"Wifey"/ Eating My Words

   Recently C received an email from a man that he knows. At the end of the email, the man wrote, say hi to your wifey for me. As C read this to me I was instantly furious. You've got to be kidding. Wifey?  I have a name and he knows very well what it is.  I felt insulted, disrespected, dismissed and treated like an object. There were not enough polite words in my vocabulary to describe how I felt.
  I should pause to explain why this set me off. I am not a fan of the word "wife". I use it because it is the common term for the female half of a married couple. However, I feel like it has a somewhat negative connotation to it. To me, there is an implication of inequality that makes me uncomfortable. I prefer spouse. The LDS will sometimes refer to their spouses as "companions" or "eternal companions". I can live with "sweetheart" or "other half" (never better half that's demeaning).
  Another thing that irritated me about being referred to as "wifey" was the "-y" at the end. In the English language adding "-y" or "-ie" at the end of a verb tends to make it a diminutive. Like kitty, doggy, girly, I think you get what I mean.
  Poor C was not prepared for the firestorm of rage that the word "wifey" set off. I marched around the house fuming about being treated like an object, being defined as nothing more than a piece of arm candy and being treated like an appendage.
  After a few minutes, a thought came into my mind. This was one of those moments when I would have to eat my words. Again. Lately, I've been a bit scornful on the subject of political correctness and being offended. I've come out a few times and wrote that too many people are getting too offended by too many things.
  It's easy to write things like that when no one has said anything offensive to you....
  I think part of the thing that triggered this fury fit of mine was watching the movie "The Post" recently. (It's a good movie by the way.) One of the characters in the movie is Katharine Graham, who was the publisher of the Washington Post during the time period the movie was set in. There were several scenes where the men around here were discussing the newspaper like she wasn't in the room. In some scenes when she was asked a question, a man would answer it. Toward the end of the film, another character praised her courage in making the decision to publish some things that were unflattering to the government. When a male character said that he was courageous too, the first person explained. The reason why Katharine Graham was more courageous because as a woman in a male-dominated field, she was overlooked, ignored and taken for granted. The fact that she made this decision and made it stick in the face of great obstacles showed great courage.
  I could relate to Katharine Graham in the movie. In the early part of my career, I had similar challenges. I think years of having to deal with obvious and not so obvious sexism finally caught up with me. I thought I'd finally come to a place where I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore.
  I guess not.
   The first thing I have to do is eat my words. Fortunately, they are not fattening. As for the rest, I'm not sure. I'm no longer willing to accept that kind of behaviour like I did 25 years ago. There are ways to handle this and I need to figure out what they are......