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Mid-week Quotable

The first is that true gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.

And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.” My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality - my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.

There's much more at the original link.

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Wow, what a wonderful quote. When I got married I debated about keeping my original name, or hyphenating but decided to take my husband's name. My original one was Hispanic and horribly butchered, even though it is pronounced exactly as it is spelled. His name is German, has a silent o and no one seems to screw it up.

I loved my name, it was very catchy, and there are times I miss it, but I like my new one too. With it there are less assumptions about my race or if I can't speak English. I had a lot of people assume that I come from Mexico, sometimes illegally, and it happens less so. It is incredibly frustrating, but getting better.

I agree. Actually I have always perceive the adopting the husband family name as pretty sexist. It feels like the woman has to leave behind who she was before marrying, and that the family, not only the wife but also the kids are all belonging to the man.

As matter of fact, the tradition of each partner keeping their own family names and giving their kids both we have here, is one of the few things we are different to half of the world and I'm proud we are.

Though in the case the mother wants the kid to keep her name in first place and the father's in second. I wonder when it happens, how many men consent to it.

In the end, bad things always find their way.

Thanks for sharing! I'm writing an essay on women as possessions and I might be able to use some of this., especially since I want to mention hyphenated names somewhere.

thats really interesting. I don't think I ever realized that a woman keeping her maiden name could seem so threatening or challenging. My entire life, even before I understood gender inequality, I intended to keep my name when I marry because it sounds so good next to my first name. But I have a friend who recently married and kept her name (I think for a similar reason), and her husband's family keep calling her "Mrs. (Husband's Last Name)". She is very annoyed by it, though she seems to accept hyphenations, even though she didn't take that.
...its also interesting to think that I have my father's last name and not my mothers. I mean I guess she took his name when she married, but I wonder if theres any families where the mother kept her name, and the children took her name instead of the fathers. The only cases I know of now of children taking their mothers' names is when the father is not present or unknown.

I wonder if theres any families where the mother kept her name, and the children took her name instead of the fathers.

Assuming we reproduce, that's the plan for my husband and I, mostly because he has two brothers and I'm apparently the only person available to Carry On The Family Line. (Though this is more a personal thing to me than the familial expectation it sounds like.)

My mom kept her last name when she married my dad. I originally had Dad'slastname-Mom'slastname, but I changed my name when I was 16. My hyphenated name didn't fit on any form and seemed to confuse the heck out of people. (Which isn't really why I changed my name, but is an interesting note on the whole name thing.) Some of my dad's relatives send my parents holiday cards to "the Dad'slastname Family," but the same relatives manage to send me holiday cards with my chosen name on them. Says a lot about how important it is to some people that the woman take the man's name when they marry.

Also, when I got my Social Security card as a kid, the Social Security administration changed my mom's name in their system without telling her. She found out when her new SS card arrived in the mail, and had to go to some bother to get it changed back. (The'd given her the same hyphenated last name I had.)

Besides the weird things that have happened to my family around the whole name thing, there's also this - if a woman who took the man's name gets divorced from him, she's either stuck with his last name or has to go through the name change paperwork to get her maiden name back. This makes divorce more expensive and more trouble for most women than for men.

As for my chosen name? I'm keeping that. Forever. It's mine.

I've always loved the way my parents did it. They both kept their last names, and when they decided to have kids, they figured hyphenation was a bit unwieldy. So they literally called heads or tails and flipped a coin. The winner's last name would be the kids' last name, and the loser's would become our middle name.

(Dad won, so we are all FIRST-NAME MOM'S-NAME DAD'S-NAME, but it was a fair 50-50 chance and my mother doesn't mind at all.)

I used to wonder if I'd change my last name or not, depending on how cool my hypothetical spouse's name was...but seeing it start to happen to my friends has cemented my resolve. It's just too weird.

My boyfriend's last name is a very nice one (the same as one of my favorite poets, actually, by coincidence), but I just can't see it becoming mine. My name is part of my identity and I would feel totally bizarre if I changed it. :/ (To his credit, he is totally fine with this.)

I saw a similar article on Yahoo recently about a woman keeping her maiden name and how outraged her boyfriend (and his family) were about it and I was rather shocked that people felt that strongly about a woman keeping her original name. Posted on my FB actually and was pleased to see that the general agreement was that the guy was a dick. For a few years now I'd just assumed I'd keep my name so I'm hoping that, if I ever do plan to get married, that this ugly argument doesn't come up.

I've actually gotten the breast-cancer-prostate-cancer argument as proof of gender inequality.

This essay just summed up what I've thought for some time, but have not been able to articulate.

This is a great quote :) It's so so true...

My parents are both physicians. When they married they were still working in the same clinic. They both kept their own last names. Their reasoning? To avoid confusion for the patients. As for us kids, well, we're stuck with an awfully long hyphenated last name.
Makes me wonder why us children got both names and not just one side. Personally I never really thought of the whole last name thing too much, let alone realize that there was a feminist tag to it. The most I've thought about it was to decide to take a future husband's last name if only for the sake of convenience. Now I know that's a pretty stupid reason.
This post is something to think about. Thanks for sharing. :)

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I wonder if it's appropriate to add my too cents?