I share my husband's name, even as I spend my entire professional and personal life fighting for women's equality. Some feminists would see this as some kind of sell-out, but I don't agree. This issue has never been my battle. Why? Because I don't see my maiden name as "mine" any more than my married name is "mine". They are both names of men who, in certain aspects of social and legal doctrine, own me. Neither name is mine. In retrospect, my husband and I talk about how perhaps we should have created our own name, something totally different (and easier to spell and to pronounce than our current one). But we've been married 21 years so that's a bit late.... . Plus, today, when there are so many women whose last names are different than that of their children, it has created a whole different kind of disenfranchisement for women, where the women are like the 'exception' to the family, the one a bit outside and unrecognized as part of the unit. It's a whole other set of problems... Anyway, I agree that there are many more aspects to this issue than one singular feminist view. And I would suggest to the writer to save her agonizing for other more important battles
I share my husband's name, even as I spend my entire professional and personal life fighting for women's equality. Some feminists would see this as some kind of sell-out, but I don't agree. This issue has never been my battle. Why? Because I don't see my maiden name as "mine" any more than my married name is "mine". They are both names of men who, in certain aspects of social and legal doctrine, own me. Neither name is mine. In retrospect, my husband and I talk about how perhaps we should have created our own name, something totally different (and easier to spell and to pronounce than our current one). But we've been married 21 years so that's a bit late.... . Plus, today, when there are so many women whose last names are different than that of their children, it has created a whole different kind of disenfranchisement for women, where the women are like the 'exception' to the family, the one a bit outside and unrecognized as part of the unit. It's a whole other set of problems... Anyway, I agree that there are many more aspects to this issue than one singular feminist view. And I would suggest to the writer to save her agonizing for other more important battles