generally to regret that I can’t have the best of both situations, and I tend to dwell on the opportunities I’ll miss by choosing one alternative over another.

In fact, as I look back over my adult life, I can see that I’ve been terribly resistant to making choices. I began college double-majoring in viola performance and English, then switched to studio art, then art history, and ended up in English again (and transferred from one school to another somewhere in the middle). After college, I drifted around a bit, trying my hardest not to settle on a career (though I didn’t see it that way then). Last spring, when I decided to go to law school, initially I was thrilled to have a trajectory at last, but by summer the doubts had set in. I worried (and still do, somewhat) that by choosing law I was rejecting a life in literature, or art, or journalism. Of course, it would be ridiculous to think that I can never again pursue any of those things once I set foot in law school. But I’ve had to admit to myself that even if I continue to write, I’m not likely to have a career as a writer, or an artist. I’m going to have a career as an advocate. I’ve made a choice, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s what we have to do in life.

Somewhat ironically, Blum himself (as Wikipedia informs me) couldn’t decide between literature and law, and he studied both at the Sorbonne. But he went on to make great, weighty choices. As the first Socialist prime minister of France, he had to decide whether to involve France in the Spanish Civil War (he decided against it, to preserve political alliances in France, but the decision cost him his position).

Slowly, I’m starting to accept the imperative of making choices. It helps to recognize that it can take courage to make even a small choice. And I can focus on the new opportunities each choice opens up for me, not on those I’ve lost.

January, Again

The year since I last updated this blog has brought a series of dramatic (well, to me, anyway) changes in my life: I decided very suddenly to apply to law school; my boyfriend, Ryan, graduated from his master's program and we moved from Ann Arbor to Washington, DC, where I stopped copyediting from home and started working for a nonprofit; Ryan and I decided, after years of waffling on the subject, to get married; and I decided that I will most likely actually go to law school, now that I've been accepted. Despite all these changes, I'm continuing today with a post I began drafting last January, on a subject of questionable significance that nonetheless grows ever more pressing for Ryan and me as our wedding approaches: who should change his or her last name when a couple gets married, and what should he or she (or they) change it to?

Last year, I had only gotten as far as reading a few other people's reflections on marriage and name changes (most likely I intended to weave them skillfully into this post, but I'll just list them here):

• A Salon article by Audrey Fisch on combination names for children


• Another Salon piece by Carol Lloyd on the historical reasons for giving a child his father's name (Lloyd herself didn't follow this convention)


• A funny and thoughtful feminist defense of marriage by Lisa Miya-Jervis


• A list of options for changing (or not changing) one's name after marriage, on the Feminist Utopia website


• A scholarly article on societal perceptions of women who don't take their husbands' last names

I regret to say that although Ryan and I have been more actively thinking about and discussing name changes since we got engaged in August, the whole issue remains as much a problem as ever. Years ago, when we first decided that we'd stick it out together, but we weren't sure we liked the idea of marriage, we played with the idea of both taking a new last name as a signal of our commitment. We had a couple of friends whose parents had done that when they'd gotten married (in the seventies, most likely), and we liked the idea of choosing a new name to reflect a new union and the beginning of a new family. One friend's parents had combined the letters in their last names to create a new one, and the other friend's parents had taken the name of a little-known writer whom they both admired. Ryan and I have gotten the Scrabble letters out on more than one occasion to try the former approach, but we haven't been able to come up with anything we like. We've also considered adopting a maiden name that was dropped in one of our families. We like that idea because it provides some continuity with our family histories (well, one of them, at least) and also honors a female ancestor who was obliged (maybe) to drop her name. But, again, we haven't been able to find a name we really like.

We've mentioned to a few friends and family members that we're considering taking a new last name, and most of them seem to think it's really weird. Which brings us to another problem--will anyone take us seriously if we both change our names? We're both at stages in our careers where it wouldn't be too difficult to make the switch, but I can imagine some friends and family members, especially older ones, persisting in using our "real" names. So, some days, we're tempted not to change our names at all. I kind of like the Scandinavian sound of mine, even though I don't feel any particular attachment to my Scandinavian roots (perhaps because I come by them by way of Utah?). But we think we may have kids someday, and we'd both like to have the same last name as our kids (although I suspect it's becoming increasingly common for mothers--or fathers--and their children to have different names).

I just realized that nowhere in this discussion have I mentioned the possibility of my taking Ryan's last name, or his taking mine. That option doesn't feel very attractive to either of us. Neither of us wants to feel that his or her identity is being subsumed under the other's, no matter how symbolically. I think the best option really would be to find a new name that we can both take, but we may run out of time to think of one. The trick seems to be coming up with something we like that also feels as though it's ours.

Maybe It's Science, and Not Women, That's the Problem

When I first read that Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, had suggested that innate differences between men and women might partly explain why fewer women succeed in math and science careers, I was more amused than anything else. His statement seemed outrageous, and certain to inflame. Sure enough, the outcry, particularly from academics, was so great that Summers soon issued an apology. But predictably, his supporters were quick to rally, denouncing the uproar surrounding the Harvard president as analogous to a “Communist show trial” (see William Saletan’s article in Slate). These voices (almost uniformly male, I couldn’t help but notice) scolded Summers’s detractors for willfully ignoring science itself, and they argued that we should welcome research that might help us better understand the genetic differences between the sexes.

