The Personal vs. the Political

There's a concept in sociology that there is a difference between individual problems and issues.  Problems, the theory goes - are more personal in nature.  Social issues are when a similar experience happens for many people.  I don't fully understand it myself and may not be able to articulate it clearly.  It's just interesting for me that some experiences can be very common for people in similar cultures and with similar backgrounds.

For example, after all these years of reading former mormon stories, blogs, posts on the internet, there are definitely many things that people have in common after leaving the mormon church (even leaving fundamentalist religions).  The experiences are not universal, but there are many hallmarks that are typical and not unusual.

I read this article in the atlantic some months back.

I am not surprised that chores are a good indicator of marital satisfaction. It seems so basic.  It also seems  incredibly obvious.

This quote from one of the participants in the article was interesting:

Personally, I don't have a life. My life is my family because whatever their needs are they always come first before mine and I can honestly say that. He—and I think it's great—he does his golfing, he does his bike riding, and it doesn't take a long time and he needs that. I don't get that yet. I don't have that yet. I don't have the time or the luxury. That for me is like a huge luxury that I don't see happening in any time in the near future.

Yikes.

What's surprising for me is that this experience is common.  It really shouldn't be so shocking for me.  We still live in a patriarchy. While American society doesn't have the same strict gender roles that mormonism does, strict gender roles still exist.  Discrimination against women still exists.

When something goes wrong with kids, society still (often) looks straight at the mom.  Was she doing stuff for herself?  Was she putting herself first?  And is it her responsibility to negotiate all this stuff with her husband because ultimately she is responsible for the marriage, for maintaining the family?  Some of these ugly beliefs are still out there, and still often referenced consciously (or sub-consciously).

What surprises me as well is that for me and my husband, despite being two college educated individuals, both self-proclaimed feminists, we still have run into this issue (negotiating about who does what).  Truthfully, it's a bit embarrassing for me, because I've read "The Feminine Mystique".  I've read lots of feminist theory and I thought my relationship(s) would be different.  

It's difficult to be co-parents.   It's tough to work and raise kids (and maintain a home). And it's not that one of us should stay home, or that one of us is shirking our duty.   It's that these negotiations are hard.  Being equitable is not easy.  It has to be conscious.  And it can't be assumed - it's a continuous process.  Both of us grew up in families where this negotiation either failed or wasn't equitable - despite at least one set of parents being feminists.

The space between idealism and reality is larger than I'm comfortable admitting.

And it's not just about who does the dishes, but about who plans. Who picks up the slack.

For me, I appreciated the article because it's nice to know that this negotiation is not just me.  This is not just my relationship - a personal thing between me and my husband.  This is a societal trend that many people struggle with, some more than others. And being aware that it exists and admitting it can help promote change.

Blogs!!!

Yes - I've mentioned before that I have this horrible habit of googling people's names. Try it sometime. It's fascinating. One of my sisters, the doctor, tells a funny story that she stopped googling people's names when she found one of her ex-boyfriend's blogs - where he described strange sex acts. Then she googled another ex-boyfriend, to find out he had been killed by a drunk driver.

Well, I have not yet been warned off this practice. Yet.

So last night I found the blogs of two friends, one from high school. He wasn't a good friend at all, but a friend of a friend. We ran in the same circle of friends, if that makes sense. Haven't seen him in over ten years. But there was his blog - complete with flickr photos and everything. Funny how you look at a flickr photo for a minute thinking "I know this person" and then you realize, oh my goodness, that's X!!! Perhaps that's just me.

Then I found the blog of another friend. He eschews the weblog format (even has that in his description) and doesn't talk (too much) about personal goings-on. What I find fascinating is just how political his blog is. I don't remember him being all that political. Things change in ten years, I suppose.

Yes, there are reasons I'm not linking to either blog - again - it's my very boring privacy hangup. I was discussing this blog with my husband the other day. He said, "Well, I could google your name and find your blog." I replied - "No, you couldn't. Thank you very much. You couldn't find it. You wanna bet?"

I have this absurd pride in that. Other people can blog with their real names and post real photos and that's ok. I choose not to, for various reasons. Including some odd ex-boyfriends (although none as scary as chansons but other people I just don't want to share my thoughts with. Also - I have some thoughts I'd rather not share with my co-workers and some IRL friends. So.

So now I'm curious if there are other friends who have blogs - some who also have my privacy hangup or not. We'll see. It's a strange road to tread. Also to determine what someone will share online and what they won't.

Have you had any odd discoveries googling people's names? Have you found any odd blogs of former friends/coworkers?