Stephen And Tabitha King Strike Back At Headlines That Just Say 'His Wife'

She made a groundbreaking and literally Nobel Prize-worthy discovery of pulsars that help astronomers the world over map space.

However, she didn't receive the prize. Instead, it went to her male adviser, who didn't even believe her discovery was real at first.

And a recent backlash against headlines that ignore author Tabitha King's legacy suggest a new push to acknowledge the legacy of influential women.

The headlines tended to say that Stephen and "his wife" made the donation and they rarely mentioned her by name.

Yet, as Stephen wrote on Facebook, the opposite was actually true and the donation was originally her idea.

This is one of the reasons that he sought to remind the press that she has a name.

By responding on her husband's official page, Tabitha could make sure that she was heard.

People couldn't pretend not to see it.

"In recent media coverage of a gift that my husband (ironic usage) and I made to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, we became Stephen King and his wife.

Wife is a relationship or status. It is not an identity."

"I have sons. You could have referred to me as Mother-of-Novelists. I have a daughter but wouldn’t it be just silly to refer to me as Mother-of-Clergy?"

"In the meantime, you might consider the unconscious condescension in your style book, and give women their names."

Boom.

For one thing, she leaves a distinct impression as an author in her own right. While not all of her works are rooted in horror, those that fit in that genre are known to express a quiet brutality that Stephen doesn't often explore.

As he told The Guardian, he had actually thrown his idea for Carrie out and it only turned into the story it did because Tabitha rescued it from the trash and told him she wanted to know the rest of the story.

Which shows a lot of self-awareness on his part. A lot of authors don't take the time to learn from people who actually relate to the characters they write, whether they're a different gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and so on.

Both Tabitha and Stephen had come much too far for one of them to just be defined as the other's spouse, although this led many commenters to jokingly call Stephen "Tabitha's husband."

Hill also knows a little something about escaping a more famous family member's shadow, as he chose his pen name as a way to ensure his success was based on his own merits and not his father's name.

And by then he'd given readers plenty of reason to respect him as an individual, having ended up on The New York Times bestseller list before the connection to his dad was known.

So we should all remember to define people as themselves rather than by the person they are married or related to.