Why should married women change their names?

[mlp]

Using your very own reasoning, of course. It's a tradition rooted in patriarchy and women mustn't participate in it.

I don't think that marriage itself is rooted in patriarchy. If it were, then the (very few) matriarchal societies that exist wouldn't have had marriage.

 

[kibbleforlola]

I don't think that marriage itself is rooted in patriarchy. If it were, then the (very few) matriarchal societies that exist wouldn't have had marriage.

It may not be *inherently* rooted in patriarchy, but the way it manifests itself in our society is.

 

[mlp]

Right, but there is a difference between framing the issue as this is something we should think about, and encourage other women to think about and something we should judge women for for making what we perceive to be the incorrect choice.

Well, my grandmother, my mother, my sister, and every female friend I have ever had has taken her husband's name. In some cases, multiple times.

I don't think less of them. I just find it fascinating that they (and most women) haven't thought twice about doing it, and that only one man I've known has ever considered taking his wife's name (and did, as I mentioned earlier).

I have to give my ex husband kudos for this: When he said he wanted to get married, I told him that even if we did, I did not want to and did not intend to change my name. He asked me why, and I said to him, "How would you feel about changing your name to mine?" He thought about it for a little while, and then he understood.

It just surprises me that more people don't have that conversation. Frankly, it also surprises me how defensive people become over this.

 

[mlp]

It may not be *inherently* rooted in patriarchy, but the way it manifests itself in our society is.

Nowadays, only to the extent people allow it to be - for instance, this automatic assumption that it's the woman who will change her name.

 

[kazyeeqen]

I didn't interpret Ansciess' comments as criticism of the women doing the name changing, but of the action of name changing.

I don't really care what women or men do with their names, just like I don't care what tattoos they get or what clothes they wear, but I have a problem with the female name-changing assumption and I find it unfortunate that the assumption perseveres, even though many women change their names for a variety of reasons besides becoming property. It's still a one-sided change and that's unfortunate.

I kept my name. It's my name and I've always had it, though it's not inherently meaningful for me because of family ties or anything, it's meaningful because it's mine. I don't really care for my first name, but I'm not going to change it, because it's mine and it's part of who I am. Same with the last name. I didn't choose it, but it's still part of me.

I have two friends who are brothers who both changed their last names when they got married. One couple found a new last name they they both adopted, the other mixed his last name with his wife's and they both changed theirs to that. I know many women who just kept their last name, like me.

 

[das_nut]

Up until relatively recently, most of my mom's female ancestors did not take their husband's name upon marrying.

It seemed to have worked for them and the societies they lived in.

 

[mlp]

Up until relatively recently, most of my mom's female ancestors did not take their husband's name upon marrying.

It seemed to have worked for them and the societies they lived in.

Native American?

 

[Ansciess]

ETA: "you know I'm a female too, right" so...we're supposed to give you a pass for being a woman, but you won't give other women a pass.

What kind of "pass" do you suppose that I'm asking for? I didn't see that I asked for any passes.

I also don't see that I denied any other women a "pass." A pass for what?

What are you even talking about?

 

[Ansciess]

Yes, and females have no internalised misogyny whatsoever.

Since you leveled the accusation, perhaps your discounting the view that it's problematic for women (general "women," not you, Renee) to change their names to their husbands' as a societal convention that comes out of a history of oppression is your own internalized misogyny?

 

[mlp]

Yes, and females have no internalised misogyny whatsoever.

Why fling charges of "internalized misogyny" around at any opportunity?

Not every choice a woman makes becomes sacred by virtue of the fact that a woman is making it. Women are no more exempt from acting stupidly/selfishly/evilly/etc. than men are.

I could argue that saying women shouldn't question or criticize other women is pretty much the epitome of internalized misogyny, because in effect it's saying that women don't have the strength, the will and/or the intellectual ability to think about, understand, and/or stand up for the choices they make.

But I'm not going to call it "internalized misogyny" because, frankly, I'm tired of that overused term. I think it's a mindset that's seen frequently, where a movement/philosophy just can't stand to be scrutinized by its members. I attended a lecture by Abbie Hoffman around 1980. In the question and answer session that followed the lecture, he was asked whether it would have been appropriate to criticize anything about North Vietnam during the era of the peace protests. He said no, that that would just have been feeding into the agenda of the war supporters and would have weakened the peace movement. I think that to the contrary - if you think that unquestioning acceptance is what's necessary for a movement or philosophy to flourish or survive, that means you think it has a weak foundation. The same thing holds true for how each of us lives our life.

