| By sekai.no.kakumei - Jun 12th, 2007 at 4:23 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
In the traditional sense, when women get married, they change their last name to their husband’s, or hyphenate their names (her last name-his last name). However, switch things around, and it isn’t too easy. Only six states allow men to take their wives’ last name (California is possibly the seventh state). This is posing a problem for married couples, as well as domestic partners. Under most states’ laws, the man must “must petition the court, advertise in a newspaper and pay hundreds of dollars in fees” if he wants his wife’s last name (just a little much?). All a woman has to do is sign the marriage license. Doesn’t the husband have every right to take his wife’s last name?
Though I have to interject an anecdote from my childhood here. When I was in middle school, the principle was Mr. W (I won’t use his full name here). When my youngest brother entered the same middle school, it was Mr. M. However, it was the same man. He didn’t take his wife’s last name…they had combined the two together. So when they got divorced (around the time my little brother entered middle school), he had gone back to his “maiden” name (what would be the masculine word for maiden?). It confused the current students, and the alumni, because it was something we had never seen before. And this was a conservative little town (a.k.a. Stepford).
Maybe it’s time for a change here?
~世界の革命
!
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If it's not conscious, then it's not really equality?
So if I unconsciously choose to pay all my female workers 75% of what I'm paying the men, that's not inequality -- it only magically becomes inequality if I stop to consciously consider it?
What kind of horseshit is that? Look at the world around you -- the idea that the woman takes the man's last name by default is a remnant of the now archaic view that women are the property of their husbands. This is a worldwide issue, not just an American one. In Japan, for instance,where gender relations are hellishly bad, women are legally required (under most circumstances) to take the last name of their husband.
Just because YOU haven't thought about it doesn't mean it isn't inequality. The world does not bend according to whatever lowest common denominator you set.
A woman taking a man's name in marriage is common practice, so a process exists to do it.
On the other hard, the opposite is so rare that it reasonable to think that a bureaucratic process to do it simply did not exist. It is not to say that it is reasonable that they be put on an equal footing, but saying something is an inequality due to someone trying to do something that is far more rare than their contemporary counterpart is a not a sound logical argument.
WHY do you think that became the common practice?
"Common practices" don't just magically spring into the world fully-formed. They come from somewhere - in this case, from the history of turning women into the property of their husbands.
Where are the feminazit whe ya need em?