Last week I read a piece by Jill Filipovic on the Guardian about how women should stop taking men's names when they get married. Instead, she argues, men should be taking our last names.
Her column came about after seeing a bunch of women with names she didn't recognize on her Facebook account, and her getting frustrated with seemingly not knowing who any of these women are anymore:
You got married, congratulations! But why, in 2013, does getting married mean giving up the most basic marker of your identity? And if family unity is so important, why don't men ever change their names?
She lists stats about how few American women nowadays keep their name, and common excuses women use as why they supposedly decided to switch to their husband's name ("It's easier to spell," "I want everyone in our family to have the same name," etc.). She calls bull on all of them.
Instead, she says our birth name is our identity and by taking our husband's name, we're giving up our identity for a man. (Nevermind the fact that our last names came from our father, but I guess that's a patriarchal argument for another day.) This is a detriment to women at our very core:
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.
She urges women to stop taking their husband's names. If your children must have a common last name, make it the wife's. Heck, while we're at it, men should be taking our names.
Sorry, Jill. I consider myself quite progressive. Heck, I'd even go so far as to call myself a feminist. But I can't back you here. When my fiancé and I get married, I'll legally become Sarah Foster.
I admit, things are a lot tougher for us women in the digital age. I mean, changing our Facebook name is easy, but what about everywhere else? After all, I blog at SarahMillar.com. And SarahFoster.com belongs to a woman in Virginia who is an insurance agent.
My current Twitter handle is @Sarah_millar. @SarahFoster has been taken by someone who has never tweeted, but follows seven people, while @Sarah_Foster is relatively active on Twitter.
And don't even get me started on my Google juice as Sarah Millar.
These were things I always prepared for. After all, I began my professional writing career at 17. As soon as my bylines in daily newspapers began, I knew that unless I got married young, I would be Sarah Millar forever -- in print anyways.
Digitally, there's much more to consider than a simple print byline. I have to laugh at how afraid I was as a young writer to be willing to change my name because it would be so hard to explain having two names to editors who had obviously never worked with a woman who got married before. But the Internet is beyond hard. It is for that reason that while I plan to change my name personally to my future husband's, I will remain Sarah Millar online.
As for my choice to change my name? It's just that -- my choice. When my fiancé and I get married we won't be presented as man and wife or as Mr. and Mrs. Foster, we'll simply be presented as married. My marriage will be a partnership. He doesn't own me any more than my father does.
I'm taking my future husband's name not because it's easier to spell or suits me better or so my kids all have the same last name (we're not having kids, but that's a blog post for another day), but because I want to.
Does it mean I lose my identity? Not in the slightest. Heck, with the digital footprint we create nowadays, Sarah Millar will never go away, or be hidden. If anything, she'll be able to be a bit more anonymous in real life with her new name.
This blog post originally ran on SarahMillar.com.
Follow Sarah Millar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sarah_millar
My boyfriend did end up proposing but he did not get in one knee and there was no ring. He just held me and asked me and I loved it because I love him.
You have the freedom to make his name paramount, but it is fooling yourself to think you can remain progressive and feminist. Erasing your name and lifelong identity and implicitly expressing that he is more important than she, his name and identity are more, you say he is real, you are reduced to the ladies auxiliary. Young females who use the b-word as a synonym for female are fooling themselves when they say they are feminists, as are you.
Choosing to perpetuate a patriarchal tradition is an anti-feminist act that condones inequality, as is using the b-word to refer to women.
It is corruption of language, the patriarchal ruination of women's critical faculties and Orwellian Newspeak to claim one can subsume one's identity to a husband's and be a feminist.
Up is down, black is white, slavery is freedom, oppression is liberation.
What is a recovering journalist? Is that a failed journalist? Journalism was a once-worthy profession that championed justice and democracy and kept the rulers honest. Now, instead of journalism and investigative reporting, we have bloggers upchucking unresearched unabashed opinions and emotionality 24/7, the work of real journalism remains undone, and the people remain so ignorant that their courts get away with appointing unelected presidents who lie the nation into war. More than ever real journalism is needed.
She is using the same logic as what my wife once told me: YOU ARE MY HUSBAND AND NOT MY FATHER.
I chose not to take my husband's name.
The lest a woman can do is show appreciation for this effort, and for most of us it is an effort.
You say that women don't see what men give up, it looks like you don't see what women give up either. It is not like women didn't have an identity before marriage in their house, didn't go out, didn't have interests they spend money on before marriage, didn't have career which they have to slow down now because of creating family (and women do it more than men because of kids) etc. etc. By your logic women are just identityless with no personality and habits and can't wait to get married.
Why would I want to give up my name for someone who doesn't even see or appreciate that I am doing the same efforts and he benefits from marriage as well? (not that he doesn't, just answering to your logic
My own nephew took his wife's name after a few years of marriage, because she is a published author and didn't want to change her name. In this case, I see no good reason why he had to change his name when she could have used her maiden name professionally. But I said nothing because it was their decision.
I've been married twice and never took their last name. I got an eyeful when women were trying to change their ID and they had some in their birth name, some in their first married name and then there was the pieces in the present married name. Some had to start all over with brand new birth certificates and build up from there.
There is nothing so unnecessary as changing your name. Legally there is no need and to keep your identity - your name is symbolic of it. Sometimes that is all you need to keep from being swallowed up in the 'us' that means 'him'.
The taking of your husband's name is an archaic practice that stems from the days when women were not regarded as legal persons, but as property that changed hands from father to husband. Basically, the man was purchasing a wife to bear him children to carry on his lineage.
But it is her choice... she just shouldn't go as far as considering herself a feminist.
I would never change my name, not even because of facebook or children etc. But why should I stop representing my family and switch to his? My parents are amazing people, to me giving up their name seems like a betrayal to them, not to women (not that my parents think so, this are just my feelings on it).
And many people (not this column) say how women should get over it and it doesn't really matter. Well, if it doesn't matter I rather not go through the trouble of changing everything and just stay the way it is. So in any way changing name makes no sense to me.
But I don't care what others do. For all I care people can call themselves Princess Consuela Banana Hammock.