Reader’s Opinion | A man remains a man when he marries, but a woman becomes a wife. What if the man became a screamer?

Opinion|Reader’s opinion

I went this summer I got married and got a new title: wife. The new title feels good, it says that something has changed and strengthened in the relationship between me and my Spouse. There are many mornings when my Husband looks at me with light in his eyes and calls me wife. We smile at each other and through the title wife we ​​both try to understand the new form of our relationship.

In these moments, however, the difference that maintains the inequality of a man’s and a woman’s marital titles to some extent becomes concrete. I don’t know how to call my spouse in the same way by any name that emphasizes our relationship, because in the Finnish language there is no similar married name for a man as for a woman. There is a man and a wife. Husband and wife. Unlike, for example, in English: husband and wife, wife and husband.

Although I like the title wife, for this reason it also creates conflicting feelings. Husband and wife. A man was a man even before he got married and now he got a wife. A woman, a wife, on the other hand, is defined through titles, again through a man. This seems like a big deal these days.

When talking to strangers, I also find it silly to refer to my spouse as a man, because the word man really only describes my spouse’s gender. At the same time, I regret that I can’t call my spouse by a new, changed name, which would allow us to celebrate the changed form of our relationship in the same way.

Is it time to make a change? The day after our wedding, we came up with a suitable title for our husband and one of them stuck: Huuspa. Roots borrowed a little from English, but suitably Finnish in color and at least a gentle and slightly absent-minded character that describes my own huuspan.

Would this be a new word in the Finnish language as part of a more equal marriage?

Miitta Ojell-Järventau

master of philosophy, psychology teacher, Tampere

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