Gah, patriarchy.

"The issue is the amount of effort put into pretending that the name change isn't sexist. I'€™ve heard all the excuses as to why any one woman's decision to change her name isn't caving to sexism.

1. It's better for everyone in the family to have the same last name.
2. What about the kids?
3. Hyphenation is stupid.
4. I don'™t like my last name anyway.
5. Both last names are patriarchal, so why does it matter?

All of these are clearly excuses for one reason and one reason only-”if you think a name change is necessary, you can have the man change his name. It's an elegant solution. Not only do you have all the perceived benefits, but you are sticking it to the patriarchy. This solution even works if you'™re employing the œ"I don'€™t like my last name anyway" thing, because if there's a lot of people out there who dislike their last names, then the odds are strongly in favor of the fact that half of them will be men. But for some reason, when this discussion comes up, women and women only seem to dislike their last names. But really, for the rest, there'™s no issue at all-€”name the children after the mother, name the husband after his wife, just switch everything around and you'€™re done. For some reason, that elegant solution never seems to come into play."

Okay, this just made me giggle: "I always wanted three names like an Upper-Class Twit of the Year."

This didn't make me giggle: "I felt like I was in a time warp. I love having my identity reduced to a fricking TITLE. “Hi, I’m Missus, and this is my husband, Joe Landes!” I am the title, and he is the person. Please. Kiss my ass, patriarchy."

"It’s just…how was I supposed to endorse this check? My husband is “Mr. Joe Landes.” Once you subtract him from the equation, so to speak, that leaves me as “Mrs.” My name isn’t “Mrs.” Am I just expected to sign “Mrs.”, or “Mrs. Joe Landes,” without even the benefit of a first name (which might be kind of useful, considering it’s going in my account)?"

"When my husband has deposited checks paid to the order of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Landes in his account (our system has been that money from his family goes into his account and money from my family goes into my account), I have never once had to co-endorse, or even be present. Not patriarchy my arse. It’s patently clear that he is the person and I am not."

The debate: "My sister’s getting married. She doesn’t like her fiance’s last name and she does like her last name, but she’s gonna change her name to his anyway. Because that’s just the Way Things Are. And nothing I say to her will cause her to even reconsider. Sad.
I have no immediate plans to get married, but if I did I wouldn’t change my last name as an intentional feminist move - even though I like my SO’s last name better than my own. Which makes me wonder: am I being as sad and stubborn as my sister, just in the opposite direction?"

This makes me seethe: "Some friends of mine got married last spring, and circulated a notice with their wedding invitation that “Neither [groom] nor [bride] will be changing their names.”
The bride then found herself in the position of having to explain her decision to her female relatives, who had all changed their names. She started with her real (and rather standard) reasons (”It’s the name I grew up with, it’s mine”), but that didn’t go over well. She then pointed out that if she adopted her husband’s surname, she’d have rhyming first and last names. Her relatives weren’t swayed; it was her wifely duty, they explained, to suck it up and suffer the lifelong indignity of bearing a goofy name - out of respect for her husband’s family.
Finally, the bride started explaining her decision thusly: “I really wanted to change my name, but my husband won’t let me, and he’s the one who makes the decisions about these sorts of things.”
Her family found this acceptable."

On another site, how awesome is this? 

"Kate and I decided to entrust one of our biggest pre-wedding decisions to dumb luck. As I mentioned in an earlier post, when Kate and I decided that we would both change our names when we got married, and that our new surname would be a hyphenated version of both of our original surnames, this created a problem: Whose name was going to be first? Would our new surname take the structure of [Kate's original surname]-[my original surname] or vice-versa? We both wanted our respective surnames to be before the hyphen. 
Reason is not really helpful in resolving disputes of this nature -- at least to the satisfaction of both parties. Polls of our friends were totally useless, as they were split roughly 50-50. Simply put, one of us was going to have to lose. 
We therefore determined the best way to resolve our disagreement amicably was by letting it all come down to chance. I proposed flipping a coin at the wedding ceremony, but we figured we'd already spent almost all of our familial capital by insisting on a secular wedding: A coin-flipping/name-switching segment was liable to push a few relatives over the edge. 
But we were concerned that if a final decision on our last name wasn't reached publicly, then there'd be no closure. While our surname dispute was by no means bitter, or even "emotional," it was definitely something that had the potential to be ugly if it was drawn out. So it needed to be resolved early, definitively, and without a scintilla of doubt as to the propriety of the ultimate outcome.

Thus, our sober concerns about how to best resolve an important issue in our marriage led us, inexorably, to the conclusion that we had to have a party -- one with a lot of alcohol. 
The idea we hatched was to divide our friends into two teams who would compete for one proposed surname over the other: Team [my last name]-[Kate's last name] and Team [Kate's last name]-[my last name.]. Moreover, to ensure a totally arbitrary result, the games played had to require as little skill as possible from the players. The contests were to be:

1. A night crawler race
2. Betting on the results of a professional wrestling match
3. A three-legged race
4. Rock, Paper, Scissors
5. TWISTER!"

 

Comments

[Neurontic]

I'm in total and complete agreement. I think the ongoing "name change" issue is proof positive that the patriarchy is still in full force. I'm astonished when female friends decide to change their names. I cannot imagine willingly trading in your identity card for a new one. Why on earth shouldn't men be expected to do this too? It's patently unfair.