Recently I read an article about last names. The writer was a woman, talking about hyphenated last names, and at first I thought it was just kind of an interesting read...until she started going into why she gave her baby one and the word "sexist" became involved. These sorts of things always cause car crashes in my head, largely because I tend not to be a conservative up until feminism becomes involved. Then I struggle with whether or not I'm actually a hater of women's rights, because somewhere in the counterargument that goes on in my head the phrase "I'm all for women having equality and everything..." always comes up, even after I discover I'm vehemently against whatever the article I read was just talking about.
After a long internal debate, however, I'm starting to think I'm okay with this one. Last names, after all, have nothing to do with rights. In the grand scheme of things, they're an afterthought, and up until debates like this they didn't seem to be a thought at all. It's one of those things that always was for whatever reason. It's a tradition that the female takes the last name of the male she's marrying. Thirty years ago, you would have heard nothing otherwise, but now, for whatever reason, that's sexist. I wonder how many feminists are also communists (not that there's anything wrong with communists either) since they believe in everything being absolutely equal, no matter how much space on the paper it takes.
I just feel like stuff like this is petty. Why make an issue out of something that most people ignore and have ignored? Why is America suddenly not free just because we typically give children their father's last name? It must be horrible in third world countries, where they all do that all the time without a choice. So on the overarching theme, there's certainly that to consider.
Talking directly about the article (which I'll link to at the end) is a bit of a lost cause, since the author more or less refers to everyone who opposes her view on names as people who don't think women should vote either. Looking at that, there's nothing to get riled up because it reveals this author to be a tad extreme, but I still wish to make a case for the opposing side. All that the article means is that I can be disjointed, a little extreme, and not entirely sure why I support the position I do.
Maybe it's because I'm a male, but I just don't see what the big deal is about a female changing their names when they get married. Your last name changing does not absolve you of your accomplishments whatsoever, and those that really care will continue to follow and respect you. If you want to get really into it, that name change could be a show of humility and committment, the latter of which tends to be a shallow construct these days (and unlike last names, the divorce rate has some serious negative effects). Do we remember the maiden names of some of the great married women of history? They're interesting, yes, but overall, their names have no less powerful. Their merits were still accreditted to them, whether their husbands were famous or not.
Then there's the issue of the children, which was the base of this whole topic. When everyone has two last names, the world becomes exponentially more confusing. The answer hyphen parents tend to give when asked about their kids marrying is "they can decide." This is something I'm actually starting to have a problem with, because this is becoming the answer to everything lately. Children can now decide their gender, sexuality, their career, high school, college, pronouns...it's a long list, and adding a last name to that would be strenuous. It's not a simple decision either, since choosing one over the other could look massively nepotistic. Youths already have a metric ton of soul searching to do when they come of age...believe me, I've spent a good few years doing it, and am still doing it to this day. With my slow decision-making, deciding a name would be just plain awful. It's something I'm glad was decided for me when I came into the world.
The world needs some things to be set in stone. If you give a kid a slate that's entirely blank, they're going to make more mistakes than they even realize. There needs to be a few things that just aren't made into an issue or a choice, because there are so many to face already. Back on the topic at hand, I can even understand if the male wants to take the female's last name, but pick one. Don't make your kids choose.
When deciding who should take who's name though, I want to choose being simple again. Precedents were important for George Washington as the first president of the United States, and they're important elsewhere too. Unless something is inefficient, there's nothing wrong with doing things as always (if it ain't broke don't fix it). Having the same last name is one of the few things left that differentiates a married couple from a nonmarried couple, and doing the same thing from generation to generation creates continuity. And of course, it's true, the idea of the shifting hands is romantic. The idea that your heritage is dynamic is just plain interesting when you consider that someday you may have a different last name and enter into someone else's timeline. It's weird to think that a child would only be part of a moment in time instead of a long stream of time. There's just no history behind a hyphenated name; as parents are not actually blood related to each other, their combined last name will exist only for their family, and only for a brief moment in time unless their children marry people who taken on both of their last names and keep none of their own. It doesnt matter what happens then...somewhere down the line, someone's history gets lost.
Dynamism in women, I've noted throughout the years, is a spectacular thing that men do not get to be proud of. As they cannot bear children and the precedent is not to change their last name, men will undergo far less changes than a woman will, especially in body. Of course, without that female dynamism, they can't procreate either, and their name cannot go on. The way it is now, men are potentially one being, for in the same way a woman's maiden name is a symbol of their father, a man's last name is a symbol of his, and a manifestation of the fact that the man is to carry on his father's name. In a way, he's forced to be his father through name. He is not made to change it, and honestly there's pressure on him to try and make the name continue on. There's issues on both sides, as always.
I don't know, this seems to be yet another thing I'm blowing out of proportion. I admit I'm pretty good at making out of molehills, and a lot of the time it's fun, but when someone takes themselves seriously, it's kind of unnerving. This is granted as some people's idea of fun is prodding at the things they've realized people have been subtly conditioned to believe since they were born. That's always amusing for me, since I like to believe I came out okay on many fronts with my upbringing, even though it was rife with preconceptions that my parents and teachers had no idea they were programming me with. That's what they start to teach you in college after all: everything you never questioned was arbitrarily given to you...ironically, just like your last name.
Tradition is, by and large, not a bad thing, and neither are norms and to some degree, stereotypes. All of these things are social constructs made by man for no reason other than to organize everything intellectually, but nevertheless there was a method to the madness, however ancient. Sticking with conventions that have existed since before your parents were born is not necessarily an infringement of your rights. I'm not saying that long ago it was okay that someone couldn't vote based on their parent's inability to do so. I'm saying your grandmother was proud to take her husband's name. Fricking proud (bonus points if he was a war veteran), and it was probably because she just loved him that much. And him? Freaking proud that she'd take on his name because he loved her that much. If you ask me, that's one of the big problems with this whole thing: people are more worried about the conventions that surround love than the love itself. The love is what's eternal anyway. If, as a mother, you believe your child is going to forget their mother's heritage just because your last name isn't in theirs somewhere...well, maybe you should have spent more time loving the kid than how much "freedom" they had.
This is the article that got me fired up for this topic. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tessa-blake/kids-hyphenated-last-names_b_1215191.html?ref=parents
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