Mrs.
Using the term 'the Mrs.' tongue in cheek, like MC or GLib are fond of, amuses me. Other than that, what possible use is there for a term like Mrs. in 2007? I know that "Mr. & Mrs. CC" is a convention in addressing letters, but I am seriously surprised when some of my friends or family use it. What is wrong with a blanket equivalent to Mr. --such as Ms.? Am I the only one who finds it weirdly disturbing to get a different title based on my marital status?
To answer your questions: 1) No. 2) Yes.
Mrs, to me, means that I've found someone I want to share my life with and maybe have children with; that I have a supportive partner at home who shares my successes and disappointments with me.
But hey, I've only been married for 3 years. I'm sure the honeymoon will be over soon and I'll start demanding that everyone call me Ms.
Yes they do - Master : Miss :: Mister : Misses.
'Master' was never popular, and became even less so after the whole slavery thing.
As I said, "Mrs, to me, means that I've found someone I want to share my life with and maybe have children with; that I have a supportive partner at home who shares my successes and disappointments with me."
Mr means... you're over 18. Big whoop.
Maybe if you don't change your name, people assume you want to be a Ms., and if you do, people aren't sure?
But who am I to even guess about these things? I live in a bubble of liberalism. I never even considered changing my name, it would be difficult to get more feminist jobs than my last two, my niece has my sister's last name, I wasn't allowed to own Barbies(tm) as a kid.
(thanks for de-lurking, Burkee--it's fun to have you around)
OK, I have never considered not changing my name. I always knew I wanted to take my husband's name if I got married. It's an emotional decision rather than an intellectual one, for me. And I'm a socialist (which is pretty liberal). And I played with Barbie and Ken (by "played with" please read "made Ken lay on top of Barbie while making kissy noises"). And I consider myself a feminist.
So am I a "bad" feminist?
I honestly don't mean this question as confrontational - I'm curious about your opinion(s), but whatever your opinions may be, I'll still consider myself a feminist and you my friend(s). I suppose a better term for what I am is a humanist - I believe in women's rights, men's rights, gay rights, civil rights, etc etc. But as a woman, it's important to me to think of myself as a feminist. And I'm curious to know if others might consider me to be a hypocrite or a compromiser. Honest.
I've seen the burden that friends have had when they go to the doctor, or hospital or daycare or whatever, and have to explain that, indeed, this child with a different name is theirs. If the parents have different names, only one can share with the children, and that's just sad. Feminism, in this case, is really stupid, because it's for the kids. The fucking kids, ladies!
My maiden name is my father's name! And my mother's maiden name is her father's name! And my mother's mother's mother's mother's name is her father's name! So I don't really see the point, unless you're Icelandic and have surnames like: Margaretsdottir. Which would be pretty awesome. Any female child of mine would be Pamelasdottir and any son would be Edwardsson. Wow.
Oops, my "bad" feminist stripes are showing!
I grew up as a 'Walsh' when my parents (mom and step-dad) had the name 'Musik'. My biological father's last name is 'Rosinke'. My grandparents (mom's mom and mom's step-dad) were called 'McGuiness'. You have to go back to great-grandparents to find the last 'Walsh' that I am descended from. But, I didn't feel like I was lacking anything because all of our names were different.
I felt bad for the hyphen-kids with the superlong last names. I eventually ended up working with someone with the last name 'Schleifer-Schneggenburger'. Imagine if she marries a 'MacDonald-Patterson' and has kids!
When M and I get married, she's keeping her last name (because it's cooler than mine, and it's hers), and I'm keeping mine (because I'm too lazy to change it... otherwise I'd have already changed my legal first name to Tommy). We tried and failed to come up with a fabricated new last name that we'd share.
If we have a kid, its name will be "Horrifying Mistake".
It's like women who don't make this marriage decision are left behind (aka, remain the semi-shameful "Ms."). They remain (insert far-away narration voice) embryos that grow and grow, but will never fully emerge with fully formed wings.
At the same time, Ms. is not nearly as matronly as Mrs., which is a tad frompy, right?
What I HATE is being called "Ma'me." I had no idea, as a younger person, how much this term would eventually bother me. I much prefer "Madame," a distinction not reserved for 30+. And, "Madame" is funny. You men don't know how easy you have it--to not have to worry about such serious problems.
As an aside--TGL, I haven't been "lurking" the Rideside for years, as you say. (At least not much.)
All I meant is that the choice I made makes me feel fuzzy and happy. And I totally understand why other people might not want to make the same choice.
Ma'am is hideous. It should be reserved for people we hate.
My niece has my sister's name, my nephew has his father's name. They followed Virtue's family's naming practice. It's not a perfect solution, but it works for them.
I'd bet multiple-named families are getting toward the norm rather than the exception.
No way. My opinion on the naming matter: I made a choice, you made a different choice, but most importantly we both had the choice. (except in Germany, where you have to choose all names from a special government-issued book. Technically, my sister's naming technique is illegal)
I simultaneously love and hate the idea of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/26WOMEN.html?ex=1382500800&en=02f8d75eb63908e0&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND"> opt-out revolution.</a>. But that the choice is available is most important.
