Why are so many women hellbent on acting against their own interest?

I disagree that politicians are at the top actually. Opposition MPs have influence, but no real power. Only the government has power, especially in times of a strong majority.

I also disagree about politicians' looks. Since politics have been more televised I think many of the most successful are quite good looking, or at least inoffensive looking. Think of Clinton, Blair, Cameron, Sunak, etc. Biden is very good for his age.

Bcause Miss is short for Mistress, which is the female equivalent of Master, even though, as with many words, its female association has diminished its status. I always quite liked being called 'Miss' when a teacher. I'm married but tend to cringe at the title Mrs.

I guess in the past most teachers were unmarried women, anyway - as women used to be expected to give up their job upon marriage. Teaching was one of those professions open to women. A lot of my female teachers at aschool were either unmarried or lesbian. I went to an all girls C Of E school.

I used to teach in a school in which the male teachers were referred to as 'Sir' an the female teachers 'Madam' .

"On that note, it still confuses when I think about why did we call all female teachers "miss" in secondary school - even obviously married ones."

In my day, you’d be eaten alive for doing that!

"On that note, it still confuses when I think about why did we call all female teachers "miss" in secondary school - even obviously married ones."

Until not so long age married women had to give up their teaching jobs so female teachers were traditionally unmarried.

also, I remember reading that even in England old spinsters were sometimes referred to as Mrs, especially governesses or if they run schools, but I don't think that was a rule

On that note, it still confuses when I think about why did we call all female teachers "miss" in secondary school - even obviously married ones.

In Polish there is term "panicz" (diminutive of "pan", like "fraulein" is diminutive of "frau") that would have been used by everyone who knew him - which means all the neighbours etc. A young man would also be introduced to new people as such, so his marital status would have been immediately known.

Nowadays it is used as light insult, but so is "panna/panienka" (miss), all adults are Pan/Pani otherwise.

However, I've heard my Polish grandma use this term when talking about people from her youth, so I think it must have been in regular use until at least mid-century.

I have no idea how in English the master of the house came to be addressed as mister and his sons as master, but I doubt it had anything to do with advertising marital status.

Unless there are servants in the house, there’s no need for children to be addressed by a title so it would make sense for Miss and Master or equivalents to be associated with the rich. Señorito in Spanish is now a pejorative term for a rich young man.
In England, some single women who obtained there own status such as cooks and housekeepers seem to have been called Mrs but those who had inherited status stuck with Miss until married.

@LadyHester as with everything - it wasn't that simple. There are many records of women keeping their husband's trade going and / or inheriting at least something. There were periods of time when being a widow of someone with money was one of the few situations for a woman to have a relative freedom.

and while a wife was not necessarily seen as property, she was definitely a responsibility - the name change was a very easy way to establish association with her husband and his family.

However, most of this reasoning became irrelevant once women gained right to own property in their own name.

@PaintedEgg I’m not sure how much that argument stands up given that married women had no legal identity until quite late in the nineteenth century.
Name changes were surely more about a woman passing from being her father’s property and responsibility to being that of her husband.

@WhatWouldJeevesDo I didn't know this one and was thinking of slavic languages

Yes, Señorito is definitely an insult @PaintedEgg.

@ArabellaScott taking on mans name dates back to times when women did not have (in general) their own wealth, it made sense to have your very name signify that you have rights to his inheritance etc.

Women who had titles that were higher than those of their husbands generally continued to use those titles / their previous names

so historically looking at it, taking on mans name was less about belonging to him and more about his stuff belonging to you should he flip over 😜

fun fact: some languages have male equivalent of "miss", although its rarely used and used to be mostly applied to rich families, which actually once again points towards the real reason for revealing someone's martial status at all

it was not so much to let people know you "belong" to your spouse, but to let them know if you're free

which is probably also why Miss often became Mrs even if she never married - at certain age she was no longer considered a marriage material (including the fact that she probably didn't want to if she avoided marriage thus far)

the tradition of giving children man's name also started as something that women found useful back in the day, especially unmarried ones. If meant the dad did not question his paternity and it would be easier to chase him legally should he try and avoid responsibility for the child.

I’ve heard this before but when did it change?

Well, maybe it's just me. I can't see the taking on of someone else's name and surrendering - feel free to use a different term if you think that's loaded - giving up, letting go of, removing, etc - one's own name as anything other than a form of erasure. Signifying ownership, obeisance, subjugation, surrender.

Names are not entirely equal to 'words'. Names have enormous power and significance and the changing/accepting of a name similarly has huge cultural meaning.

