Guest Post: Willful Girls

Guest Post by Miri. Miri is a Canadian student and newlywed exploring her roles as a wife, daughter, and spiritual being through writing. 

Last April future in-laws’ learned that I might not be taking their last name and that my future husband might instead be taking mine. My father-in-law was particularly unhappy with this. The ensuing conversations I and my mom had with him demonstrated many tools of power I was then not able to put a name to. The forces at play were influenced by tradition, religion, and class. They shaped how conversation surrounding the subject ensued. During this conflict my mother and I were placed in the role of “willful girls”, a term I came across during a university course on feminism I took a few months later. The course put a name to something I had been experiencing particularly within church and family.

My then-fiance “James” and I were unsure of what surname we would use after we were married. We were considering several possibilities at the time. My future in-laws, “Mark and Kaylee,” became aware of mine and my fiance’s uncertainty with which name we would be using when my mom mentioned to Kaylee that we were leaning towards using my name at the time. Mark began incessantly calling and texting my mom. He accused her of pushing her opinions on us and reminded her that it was not her choice or place to influence us. Within our parents’ ward, my mom is known as an outspoken and progressive person and it is likely due to this reputation Mark assumed she was behind us considering non-traditional name options. He urged us not to decide anything yet and to speak to him and Kaylee first.

It was odd to me that Mark thought my mom was out of line for expressing an opinion on the subject yet wanted to meet with us to be a part of the decision making. Later he repeatedly said that this was a “family decision” and not one James and I could make alone. This is when it occurred to me that my mom and I may be under the label “Willful Girls”, a term I learned in class that describes the infantilization of women who “step out of line”. Mark was, unconsciously, or consciously, using tools of oppression to quiet us. James and I arranged to meet with Mark and Kaylee to discuss this.

Mark spoke about the tradition of a woman taking her husband’s name dating back to Abrahamic times, though this tradition did not actually start until much later in medieval Britain. He also valued the tradition having value and following a patrilineal line of achievement. He emphasized the pride he took in his family’s name and things his ancestors had done that he was proud of. Mark wanted his future grandchildren to carry this name and go on to add more to this legacy. My counterpoint to this was the many things my maternal grandmother has done. She is known in her community in her own right for her outspokenness and service she freely provides to her ward and community. However, this led me to a realization; my grandmother’s name is the name of the family she married into, not the family she was born into, my mother’s name is not her mother’s name, and should I take my fiance’s name, my name will not be either of their names. While we often look at a patrilineal legacy, women are never viewed according to their maternal line or legacy. Men’s achievements contribute to their family name while women’s achievements are viewed individually and do not contribute to the legacy of a family line. The tradition of women taking their husband’s names emerged as a symbol of husband’s taking on ownership and responsibility of a woman from her father. Interestingly, though my father-in-law said he valued this only as a tradition and did not view me as someone who is owned, he spoke almost exclusively to James and frequently cut me off to instead question my fiance. I had prepared some things I wanted to say during this confrontation, but I spoke very little. This experience made me understand more how women in my ancestry had stayed silent as I was now experiencing how useless it felt to speak when no one wanted to listen.

Belonging and class were the two most controversial terms in our discussion. Mark did not want to use the term ownership, though I felt the way he spoke reflected a belief that surnames symbolized a form of ownership. He saw the situation as me leaving my family and joining his, and so my name should reflect that transfer in belonging. He was also operating in a sort of class system. My maiden name is a widespread and old name within our region, when I tell people my last name I am usually answered with “X! Are you related to so and so X?” and I usually am. Mark converted to the church at eighteen so his wife and children are the only ones with their name in the Church. He only has two sons who could have more children that would carry his name and grow it in the Church. This shows that women’s voices were not being considered in this discussion by first considering women to belong to the family they are born into and later the family they are married into, and through silencing ancestral women by only considering patrilineal lines. My value, and women’s value throughout our church’s history, was being reduced to how we could grow and further the patrilineal line we were assimilated into.

The power we held as individuals in this conversation was greatly different. The voice most missed was Kaylee’s; she said very little and I know very little about her feelings on the matter. Because she was a woman in a male dominated conversation, she did not fight to be heard and therefore she was not heard. Mark held the most power as the patriarch in the conversation.The fact that men “preside” over their families and everyone can receive personal revelation means that men often receive personal revelation that trumps their wife’s and children’s revelation. Any argument I made could ultimately be defeated by Mark saying he had received divine revelation that was contrary to my opinion. Through reading Willful Girls in my textbook months later I was shocked to read the story of a willful girl who is punished by God for her rebelliousness. It was the first time I really internalized the idea of “God” being weaponized against women systematically. As one who is beyond scrutiny, anything attributed to Him is viewed as automatically right. Though I was aware of this being used historically on a grand sale for justifying colonization and moral crusades I had not previously considered this an issue in my personal life. I thought that since my church came after the colonizing and moral crusades, our version of Heavenly Father was never weaponized this way. This instance showed me how men in my life employed “God” as a tool to make their opinions have greater weight than women’s.

When a conflict arose between myself and my future in-laws, my father-in-law treated my mom and I as “willful girls”. Through this I realized that we had been both historically and culturally set up to either become willful girls or be lost in our silence. The idea of “God” is systematically employed to push willful girls into line through silencing and superiority tactics as was demonstrated in this surname disagreement. My now husband and I decided to hyphenate our names with mine coming first. Though we do not engage in arguments about it, we do not answer to the name James’ family occasionally calls us by.