 

[SummerRain]

I will take my Husbands name when I get married. The way I see it, it's a neutral thing that doesn't harm anybody. When traditions don't hurt anybody, and I don't mind/want to do them, I think they are nice things to upkeep.

I think it's got nothing to do with anybody else whether somebody changes their name, and what they change it to. If women don't want to change their name, or make up a new name, or hyphenate their name, that's great if that's what they want to do. Most women don't see anything oppressive or sexist about taking on their husbands name.

Personally, I really think it's a non-issue. If it were compulsory to change your name, I'd feel differently. If a woman didn't want to change her name, and her husband forced her or coerced her into it, I'd feel differently. If somebody tells me that I shouldn't change my name, I find that quite rude, it's my name - it's not any of their business.

 

[ledboots]

Honestly, if you weren't interested in hearing what other people think, or why some people might disagree with you, why start a thread on it?

Feminism isn't an echo chamber, you know.

ETA: "you know I'm a female too, right" so...we're supposed to give you a pass for being a woman, but you won't give other women a pass. At least, that's what I'm getting from this.

I was wondering if you were female, but you limit who views your profile, so I couldn't check. I don't know anymore who is just ******* around with the women on vv for their own entertainment on other sites. The timing of this thread is suspicious, as is the manner in which you blame women 100% for a choice and decision that the couple makes together that you feel is wrong.

 

[mlp]

Ansciess is indeed female, she is not a member of GB, and she doesn't play silly games. She's pretty much the opposite of what you're suspecting her to be.

She's also not "blaming women."

I will take my Husbands name when I get married. The way I see it, it's a neutral thing that doesn't harm anybody. When traditions don't hurt anybody, and I don't mind/want to do them, I think they are nice things to upkeep.

I think it's got nothing to do with anybody else whether somebody changes their name, and what they change it to. If women don't want to change their name, or make up a new name, or hyphenate their name, that's great if that's what they want to do. Most women don't see anything oppressive or sexist about taking on their husbands name.

Personally, I really think it's a non-issue. If it were compulsory to change your name, I'd feel differently. If a woman didn't want to change her name, and her husband forced her or coerced her into it, I'd feel differently. If somebody tells me that I shouldn't change my name, I find that quite rude, it's my name - it's not any of their business.

If it was traditional for women to walk five steps behind their husbands, but it wasn't compulsory for them to do so, yet most/almost all of them did, I think this same argument would apply.

Do those of you who think that there is no significance to wives changing their names to their husband's also think that there would be no significance to women walking five steps behind their husbands?

 

[Ansciess]

Here's the author of the Guardian piece (quoted in the first posting) writing in Feminste, "one of the oldest feminist blogs online designed by and run by women from the ground up":

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2013/03/08/dont-change-your-name-when-you-get-married/

Putting this up on a Friday evening because it’s already causing Outrage on the Guardian, Twitter and my personal Facebook account: Women shouldn’t change their names when they get married.

I'd like to skip over some of the basic objections and hopefully steer the conversation here toward something more interesting. My Guardian column was purposely a bit hyperbolic and strongly-worded, intended as a push-back on I CHOOSE MY CHOICE! feminism, or the idea that just because a woman chooses something, it’s a feminist choice or even a neutral one. I make anti-feminist choices all the time, so I’m not saying that you are a Bad Feminist for changing your name. And yes, some women don’t have a choice to change their names or not, and social pressure to change your name is enormous, making it at the very least an incredibly coerced choice. But I rarely hear recognition of that; instead, it’s just “well feminism is about CHOICE and I CHOSE!” Ok. Well, we also need to look at what’s going on when 90% of women change their names upon marriage (more now, by the way, than 20 years ago) and when 50% of the American population thinks women should be legally required to change their names upon marriage. Yes, if you’re one of the 90% of women who changed your name, you may feel judged when a feminist is like, “Don’t change your name.” But in the rest of the real world, it’s the 10% of women who do change their names who get a lot more push-back. And of course people have all sorts of reasons for changing their names and of course they’re a little more diverse than “I want to subsume my own identity into my husband’s.” But in the tradition of heterosexual marriage, that’s what name-changing was. That is, quite literally, what name-changing still is — it is changing your identity. And taking your husband’s. Also everything Kate Harding says here.

