Photo Credit Timothy Goodman
What's in a name? The answer is increasingly subjective.
"I never got used to saying 'husband,'" said Tony Valenzuela, the executive director of the Lambda Literary Foundation, who married his husband in California in 2008.
"Secretly, for years, I kept referring to him as my partner if he wasn't in the room," Mr. Valenzuela said. "There's something deeply heteronormative about 'husband' that feels like a betrayal of my very queer identity. Like, if I say it, people will picture him wearing a cardigan reading the newspaper by the fireplace. I do say 'husband' more now, but a tiny part of me cringes with shame when I do."
The spe aker and spiritual coach Robyn Vie Carpenter-Brisco calls her wife, Veronica Brisco, "my wusband." Ms. Carpenter-Brisco explained: "She's my wife, but she's like a dude. She's more like a husband than a wife, so: wusband."
A loose approach to relationship titles — not to mention pronouns and proper names — has long existed within the gay and transgender communities; for example, calling a homosexual "mary" probably goes back to the 1920s. But the debate over what to call one's same-sex spouse has become more pronounced since the legalization of gay marriage last year.
Continue reading the main story "Before, when you had a commitment ceremony," Ms. Carpenter-Brisco said, "you didn't change your name. But now your life is joined, so all of these considerations become a thing. What do you say at the end of the wedding ceremony?"
Before marrying in 2013, Ms. Carpenter-Brisco already had a hyphenated name, Vie-Carpenter, because her father had taken his wife's maiden name. Her partner wanted Ms. Vie-Carpenter to take her last name, Brisco. But Ms. Vie-Carpenter was already known professionally by her maiden name; also, she loved that her name translated loosely to "life builder." Moreover, she felt that, as a feminist, she shouldn't have to change her name.
After contemplating a variety of options, she announced to her partner that the married name she would take would be a fabulous one: Robyn Vie Carpenter de la Brisco. ("I love being long and ridiculous," she told me. "It was my Pippi Longstocking moment.") But, alas, putting such a name on a marriage certificate would have required more legal maneuvering than she was prepared for, so she opted for the less fanciful Robyn Vie Carpenter-Brisco. Who has a wusband.
For many gay and lesbians who marry, the nomenclature-based fluidity is specific to legal forms. When Timothy Neumann, the executive director of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, Mass., married his husband last fall in Massachusetts, the designations on the marriage certificate read "Party One" and "Party Two.� �
Mr. Neumann said: "We went with me as Party One and Tom as Party Two, and now from time to time we introduce ourselves to others as Party One and Party Two. Our ring bearer said that I could make amends for being first too often by blending our names: Meshor-Neumann could become Tim and Tom Mermann, but we thought that was just too gay."
Some think that the designations on legal forms bespeak a larger truth. Michael Jay McClure, an associate professor of art history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said: "My friends Jill and Anna got married this summer in New York City, where the government forms refer to a Spouse A and a Spouse B. Of course, I asked how could someone ever submit to being Spouse B; I mean, what kind of person wants to be on the B list? Then I realized the logic: only a real Spouse A type could be confident enough to take the title of Spouse B and know, inside, that they were really Spouse A all along."
At least one gay couple neatly dodges the heteronormative by going hyper-specific. Art Smith, a chef who has worked fo r Oprah Winfrey as well as for the former Florida governors Bob Graham and Jeb Bush, said that his husband, Jesus Salgueiro, is known by all the couples' friends and colleagues as Baby Jesus: "We get more reaction from folks with that name than with 'Chef Art's husband.'"
To some minds, the easing up of traditional labels reflects the belief that sexual orientation is less assigned than chosen.
The transgender comedian Ian Harvie, who played the bearded, flannel-clad teacher's assistant who shaved Gaby Hoffman's character on "Transparent," said: "People ask me all the time how my partner identifies given that she's with a trans man. Is she a lesbian? But peoples' identification now has more to do with how they fe el about their own identity than who they're sleeping with. My gender and my identity doesn't force my partner's to change — she can be whatever she wants to be. I've dated lesbians who've identified as lesbians even though they're dating a trans guy."
Indeed, there are many lessons for gay people to learn from the transgender community, where titles and pronouns are even more in flux. "If someone wants to be called a certain name, why not respect them?" the transgender stand-up comic Julia Scotti said. "During my transition, my mother, in her passive-aggressive way, called me Lidia for six months. She thought I looked more like a Lidia."
Transgender people and married gay couples may need to get into the habit of laughing off their inte rlocutors' fumblings. For their part, the interlocutors may do best to be alert and to be willing to make tiny adjustments. Some married same-sexers want to be called wives or husbands; some, partners; some, "hersbands" or "wusbands" or "husfriends"; some, "support staff." Ask them.
As Mr. Harvie said: "People adjust all the time. If there are two people named John in your office, eventually someone will say, 'Let's call one John and the other Jay.'" Though even some of the most socially liberal people fumble over newly coined terminology like "wusband" or "wifi," using such terms, it turns out, can be quite fun, similar to referring to the singer Rihanna as RiRi or to the writer Edmund Wilson as Bunny.
To go the extra mile i s to make a powerful statement about the future of your relationship with the person in question. What the activist and transgender sensitivity trainer Imani Henry said of transgender people may also be said of married gay people: "We don't really transition, it's the people around us who transition. They're trying to figure out if they're going to stay in our life, or if they're going to stay in their own."
As Robyn Vie Carpenter de la Brisco would have put it: touché.
