"an unbalanced union"
Jul. 27th, 2009 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashwednesdayInteresting article on a man who chose to take his wife's surname when he married.
I have no strong feelings on way or another about women taking their husbands' names. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I think that assuming it's an old fashioned harking-back to a woman becoming a man's "property" is a facile reading of the historical context. I would not think any woman who doesn't take on her husband's name is failing as a feminist, and nor would I think her husband was trying to lay some kind of archaic claim to her. However, Neufeld's act, and the popular reaction to it, does say interesting things about how hardwired our sense of - hm, what can we call it? - "patriarchal propriety" is. If Neufeld's gesture was shaking his fist in the face of male oppressors omgz I would probably not be interested. What is interesting about his decision is that it seems to be based on him coming to terms with the existence of male privilege, and is, in my opinion, a relatively graceful way of addressing it.
If I marry, which I hope I do, I won't be changing my surname - the idea of it is strange to me - and I wouldn't expect, or even want, my husband to change his. But it's always fascinating to see how people negotiate the terms of their new identities as married people.
I never suspected that as a man I had been given an extra portion of power in the global allotment.
I did it because any form of power comes with duties. I'm obliged to take responsibility for my power, to learn its effects - even unintentional ones - to see what it does to others when I'm not watching, to use it in the best way possible. Sometimes to relinquish it.
So far the name change hasn't cost me more than a few hours of paperwork, some explanations to public officials and a few strained conversations with brittle relatives who think I've joined a matrilineal cult. I still feel like myself. My identity remains intact. Marriage will demand larger sacrifices than this, I expect.
I have no strong feelings on way or another about women taking their husbands' names. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I think that assuming it's an old fashioned harking-back to a woman becoming a man's "property" is a facile reading of the historical context. I would not think any woman who doesn't take on her husband's name is failing as a feminist, and nor would I think her husband was trying to lay some kind of archaic claim to her. However, Neufeld's act, and the popular reaction to it, does say interesting things about how hardwired our sense of - hm, what can we call it? - "patriarchal propriety" is. If Neufeld's gesture was shaking his fist in the face of male oppressors omgz I would probably not be interested. What is interesting about his decision is that it seems to be based on him coming to terms with the existence of male privilege, and is, in my opinion, a relatively graceful way of addressing it.
If I marry, which I hope I do, I won't be changing my surname - the idea of it is strange to me - and I wouldn't expect, or even want, my husband to change his. But it's always fascinating to see how people negotiate the terms of their new identities as married people.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-27 07:23 pm (UTC)I have a friend whose husband took her name, but that was partly because he didn't have family of his own (and partly because she's just that sort of fabulous, I suspect :) ).
Personally I don't know if I'll ever want to get married, but I abso-bloody-lutely wouldn't be changing my name. I love my weird, foreign surname that nobody can spell and is way too long, dammit: there's hardly any of us as it is!