The feminist parents who reject ‘patriarchal’ tradition
ACADEMICS Rebecca Steinfeld, 37, and Charles Keidan, 41, describe themselves as feminists who reject traditional, ‘patriarchal’ marriage.
Both come from large families of lawyers and met at a London School of Economics lecture about Gaza in 2010. They now live together in Hammersmith, West London. While celebrating their third year together in the Pyrenees, they decided to get engaged in a way that ‘reflected’ their values.
They announced the news by putting a notice in the Jewish Chronicle, asking the paper to create a ‘special section’ for ‘forthcoming civil partnerships’. The publication obliged, but in October 2014 the couple were refused a civil partnership by the Registrars at Chelsea Old Town Hall.
In December that year they launched a legal challenge, which has spanned three court hearings over four years.
They put their rejection of marriage down to a combination of history and social norms, describing it as ‘a union in which women were exploited for their domestic and sexual services’.
Mr Keidan has also cited traditions such as the father giving away his daughter and ‘virginal white dresses’, as creating unequal ‘social expectations’. Since starting their campaign, they have had two children, Eden, two, and baby Ariel. The children use a fused family name, Keidstein.
Miss Steinfeld, an Oxford graduate who researches on gender issues, said having two children had made them ‘keenly aware of the vulnerability of our situation’, given they had no family rights.
The couple insist they are not anti-marriage, with Mr Keidan saying that, for them, a civil partnership was simply ‘a better fit’. Mr Keidan edits a magazine about philanthropy and Miss Steinfeld is a visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London.