On a side note, Sweden & Switzerland are 2 countries I know of with lists of "suitable" (i.e. "legal") baby names. Illegal names are, well, illegal. One major problem? Sweden, at least, now has a sizable Muslim population. Who are... not allowed to name their children many traditional Muslim names as they aren't "yet" on the list. Right.
As for legal surnames, in Holland I will always be known by my maiden name. They don't recognise my married name as legal, although I was able to use it on my bank account, etc as it's on my new passport as my US-recognised legal name. But the government (and society) don't recognise it. My healthcare paperwork compromises by hyphenating my name, but with my married name first and my maiden name last. Kids get the papa's name, provided his name's on the birth certificate.
But this is entirely serious: To me, Ma'am sounds like a euphemism for "b--ch" in any shade of northern or southern accent.
Of all the outside of 128 culture shocks, hearing a heterosexual man call another heterosexual man baby really whacked my brain about in my skull.
Of course, as alluded to by GLib, I come from from pretty hard core liberal feminist stock, so hearing any body called baby or sugar was kind of a trip (as a teenager I once got a lecture for referring to another girl as a chick).
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
From personal experience, the second paragraph of 10D's post is bullshit. And I experienced this when people were even less used to the idea of multiple last names than they are now (my parents filed a class action suit with several other families in order for me to have my mom's last name). Yes people get confused, but people get confused about far more basic things that cause just as much hassle. I certainly don't feel less connected to my sister or to my dad or to his family because we don't have the same last name. In fact, I don't give this subject all that much thought except when it comes up in conversations like this.
The same goes for titles--I recently sent burkee an invitation addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Conor Clockwise, because she had taken his last name, and that is how it's done in the most recent set of generally accepted rules. I don't want to agonize over what other people were thinking about when they got married and what it means to them.
I once asked my mother if it bothered her when people sent mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Blankety Blank. She said that she knew who she was, she knew what they meant, and it was generally a pretty good way to screen out telemarketers. Works for me.
Note: she was at least 65 years old and looked about 85 and acted about 3.
That's when I started referring her calls to other people.
Inversely, I am beginning to loath all titles. Not in the sense that I mind too much how my mail is addressed, getting personal mail is a rare and happy occasion: thanks, virtue! Rather, in the sense that titles (especially when used by strangers) assume a lot about a person. By 'a lot', I mean sex organs and gender identity. In the case of junk mail, the title could be the result of some little box checked F or M. What business does the credit card company have inquiring about the junk in your pants?
Hell, I am for canning gender and marital associations altogether, and using simply the letter M. as the universal title of respect.
If all titles are the same, there is no need for a title at all.
There is no need for titles.
No offense meant to any other ridesiders.
Maybe we should:
-all start calling each other unpronouncable symbols a la Prince or TAFKAP
-start referring to one another as clicks / clacks a la <i>The Gods Are Crazy</i>
just a thought...
I don't want to speak for Virtue's parents, but I think that if I had fought the good fight to give Virtue her name, I would feel proud every time I was inconvenienced by having to explain why my children have two different names.
In fact, I am proud of what Virtue's parents did, and I'm not even their kid.
Your son has a pretty unusual name-- my guess is that he'll grow up simultaneously loving and hating it (like me,) and having to explain it to people just like Virtue's parents.
[no snark here-- just my 2 cents]
And on a side note, how many people are inconvenienced by being called John Smith or Jessica Jones?
Not fun being a fat little girl named Pam.
Sayin'.
How often was dealing with bureaucracy more difficult than it needed to be
because we all don't have the same last name?
Reply:
Once we got your birth certificate - which required a court case/decision from the Supreme Judicial Court in which we were not named plaintiffs but did provide an affidavit; it was part of a bigger battle to require the various Town Clerks to allow women to keep their birth names and the right to choose whatever name you want for yourself and child so long as there was no intent to defraud anyone - I don't think we ever had any problem. You do know that you had a passport before you had a birth certificate, since the decision didn't come down until August 1977 and we went to Ireland in July. That was a small hassle, but I went into the passport people with affidavits from the doctor who delivered you to say that you were born in the US and the people at Infants and Other People to say that you were generally known by all and sundry as [Virtue], so we didn't have any problem other than the need to produce additional documents. By the time you got to Devotion,
more than 50% of the students there came from some sort of "non-traditional" families - although what could be more "traditional" than Brownies and piano lessons and eating dinner all together and going to church on Sunday and having Grandpa for dinner regularly?
A+
1) Mom is born to Arthur and Dorothy Walsh
2) Arthur is killed (in a bar fight! honest!) when my mom was just a wee lass
3) Dorothy remarries and becomes a McGuiness, Mom stays Walsh
4) Mom marries a Rosinke and gets pregnant (or vice-versa maybe)
5) Marriage is "annulled", Mom reverts back to Walsh
6) Tommy is born as a Walsh
7) Mom remarries and is now a Musik.
So, the Walsh name squeezed through from my great-grandfather, even though nobody in between is a Walsh now.
But, yes, my mom is a hot ticket.