tim | I choose... to deny someone else a choice.

Somehow, I suspect it's reason number 10 a hell of a lot of the time, and I just wish more people (other than the author of this article) would be honest about that.

And the comments. Oh, the comments. It's amazing how many women have ugly, aesthetically un-pleasing surnames and how many men have beautiful, mellifluous surnames. Also how many women have boring, common surnames and how many men have special unique surnames. Do all these people come from some subculture where families give different surnames to their sons than to their daughters? (No, I don't think any of them are Icelandic.) Or do surnames just become that much more alluring when they appear on a man's driver's license? Someone who just doesn't like their assigned-at-birth name or their family of origin can choose from thousands, perhaps millions of surnames that are not the surname of their intended spouse -- and yet, they rarely seem to, any more than very many straight men say "I just don't like my name!" or "I don't want to maintain a connection with my father."

Look, the problem with wanting to silence the whole name change debate is that if people would admit to reason number 10 being in effect, then there would be no debate. It's disingenuousness that's irritating, not what someone does with their name, because the latter is a private choice but the former is part of a larger pattern of denial of gender inequality.

But it's not really a private choice, anyway; the choice to be called a particular name only in the privacy of one's home by people intimate to oneself would never be called into question. What the article above barely addresses is that one person's choice to uphold patriarchal naming traditions now limits the choices of an unknown number of people later; traditions only survive when people like you and me choose to perpetuate them. We have agency. Making up a last name or picking one at random from the phone book would satisfy one's desire to rename oneself without foreclosing the choices of others.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've heard several married women in their 20s or 30s tell me that at first, they didn't change their name, but after time, they realized that it would just make their lives easier in many social settings. One interesting example was that the mother went to pick up her child from school, but the caretakers did not believe the child was hers, because the child had the father's name and not the mother's. I'm naturally in favor of a person choosing whatever name s/he wants, but I get the impression that some choices are more favorable in a practical sense. As with many things in American society, the freedom is there to follow your beliefs or ideals, but unfortunately, you can expect to face hurdles getting there.

BTW, like the goatee. :)

It's not a goatee, just bad lighting :-)

I hear about these stories about the mothers picking up the children from school, but I also know various women who didn't go patriarchal and have children and, well, their children never seemed to get sucked up into some cosmic vortex into which children with different last names from their mothers end up. Surely if that ends up being a problem, it's a problem once. I don't have kids, but I was married for six years (to a man, while most people thought I was female) and the only time that me having a different last name from my spouse was an issue was one time, while applying for car insurance. (We didn't end up going with that car insurance company.)

Plus, if you're really a feminist and it's really that important to you for your whole family to have the same last name, you could always, I don't know, have everyone take the woman's last name.

Edited 2010-11-07 18:52 (UTC)

Maybe you should try the goatee. It seems like it would work. ;)

Of course, there are multiple solutions to every problem, and not everybody faces the same issues. It's also possible to be independent, non-patriarchal, and feminist and still take a spouse's surname. These things are not mutually exclusive.

My real point was that there are occasions in which individuals can choose to do something that goes against their desires or ideals, because it is simply easier in practice. One can choose the battles that one fights. This doesn't mean that changing or keeping one's name is an insignificant thing. Rather, there are some people who choose not to fight that battle.

And there would be no debate if people simply said "I choose not to fight that battle" rather than "I just didn't like my name."

(In addition, I'm not sold on the idea that taking on the patriarchal naming convention can be a feminist choice, given that all the plausible problems with not doing so could just as well be solved either by taking any of the thousands of possible surnames that aren't your spouse's surname or your father's surname, or by the husband and children taking the woman's surname, except for the "I actually like patriarchy" problem. Certainly, feminist people can make non-feminist choices, but the choices do not become elevated by virtue of the person's ostensibly high ideals.)

Edited 2010-11-07 19:22 (UTC)

That example gets brought up a lot. It's hard to believe that, in a society where divorce and remarriage are common, there are people—people who deal with kids and their parents every day—who cannot cope with a child's name not matching their parent's. There must be plenty of step-parents who have the same problem, but I haven't heard anyone argue that the solution to this is for all the people involved to change their last names. After all, that would be crazy, unlike choosing a patriarchy-conformant choice.

I choose... to deny someone else a choice.

Socially easier

Re: Socially easier

Re: Socially easier

Re: Socially easier

Re: Socially easier