My struggle with the term “partner”

by Allison Zacharias | Published 26th July 2016 in Ways of Seeing | 2

Lately I have been struggling with how to introduce my significant other to new people. Since moving to Winnipeg three years ago, I often am meeting new people, and telling them about my life means telling them about the man who is part of it. In certain circles I feel comfortable saying “my husband” because our relationship is well known among the group or I know that by saying “husband” no one is going to falsely assume I spend my days cleaning and he spends his days working to support us. But I often wonder if that’s enough? I wonder if using the term “husband” to describe my significant other is too restricted in its connotations and the term “partner” would be better-suited.

What’s in a word?

My qualms are rooted in the feminist perspective that names hold power. By using the term “husband” I am signifying that we are married in the sense that in front of witnesses we exchanged vows and were united in the eyes of the government. The term “husband” has the connotations of institutional marriage, the patriarchal system within which the woman is suppressed and the man is dominant.

“Husband” is also deeply rooted in the church and the Christian bible. Verses like Ephesians 5:21-24 that tells wives to submit to their husbands and husbands to be the head of the wife are reasons why the terms “husband” and “wife” are so problematic. It’s not just about gender roles, but the implication that “husband” has historically referred to a bread-winning head-of-the-household heterosexual male.

Everyday feminism

Drew Bowling wrote about his decision to call his female significant other his partner on Everyday Feminism. Bowling chose to use the word “partner” rather than “wife” because the term “effaces the concept of normal, and makes indistinguishable my two-person, male-female relationship from any same-sex or poly relationship.

“I simply chose not to passively perpetuate any anachronistic notions of gender in any relationship.”

Bowling emphasizes how his decision to use partner negates any gender assumptions that come with using the terms “husband” and “wife.” But what about husband and husband or wife and wife relationships? How do they choose to speak about themselves and each other?

Steven Petrow writes an advice column for the The Washington Post and runs the website Gay & Lesbian Manners. Petrow believes the key thing is to pay close attention to the way gay couples introduce each other and the way they describe their relationship. He quotes author Marc Solomon who wrote, “For many same-sex couples, the use of the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ are powerful reminders to others that their marriage is fully equal in every way.”

The term “partner” has a long history of being used to describe same-sex couples who were not legally able to be married. For those thousands of couples who were waiting and wishing for their relationship to be legally recognized using the terms “husband” and “wife” is a victory.

Earlier this year Michelangelo Signorile of The Huffington Post. expressed his own struggle with the terms “husband” and “partner” in describing his marriage to the man he was in a relationship with for 18 years. Now that they are married life isn’t much different for them, but describing their relationship has become a dance between calling each other “husband” and “partner.”

“Am I self-loathing for thinking it’s too heterosexual – perhaps deep down thinking we’re not worthy of it – or does that make me forward thinking for resisting acceptance of a word which delineates gender and denotes possession in an institution that once did (and, in some places, still does) allow ownership of one spouse by another.

“‘Partner’, as cold as it is, does connote equality, doesn’t mark gender and doesn’t imply possession.”

The freedom of feminism

As for me? I think Signorile makes the most salient point. When speaking with people I do not know, the term “partner” evokes a kind of ambiguity that does not evoke gender or possession. Saying “partner” bypasses all the negativity that has surrounded the term “husband.”

Yet there is something about the word that I can’t seem to let go of. I think it stems from something Geez assistant editor Kyla Neufeld wrote in her three-part blog series Flailing Feminist. about navigating gender roles; “If feminism is about women having the freedom to choose how they live their lives, then my friend is absolutely within her rights to be in the home if she wants.”

Her words make me wonder if the freedom of feminism translates to the language I choose to speak about my partner? Sometimes I like the way “husband” sounds, and I think it’s okay to use it now and then.

What do you think? How did you decide which term to use? Let me know in the comments or email me at allison@geezmagazine.org.

Allison Zacharias is a summer intern at Geez. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.