Gary, a coworker at the deli, and I often talk about his obsession with baseball. He declares he would marry baseball, if only it were legal, or even possible. Today we were talking about women taking their husbands' last names. I proclaimed my unwillingness to completely retire my last name. I would rather hyphenate or simply have two last names. He firmly believes that it is the wife's responsibility to take on her husband's last name, since, "she belongs to him!"
"And who does he belong to?" I asked. "To baseball," he responded.
Around this time, two of my friends entered, bringing some sanity to the conversation. I asked their opinion on the subject. Carrie said that she intends to take her husband's last name, and gladly, because it is "a special way to honor him." Becky thought something similar, describing a relationship in which it only made sense that a woman would abandon her last name and willingly give her husband the honor of having her be called by his name. That was a nice way to put it.
n my view, it's a silly and patriarchal tradition. A woman willfully abandoning her own last name for her husband's in order to honor him in some way makes NO sense to me. The simple fact that it is considered to exclusively be the woman's duty to honor her man is so blatantly chauvinistic in its implication that men are somehow a more respectable class of person, and to not be loved and simply respected as an equal, but actually REVERED and HONORED by their wife. And the man? What responsibility to honor HIS spouse in such a petty fashion? None! Why, it's a PRIVELAGE he's granting his woman the honor of his name, no? No thanks.
ReplyDeletePersonally, if or when I get married, I'd be a little disappointed and offended if my wife wanted to have my last name. I don't want my lover to be tribute to me, I want her to be the individual I love. Plus, I find the obsessive, warped affection of wanting my name to be a bit creepy.
The only way for such a tradition to not offend my feminist sensibilities would be for both man and woman to trade last names with each other. And that... would just be silly.
I consider love to be something much deeper than an inherently sexist and redundant custom could ever be able to express anyway.
I found that conversation hilarious. I love baseball as well but marrying it seems way out there for me. The whole taking the last name thing should just be another of those choices that is left up to the couple when they reach that part of a relationship.
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