What's In A Name

So I wanted to talk a little bit about why I chose the name Lavinia Speaks for my foray into bloggery.

Originally, I needed a name to go by on a friend's blog, and chose Lavinia because it was the name of a woman that I was very close to who passed away about a year and a half ago. She was a fierce, powerful, smart, passionate woman who I admired very much, and I had a strong emotional connection to the name.

I'd been considering starting a project like this one for quite awhile, but something was holding me back. I've read feminist blogs before, and often (some of the ones I really like are in the links in the left hand column there), and I think that I was concerned that my voice couldn't possibly contribute anything useful to the discussion. But then I read the post at Shakes that I linked to yesterday, and I decided that if the only thing that my voice adds is sound among the growing din of smarter, better educated, more eloquent women writers, it's still better than staying silent.

I started thinking about the name I had chosen for myself in that context. For those of you who didn't spend five years and twenty five thousand dollars learning to read (AKA: receiving a liberal arts degree), Lavinia is the daughter of Titus Andronicus in the play of the same name. Basically she gets brutally raped, and has her hands cut off and her tongue cut out. This happens to her because she is a woman related to a powerful man. Her sex and her connection to the man the action centers around leads to a vicious attack, and the literal loss of her voice; a symbolic loss felt by too many women in the world we live in. Lavinia is an early example of what Gail Simone calls "Women in Refrigerators", which I will almost certainly discuss in more detail in another post. Everything that happens to her happens because of her sex, and because of how she is connected to the main character (a man) in the story. Also, what happens to her is horrible rape. Not uncommon with WIRs.

In any case, these things all coming together led me to take the name, and to make sure that I am not responsible for the silencing of my own voice, simply by choosing to remain silent. I hope to throw off some of the fear of rejection and judgement that has held me back from speaking out for this long, because I know that that fear and silence is what is expected of me from too many people.