Our BetterMost Community > Chez Tremblay
user names
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: injest on March 17, 2008, 11:43:02 pm ---why does she feel that her identity will be lost if she changes her name? You are who you are....married, single, whatever your last name. A rose is a rose...
--- End quote ---
That's funny, Jess! I was going to say "a rose is a rose" when I responded to your last post, the one about why it's better if all people in a family share the same last name. But I didn't, because on second thought I decided it's not that simple. You rightly made the point then that sharing a last name gives family members a sense of unity -- that is, an identity as a family. But identity works on an individual level, too.
Or consider the reverse: If you are who you are, married, single, etc., then why should a woman bother to change her name? Especially because that entails many more hassles (changing driver's license, etc.)? The reason many women do it is because they want their name to reflect their identity as a wife.
Brown Eyes:
The name issue is certainly not necessarily an issue of deeply ingrained personal identity. Yes, I agree that changing a name doesn't fundamentally change a person's "real" identity.
This is more a question of symbolic identity. And, I think for some people, there's a deep attachemnt to a name and for others it's not such a big deal.
To me, the situations where women entirely subsume their name/symbolic identities into their husband's names in cases that have been mentioned before... where a woman's name would be written "Mrs. John Doe" are actually sort of sad. It just seems to be an unpleasant reminder of old-fashioned aspects of marriage... when the word "obey" was in marriage vows and when there was a large degree of subservience implied within marriage as an institution (of couse circumstances like this still persist in lots of current cultures and individual circumstances).
I had a a friend once who loathed her father and couldn't wait to change her last name when she got married. She's divorced now. So, in a way she's in a real bind in terms of a last name... either she had to choose to go back to a disliked paternal last name or to keep divored-married last name. She was only married for about 2 years and has no children. She kept her divorced husband's last name, but in a way there's something sort of odd about that.
Women really are often stuck when it comes to having "names of their own". It's usually one kind of paternal/patriarchal option or another. Lesbian couples wrangle with this dilemma a lot.
For me personally, I have my father's last name and my mother's "maiden" name as my middle name (which of course is really her father's last name). So, even my middle name isn't truly a name of female origins (meaning it doesn't reflect anything about my mother's maternal line).
Also, the whole issue of tracing a family lineage can be just so difficult for women compared to men (based on constant name changes through multiple generations). In a way it obscures female lineage to a degree that doesn't seem fair.
And, I still think the fact that men are usually so reluctant to change their last names is very telling about the cultural implications of a last name.
CellarDweller:
When the day is over (work/gym/dinner) I take a quick shower and go to the cellar where the TV, phone, DVD/VCR, CD player, CDs and DVDs and computer all are. I stay there until bedtime.
:D :D
Katie77:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on September 17, 2008, 08:35:03 pm ---When the day is over (work/gym/dinner) I take a quick shower and go to the cellar where the TV, phone, DVD/VCR, CD player, CDs and DVDs and computer all are. I stay there until bedtime.
:D :D
--- End quote ---
And when you are asleep, the boogy man lives down there........ :o :o
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: Katie77 on September 17, 2008, 10:18:28 pm ---And when you are asleep, the boogy man lives down there........ :o :o
--- End quote ---
Oh puhlease.
I killed him a long time ago!
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