Sometime during this course of events, my amusement turned to anger, and I had to admit to myself that my anger stemmed partly from fear. The standard liberal argument against claims about innate differences between the sexes, and the one that jumped to my mind, is that social factors play the greater role in shaping the achievement gap between men and women in areas like math and science. This argument is appealing both because evidence of historical and contemporary discrimination against women, and the ways in which it has barred women from success, is easy to find and because social factors, such as discrimination, are changeable. But I couldn’t help worrying, what if men really are genetically predisposed to possess certain cognitive advantages over women? And the possibility that science might “prove” such a scenario to be true really freaked me out.

But the more I thought about the “innate differences” hypothesis as an explanation for why men are more successful than women in math and science, the more it led me back to social factors, or at least to a combination of biological and social factors. It seems possible that some cognitive differences between women and men do exist (though, obviously, we’re talking about group averages, and not individual ability), and if they do, if women learn differently from men, then why shouldn’t men succeed more often in math and science, since they’re the ones who have historically shaped the fields? In other words, it could be that math and science privilege men’s ways of thinking and learning because, overwhelmingly, men have been the architects of these disciplines as we understand and teach them.

If I follow this line of thinking, it almost seems that Summers and his supporters are right, and we should endeavor to learn more about the differences in men’s and women’s cognition, if only so that we can help more women succeed in male-dominated fields. But I have serious reservations about attempts to establish the genetic differences between men and women. For one thing, the public, encouraged by the biotechnology industry, seems to view genes as the essential expression of who we are, even though research has shown that organisms with identical genes may develop differently depending on environmental and other unknown factors. I also fear that findings about genetic differences in cognition would devolve into claims about the relative intelligence of men and women. Though I think such claims would be meaningless because social factors cannot help but influence our understanding of intelligence and our ways of measuring it, these claims could be damaging to women.

We know there are women who shine just as bright as men in the fields of math and science. Why can’t we work on finding ways to encourage other girls and women to pursue these disciplines (girls’ math clubs, for example, that value exploration rather than competition), rather than trying to show that women as a group might be less genetically predisposed to succeed in these areas? Maybe once we get more women involved in math and science, they can fix whatever it is about these male-dominated fields and their cultures that is discouraging to women.

Car as Cuisinart

I wouldn't have thought my first post on this blog would be about cars, but since this is the last January that we'll live an hour from the Motor City, Ryan, Greg, and I decided to go to the Detroit Auto Show today. The show was flashy, but it wasn’t the spectacle I’d expected. After all, it was just cars, and cars don’t usually excite me (the hybrids at this show being a notable exception) the way they often seem to excite other people. Even before I knew about greenhouse gases, oil crises, and urban sprawl, I wasn't into cars—they’ve just never turned me on. But that’s not to say I didn’t find some of the exhibits at the show entertaining. There was a minivan whose entire side opened vertically, like a DeLorean’s doors. The spokesperson achieved this effect with a remote control, then used the control to call forth and unfold the passenger seats, which were hidden in the floor when the door first opened. A young boy who was standing in front of me turned around with a little stamp of his feet to see if his parents were catching all this—the look on his face was one of nearly uncontainable excitement. Of course, there were the spectators themselves to watch—a mix of serious-looking men who wanted serious posed pictures of themselves sitting in the cars and giddy children who were collecting every piece of literature they could find and stuffing it into the plastic bags the makers at the show had provided for just that purpose. These kids won’t be driving for years—car culture, indeed.

I have to admit that the hybrids did genuinely excite me. Ryan and I were both a little embarrassed by our enthusiasm for them—they’re still cars, they’re still destructive to the environment, and they still encourage sprawl-style urban growth. As Greg said, the car companies are so good at co-opting our ideals! But we liked the Toyota Prius more than we thought we would. There are some weird little things about it (a small, electric shifter that comes out of the dashboard), but I think they’re the kinds of things you’d get used to. When we got home, we did a little research on the web (car lust!) and found a review of the Prius by the Chicago Sun-Times auto editor, Dan Jedlicka. He liked the car generally (gave it an 8 out of 10), but he listed as one of three cons, “Appliance-like feel.” He ended the article by saying, “The Prius is an exotic car, although not in the same way a Ferrari or Lamborghini is exotic. Unlike those sports cars, it feels much like an appliance, with no soul. What else is to be expected from a car mainly designed to provide high fuel economy?”

I had to laugh at this objection—the car lacks a soul? At the same time, I realize that many, many people, not just auto editors, view cars in these terms—such wording signals how strongly embedded the car culture really is in this country. I’ve noticed that friends of mine—young, liberal environmentalists—seem to feel emotionally attached to their cars: two of my girlfriends have had particularly strong feelings for their Volvos, and another friend named her car. When I discussed car-sharing programs with my dad, he said he couldn’t imagine them really taking off, at least at first, because of the tendency of many car owners to consider their cars a deeply personal space, and to associate them with their identities: Your car is who you are.

We imagine that our cars provide us with an independence that bikes, public transit, and car-sharing programs can never match, and while that may be true to some extent, it is also partly illusory—we can only go where the road takes us. So we keep building roads, and as a result, we have a self-reinforcing car-based infrastructure that is choking us, and it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll be able to improve on it as long as we think of cars as things with souls, things that define us, things that we love in an emotional, intensely personal way. Maybe it’s time that we do start thinking of cars as appliances, ones that we only use when we need them—let’s face it, for most meals, it really isn’t worth lugging out the food processor. And as appliances, shouldn’t cars be as efficient as possible? Hybrids seem to be a step in the right direction.