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By nonawa • 14 years ago

My big fat shotgun wedding

I got married the other day.

Yup, just like that. After an hour of mulling it over, I eloped to City Hall to marry my wonderful live-in boyfriend whom I love and have been with for a year and a half. No, I’m not pregnant (eye roll). No, my now-husband is not an illegal immigrant.

So why the shotgun wedding? One (evidently all-too-common ) reason: health insurance.

My bf is a bartender and a student whose school’s insurance is exorbitant. I’m a reporter who works for a company that has a kick-ass medical plan. Without going into too much detail, a domestic partnership affadavit was standing in the way of my partner having awesome coverage and escaping $8000 worth of retroactive hospital bills. It was a no-brainer. Onto domestic partnership!

Problem is, the state of Illinois doesn’t let you get domestic partnership if you’re hetero . ("If they could, no one would get married!" the City Hall employee informed me smugly, as if 1. that fact was actually true and 2. rampant domestic partnerships would mean the end of the world.) Apparently you can’t be a part of the "system" if you’re queer, and you can’t opt out of the "system" if you’re straight. It started to seem so ridiculously arbitrary—and unfair! Did I really have to choose between leaving my honey vulnerable to unthinkable medical costs and a measly, $50 piece of paper?

The choice was obvious. We ...
By nonawa • 14 years ago

Parenting, blogs, and feminism

I recently wrote a piece for The Nation about the disconnect between mom activists/bloggers and young feminists, and I sent the link to Jessica and Courtney to get their thoughts.  Both of them disagreed—that they actually saw a lot of overlap between feminist blogs/community and parenting issues.  And it’s true. Feministing does post on these issues, such as here , here and here .

Yet, all of the mombloggers I talked to, feminist/activist/political or not, felt very separated from the young feminist community and discussions around it.  Blogs and orgs I mentioned in my article, like Sistas on the Rise and Hip Mama , as well as ones I didn’t, like MOMocrats and ...

I recently wrote a piece for The Nation about the disconnect between mom activists/bloggers and young feminists, and I sent the link to Jessica and Courtney to get their thoughts.  Both of them disagreed—that they actually ...