Yeah, I know.  You’re surprised.

Like my previous post, there was a starting point to my train of thought.  The infuriating, misogyinistic drivel that inspired my own rant can be found here. The basic gist is that this man will be offended (his word, not mine!) if his future wife refuses to take his name — so much so that he ended a new relationship based solely on the assertion that the woman in question wouldn’t do it.

I was stunned to read phrases like “leave my manliness intact” and “in the man’s bible.”  Perhaps the best one is this: “If we feel like a man, we’ll act like one. And stripping of us the honor of bestowing on you our surname is one surefire way of knocking off a chunk from that pride.”  Did you hear that, ladies?  If you dare have the audacity to want to maintain your own identity, to have the same familial pride that he apparently cherishes, you damage his pride, and therefore, are responsible for his inability to act like a man.  Pretty big responsibility, huh?

Thankfully for women everywhere, this idiot will be “drinking his coffee” at home alone.  No real surprise there, right?

But seriously, the fact that attitudes like this still pervade just irritate me to no end.  Seriously?  How is your genetic pride superior to mine?  Why is your last name automatically better than mine, such that it’s the one chosen to be on all of the paperwork?  The Scientist told me after 3 weeks of marriage that he should’ve taken my last name.  I could’ve smacked him.  Yes, the thought was sweet, and if he had had any foresight whatsoever, I probably would’ve had both of us keep our own.  However, by this point, I had stood in line at the SSA and the DMV and the bank.  I had called the credit card company, the doctor’s offices, our University, the post office, and the Good Humor man on the corner.  Those were the days before the Internet, so it meant actually standing in lines and making phone calls.  No simple clicks.

Now the obvious question about to spill out of your fingertips into my comments is, “Well, if you feel this way, why did you change your name?”  So I’ll save you the trouble and just answer it here.

When I got married, I hid a lot of the real me.  I was still crafting the mask that I wore for so many years, and at the time, the foundation layer was constructed from mutliple strands of “don’t rock the boat.”  “Do what people want to keep the peace” was the glue that went with that.  So when the Scientist’s father got very, very heated at the mere mention of a woman not changing her name?  I assessed the situation and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.  Admittedly, it paired well with the fact that my relationship with my father was nonexistent at the time (and it was only ever tenuous at its best), so keeping his name really meant nothing to me.  I just didn’t care enough about my name to keep it.  Truthfully?  What I actually wanted to do all those years ago, was to take my grandparents’ name of Collins.  But I didn’t.  Like so many other things and times, I shut up, and I did what everyone wanted me to do.*

My own children have been raised better.  They have been raised with confidence in themselves and pride in their identity.  They have also been raised to know that a name can be altered easily to suit the person.  So if they, at some point, choose to marry and take their spouse’s name?  Rock on.  If they choose to keep their own?  Same goes.  If they choose together to take a new name, a new familial identity?  Much the same.  The point is that they are clear on the point that their identity, their heritage, and their history, is just as important as anyone else’s, and that the decision to alter their name rests solely within themselves.

This snarky vent doesn’t make me a man-hater, although some would say it does.  This is not about a woman’s lineage being superior either.  Instead, it’s about respecting your partner enough to have a discussion, to explore the feelings, to come to a decision that respects everyone involved, without murmurs of condescension and arrogance.  It’s about not merely assuming that the female name change is an automatic thing, not worth consideration.  But as much as the author of my referenced post above protests that it’s not about making his wife his “possession,” the attitudes he expresses clearly convey the opposite.

*getting married in my parents’ church
*doing it when it was convenient for THEM (finals wknd!)
*naming my kids names I didn’t like
*baptising them in my parents’ religion
*not following my instincts sometimes with my infants
The list goes on……….