[UbuntuWomen] Gender and email [was: Free Ego :)

[Ireene-Sointu]

Hi!
Right to one of my very long term preoccupations: setting of genders 
opposing each other instead of seeing us all as a part of humanity. For 
me it all started when as a single parent of two young children I first 
had to face the question of names. I had first been known by my father's 
surname, then by my violent husband's surname. What next? First I went 
back to my father's name and also changed my children's surname to it. 
(There is an interesting novel written by an Irish born Candian male 
writer, Brian Moore, about a woman who has an identity crises having 
changed pers (her/his) name a few times to the name of the man per was 
married to at any given time. It all goes blank for the main character 
and per cannot remember what pers name is, who per is.)
I changed my name again while doing my degree in London (finished in 
1984). I dropped the surname altogether and also from then on refused to 
use any title indicating my gender in front of my name. I have labels 
printed with a message: "Return to sender. Reason for return: addressed 
incorrectly. Legally I have one personal name. NO surname - NO title." 
Even the government departments get the mail returned if addressed 
incorrectly. 
My reason for doing this is that I want to emphasize our common 
humanity. I think all the names should be available for all the people 
regardless of gender. For this reason when I got pregnant again at the 
age of 39 I, with the agreement of the father, decided that the child 
would have a so called male name if a girl and a so called female name 
if a boy. (One Finnish name from my side and one Irish name from the 
father's side.) So that is what happened. Furthermore, the child has a 
surname which refers equally to both parents. The surname is made out of 
the first three letters of my personal name and the first three letters 
of the father's personal name.
Last, I got the idea of using "per" as a first person singular pronoun 
from a novel by Marge Piercy, /Woman on the Edge of Time/. And there is 
an interesting novel by Ursula LeGuin, /The Left Hand of Darkness/, 
which deals with the gender issue.
With best wishes,
Imppu
 

Fred H Olson kirjoitti:
>
> So I ask the list
>
> Is there a legitimate reason for participants to know the gender of people
> who post here?
>
>
>   
> Fred,  my intro post:
>  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2008-April/001490.html
>  I plan to go to the Barcamp here on May 10th: http://barcamp.org/MinneBar
>
> --
> Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
> Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads:
> http://justcomm.org      My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org
> 612-588-9532 (7am-10pm CST/CDT)   Email: fholson at cohousing.org
>
>
>