Guest Post: A Feminist by Any Other Name
We have a fourth post from Not Guilty about relationships and feminism! She actually sent this post to me about two weeks ago, and I responded that I was taking a significant break from blogging so I could concentrate on last-minute wedding plans. But when she saw my latest post about name changes, thankfully she directed me to her post, which is on the same topic.
I find it incredibly interesting how my feminist life parallels so many others’. In this case, when I first told Tim I wasn’t changing my name, he was pretty upset about it, but I offered a compromise – he wanted kids and I didn’t (or didn’t really care), so I told him that if we had kids, then I could keep my name. He agreed, and lucky for me, he has since decided that me keeping my name is totally cool – in fact, he’s really proud of the fact – and has also decided that he’s not sure he wants children.
Not Guilty had posited an entirely different type of compromise – one that works for her – and has left herself open to a change in heart. But I think it’s important to read this post fully and understand that, no matter what your belief about name changes is, the decision and the decision-making process is different for everyone.
A big issue in modern feminism is the right of mothers to breastfeed their babies in public. Even when I had no intention of having children, I was a big advocate of these rights. We also often hear that we should be careful not to belittle mothers who are unable or uninterested in breastfeeding. As with everything in feminism, it comes down to informed choice and some governing feminist body should not artificially limit those choices.
I was reading a blog post, the topic of which isn’t relevant, but in it there was this quote by Sally Quinn, a Washington Post journalist,
One thing I’ve noticed is that high-powered women today are all taking their husbands’ names. These women are in their 20s and 30s and sometimes in very high-powered positions. When I got married, I never would have considered taking my husband’s name . . . I think it’s a good thing. I think it shows that women feel more comfortable with their power.
That quote pointedly tells me that as a woman soon to be in a high-powered career, if I take my husband’s last name, it is because I am uncomfortable with my power. Anybody who knows me will tell you the last thing I am uncomfortable with is power. This attitude definitely floats around in the feminist world and feminists are told that taking their husband’s last name is submitting to the patriarchy. Just like being told I can’t shave or compromise with men, telling me how submissive it would be to take my husband’s surname really pisses me off.
My boyfriend and I have discussed the future and this topic has come up. At a BBQ I was quite drunk and at one point, for a reason I cannot recall, I turned to him and said, “by the way, I’m keeping my last name,” to which he replied he figured I would. I have no idea what lead to me saying this, but I do recall saying it. Sometime later the topic came up again and we started discussing it. He said that while he would support my decision to keep my last name, he didn’t love the idea. When I asked him why, he presented primarily emotional reasons. His best reason is that he is the last person in his family with his last name and thus it is up to him to carry it on. At this point I wanted to know that if we didn’t have a boy, was he going to expect me to keep reproducing until we had one (which would not happen); he said no (so what’s the point; it’s a crapshoot anyways!). I, on the other hand, have a number of logical reasons, primarily, career-wise; I would be known by my current surname and then it would change. I threw out alternatives, such as hyphenation, him taking my last name, or even creating a new surname from both, none of which he was really keen on.
At this stage I think it is important to mention that a year ago I was seriously considering (i.e. I’d printed off the forms) changing my last name to my mother’s maiden name because I don’t get along very well with my father’s family. I hadn’t gotten around to it because it costs money. Here I find my boyfriend and I at a minor impasse: it is important to him that I take his last name but I’m a feminist and feminists just don’t do that.
My boyfriend isn’t keen on a ‘traditional’ wedding (he prefers destination weddings), primarily for cost reasons, which is a good reason. I really want a ‘traditional’ marriage (i.e. not a destination wedding), for no other reason than I’ve already planned it in my head. Here is a great opportunity for us to play my favourite game: let’s make a deal (a.k.a. compromising). So I presented him with this: if I got to have my ‘traditional’ wedding (with a reasonable budget) I would take his last name, to which he agreed.
At this time, I would like to define submission,
the action of yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person
I can assure you, I am not submitting to my boyfriend; we are compromising. Just because I do something that was traditionally used to oppress women does not mean that I am oppressed. If society were to avoid anything that was ever used as a tool of oppression in the past, we’d have to give up race and sex-segregated schools [there are all-black schools in Ontario]; it’s a ludicrous proposition. What has to be emphasized is the choice to do something. By definition, if you choose to do something you have not submitted (assuming there is no duress). Rather than feminism telling me I’m a bad feminist because of X, Y, Z, what I would really love is for feminists to understand that being forced to “submit to the patriarchy” is the problem. So I will take my boyfriend’s surname if/when we get married, and I will still be a feminist because a feminist by any other name is still a feminist.
Not Guilty writes at her blog, Finding My Feminism. She is 25 years old, on the cusp of finishing her law degree, and has been a feminist her entire life, but just recently became active through blogging and organizing/attending rallies. You can follow her on Twitter @atheistincanada.
This was a guest post in a series on feminism and relationships. If you’d like to submit a guest post for this series, see the guidelines here and submit your post to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.
I think it’s interesting how frequently this conversation seems to take the form of “By the way/FYI/just so you know, I’m keeping my name.” [implied: and you can’t stop me!]
Ashley phrased it the same way in her post last week, and, while I don’t remember the exact words I used, I think I said something similar myself.
I’m quite not sure if/why there’s anything wrong with this, but it doesn’t quite sit right with me. Even though I did the same thing myself, I sort of cringe thinking back on it. It’s hard to explain why. My name is my name. It’s my decision. I *do* get to make the call. Nevertheless–since these posts have all agreed that name changes (or non-changes) are a topic worthy of open, thoughtful discussion, and asked men to be open to that conversation, it seems perhaps counterproductive to bring the subject up for the first time by announcing it subject as closed. It seems likely to put the partner on the defensive when perhaps he wouldn’t have been in the first place.
That’s not to say that we need to be tentative or, for heaven’s sake, ask permission to keep our names. Not at all. But it just seems sort of deliberately provocative–like attempting to open a discussion of shared household responsibilities by saying, “Don’t think I’m going to clean and cook for you all the time!”
I guess I’m just coming around to thinking that, even when you don’t intend to budge, it’s not always productive to wield that conviction as a weapon.
If I had been sober when we first discussed it, I NEVER would have used “btw/fyi” because I agree, it’s really not an adult way to start that sort of conversation. In my defence, as my boyfriend can attest, I was smashed. I had been drinking hard liquor for the first time in years and I did an incredibly poor job of deciding how much it would take to get me drunk.
Once we got back to the conversation when I was sober, I definitely dealt with it in a more appropriate manner.