But I suspect feminists are never going to agree on this one, because it is very personal. What’s more personal than your name, after all? (Exactly, the cranky feminist says). What I’d rather focus on here is this:

Identities matter, and the words we put on things are part of how we make them real. There’s a power in naming that feminists and social justice activists have long highlighted. Putting a word to the most obvious social dynamics is the first step toward ending inequality. Words like “sexism” and “racism” make clear that different treatment based on sex or race is something other than the natural state of things; the invention of the term “Ms” shed light on the fact that men simply existed in the world while women were identified based on their marital status.​

​

Your name is your identity. The term for you is what situates you in the world. The cultural assumption that women will change their names upon marriage – the assumption that we’ll even think about it, and be in a position where we make a “choice” of whether to keep our names or take our husbands’ – cannot be without consequence. Part of how our brains function and make sense of a vast and confusing universe is by naming and categorizing. When women see our names as temporary or not really ours, and when we understand that part of being a woman is subsuming your own identity into our husband’s, that impacts our perception of ourselves and our role in the world. It lessens the belief that our existence is valuable unto itself, and that as individuals we are already whole. It disassociates us from ourselves, and feeds into a female understanding of self as relational – we are not simply who we are, we are defined by our role as someone’s wife or mother or daughter or sister.​

I’ve never been able to find a study on this, but I have to think that there’s some psychological consequence of raising half the population with the idea that the primary name for themselves is temporary. You don’t escape that on an individual level by not changing your name, although we do shift the culture when a critical mass of women stop changing their names. But I think there’s something to the idea that an understanding of one’s own name as temporary feeds into an understanding of one’s identity as less fully developed — that when women are collectively raised in a society where we get our “real” names only after we find someone to marry us, that we understand our own identities as inherently tied to someone else. And so yes, name-changing is a “choice” and people should do whatever they want when they get married and etc etc. But the normalization of marital name-changing isn’t just a long-time sexist practice; it influences our basic understanding of ourselves and our roles in the world.

 

[Muggle]

Ansciess, I can't read that post at all on the theme I'm using and I can't change my theme because I struggle with the other themes.

Could you change it to remove the formatting please?

 

[Ansciess]

Not sure how to do that, but I will if you explain how.

Also, I posted the links at the beginning of both articles if that would be easier.

 

[Moll Flanders]

I was always quite sure that I wanted to keep my own name if I ever got married when I was younger, but I didn't want to get married anyway. I had a massive schism with my parents a few years ago and I decided that I wanted to get married to my long term partner to feel more stable. We had been together for thirteen years at that point and were engaged but I think we were worried about getting married as we were both products of divorce. Getting rid of my father's name was a relief for me and I won't ever go back to that name even if I get divorced. People always ask me how to spell my new surname but then people asked the same question with my old surname.

If it were compulsory to change your name, I'd feel differently. If a woman didn't want to change her name, and her husband forced her or coerced her into it, I'd feel differently. If somebody tells me that I shouldn't change my name, I find that quite rude, it's my name - it's not any of their business.

 

[Clueless Git]

With the strict proviso that I am not sure of the actual importance of this ..

When the fathers name is carried on it acts as an accurate Y chromosone tracker through the generations.

With nowt to blame but Mother Nature carrying the Mothers surname is not an accurate tracker of anything.

Just seems churlish to me to replace anything that does something with something that does nothing.

 

[AeryFairy]

Women should change their last name when they get married if they want to.

My mother hyphenated when she married my dad. Her family name was important to her, my dad was important to her, so she used both. It created a completely unique surname, which I have complained about most of my life due to its awkward spelling. I am getting married next year. I'm keeping my name. It's a part of my identity at this point in my life, and I'm fond of it. Also, less paperwork hassle.

Even if traditions are rooted in patriarchy, it is still possible for women to take part in them without being anti-feminist.

 

[Alice-Bee]

Women should change their last name when they get married if they want to.

My mother hyphenated when she married my dad. Her family name was important to her, my dad was important to her, so she used both. It created a completely unique surname, which I have complained about most of my life due to its awkward spelling. I am getting married next year. I'm keeping my name. It's a part of my identity at this point in my life, and I'm fond of it. Also, less paperwork hassle.

Even if traditions are rooted in patriarchy, it is still possible for women to take part in them without being anti-feminist.

I dont like the attitude that if you do this you are not a feminist. You must do this. Irony much.