It’s 2009. Is this really still a big deal? Why do people feel the need to disparage him?
Those comments are absolutely bizarre. It’s like someone left the blog open at an Old Geezer convention.
Yes, it is. Let me tell you about the shit I’ve gotten for hyphenating my name.
He’s violating a long standing custom that many ignorant people feel is universal (it isn’t)
Considering how weird my relatives think it is that I haven’t taken my husband’s last name, this doesn’t surprise me at all. It is discouraging, though.
When I got married, I was the only person in the U.S. with my last name. Confirmed with Social Security. My sister, who has since died, had married and taken her husband’s name, and everybody else was dead. My husband offered to take my name. I can’t tell you what that meant to me. I declined for several reasons, but the offer was just one example of what a wonderful person he is. What is wrong with people for dissing this guy?
I was recently told that she didn’t realize women were ALLOWED to keep their own name.
Many, many people are clueless.
Just before I got married, I was chatting with a woman at work and mentioned that I would be keeping my name. She just could not wrap her brain around how that would be accomplished. Um, by doing nothing? By not filing a name change form with DMV, SSN, banks, etc? Durrrrr . . . .
I’m sure a friend of my mom’s thinks I’m a whore because I got married in a red dress, not in a church, didn’t have my only sister as an attendant, and on and on . . .
Amazing how narrow-minded people can still be in two-thousand-fucking-NINE.
I dunno… possibly because taking your wife’s name instead of keeping your own is about the most whipped, pussified thing that a guy could do in that situation?
Like it or not, our society evolved out of a male dominated one, and generally speaking, the social traditions and gender roles still reflect that. A man taking his wife’s name is pretty much doing exactly the opposite of what the gender role would dictate, and even if it’s something as inconsequential as taking the woman’s name, people are going to assume (rightly IMO) that most of the other masculine virtues are lacking in that guy, and that he’s pretty much completely under her thumb.
Ah, another Neanderthal . . .
Full disclosure: I kept my name when I got married and have never regretted it.
Normally, I don’t have any problem with someone changing their name: I can understand wanting the family to share a name, and one name is as good as another. I rather like it when a maiden name is passed down as a first or middle name. However, the reaction of people on that page and of bump here have kind of made me re-think that: I never really thought a name was that big of a deal one way or the other, so it didn’t matter. But apparently a lot of people think that giving your name up is a sign of total submission and canceling out of the self, a complete hand over of one’s autonomy to the other. If that’s the case–if that’s what changing your name really signifies to most people–then women really have to stop doing it.
I agree. That guy will be subject to ridicule for the rest of his life, from myself included. While society is getting more progressive and tolerant all the time, this is something that I can’t see as ever changing all that much because it says something about his character. And that something is that he’s a total pushover and lacking in the area that makes a man a man. No woman wants a guy that acts like a woman, no man can respect a guy that acts like one.
No doubt that also accounts for the hostility encountered by women who either keep their name or hyphenate - how dare they act like a man!
Frankly, I think the attitude that a man takes his wife’s name is pussy-whipped is bullshit. It’s frankly no one’s business but his.
Obviously, the people in that thread don’t travel or know many other cultures, as there are many other places in the world where the common thing is for both parties to keep their unmarried last name.
I grew up in one, and I fully admit that, out of tradition, I will keep my last name if I ever marry. Similarly, I’ll admit that if I had grown up with the tradition of “you give up your last name upon marriage”, I would likely have a different view.
That said, I agree with Manda Jo. It is, for me, a bit silly thing to do, change your last name, but I can get it under the “it’s tradition and I grew up this way and it harms no one” category. But if the men view it the way she expressed… Seriously, women, stop doing that.
Speaking as someone who kept her own name, I’m okay with people going with whatever name they want. Maybe it’s each keeping their own, maybe they make a new one, hyphenate, take his, take hers, whatever.
However, I will say that to the extent that putting something extremely personal out there on the internet for anyone to read invites people to judge, I found his reasons a little cloying and full of rainbows and unicorns. Ooh, she feels loved! Ooh, they have antlers! Ooh, she thinks god is a woman! How terribly, terribly earnest of them.
But hey, they found each other, I don’t have to marry either one of them, so it’s all good.
What is “the area that makes a man a man” even mean? (assuming you are speaking metaphorically.) This is what I really object to: that there is this “area”, this core, this source of dignity and pride and self-respect that men have access to and that women don’t, and that for a man to violate that is somehow tragic but it’s no big deal for a woman because she never had it anyway.
I also have the knee-jerk reaction that taking one’s wife’s name is, for lack of a better word, unmasculine. I don’t think it’s necessarily a rational reaction, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s a common one.
There’s something about one spouse changing their name that smacks of inequality to me. Yes, a woman can take her husband’s name as they enter into an equal partnership, but it’s a tradition rooted in a time when marriage was most definitely not an equal partnership. The symbolism of each spouse keeping their own name is more in line with what I think of as a modern marriage.
The notion of a man taking his wife’s last name is, to me, akin to saying “A marriage has to have a dominant partner and a submissive partner, and I will be the submissive partner.”.
I agree that this is probably why a lot of people have a more negative view of a guy changing his name than a woman simply not changing hers. I have made it clear to my boyfriend that I want to keep my own name (I am even planning to hyphenate the kids’ last names!), and he is cool with that, but I’m pretty sure he would never agree to change his own name to mine. Most guys are pretty attached to their last name. I’ve noticed that even in families with common last names, there is still this feeling that “The Smith family name must live on”.
Also: The part about using pieces of antler to make an amulet instead of a wedding ring does sound like the sort of thing hippies would do, and lots of people like making fun of hippies.
When I got married my husband almost took my name because that’s what I thought would be best and I don’t see any problems with it. I actually find it offensive that people are acting like this. I just find it to be ridiculous that in this day and age there are still neanderthals who would judge a man’s masculinity by whether he took my name or I took his!
That’s what we did with the kids. I definitely feel it was the right decision, but it does come with it’s own host of problems.
No way am I (male) changing my name. But I don’t expect her to change her name. In fact, it seems kind of silly for her to do so. Not sure what to do kids’ names if there are any.