FWIW women have pretty unarguably been subjugated as second class citizens throughout the UK up until relatively recently (last century) - legally, socially, culturally - and I would say that changing their names from their father's to their husbands was part of that subjugation.

Yes, that's rather the point. There are all kinds of different traditions, and the history behind them is quite varied, and they don't seem to be especially related to the status of women in those societies.

"Erasing" is loaded language here. A woman doesn't cease to be who she is because she takes a spouse's name any more than a man does. The question of the social effects of one convention or another is completely unestablished.

Personally I suspect it makes little or no difference in itself what the social convention is in a society with regards to names, although potentially other social forms related to that (legal status, say,) could. Naming conventions are socially neutral IMO. There's no particular reason to oppose people who want to change them, but it won't materially affect women as a whole or individually and it represents a waste of energy as a campaign.

Western liberal progressivism has contained a strong bias towards the idea that changing language in itself will drive deeper social changes and attitudes. In some cases that may be true, especially where it clearly makes it difficult to conceptualize or discuss ideas clearly. But in a lot of cases I don't think it's evidenced, and in fact the evidence suggests that it's not the case - the revolving door of which words are considered acceptable or rude or slurs is a good example - attitudes simply change the meaning of the words rather than the opposite.

On the subject of titles, I always think that the resurrection of ‘Ms’ was a definite tactical error. In languages where there’s just a word for Mrs such as Frau and a rather diminutive word for Miss such as Fraulein, single women tend to become Frau and it’s a bit of a non-issue.

FWIW it's a rather specific and localised convention, too. Scots women didn't used to take their husband's surname, although many first names were 'feminised' male names (Williamina, etc).

No evidence that women erasing their own names is harmful. I guess this is true. And is there any evidence that the converse is true? Does taking a man's name make a woman happier? Or are you just assuming that convention must be the de facto better option?

*@TempestTostI think this is less to do with gender issues and more to do with general capitalistic "bleed you dry" approach

However, I have seen feminists saying that taking long leave from work is anti-feminist because you're forsaking your career for childcare...and then that supporting longer paternity leave is wrong because men allegedly don't use it for the right purpose

in fact anything to do with parenthood is a can of worm and you can never do it right - not as a parent and not as a woman*

Yes, of course it intersects with larger questions about the structure of the economy. And if that's not a feminist issue, (it's not,) views can differ among women without any of them being anti-feminist. They just reflect different views about human economic life.

There has always been a strain of feminism that is largely anti-children. They are accepted as a kind of necessity, but anything that ties women to their children more than men is to be rejected, so breastfeeding for example. Some of these feminists get into transhumanist territory with ideas around outsourcing gestation to.

It's never caught on to a huge degree because not enough people want to live like that, but it's had some influence in discourse on women in work.

I guess it's not surprise ideas about parenting are fraught, it's one of the most important, long term, social functions. And our society is unusual in having had not only huge changes to how it is done in a short time, but also a very wide spectrum within society. Even compared to when I was a growing up. So lots of scope for friction.

I like evidence based claims, when possible. There seem to be a huge assumption made by feminists, at least in English speaking societies, that women taking the man's name is bad for women (whether individualistically or as a whole) and it would be better if it was different.

Is there any actual evidence based that where women do not typically take the man's name, "the patriarchy" has less power?

I'm going to suggest that there isn't. There are a lot of societies with a lot of naming traditions, and overall they don't especially correlate to the position of women in the society. Nor is there evidence that changing a tradition of this type has any effect on the position of women, not just individualistically, but as a whole.

That being the case, while people are welcome to think the hypothesis that this is important for women, I think it shows a certain amount or arrogance to suggest that women who don't do it are being anti-feminist, or settling, or anything else. Not subscribing to a hypothesis with, at best, a limited evidence base, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I suspect that the surnames thing will change over time. I certainly think there was more societal pressure/expectation that a woman would change her name on marriage when I got married in the 80s, than there is now.

I do think that, even if there had been no pressure to change my name when I got married, I would still have changed it, for the reasons I explained earlier. I also chose to be Mrs, and would not be happy if that stopped being an option on forms etc, and I had to be Ms - because I have been Mrs for so long, and I am not at all good with change. But if, overnight, all titles were removed from forms etc, and we were simply known by our names, that would not worry me at all.

and here is where I think there is definitely enough people keeping their name, let alone using title Ms for it to work. Someone mentioned that 90% of women in UK changes their surname after getting married - so in theory every 10th married woman keeps her previous name

this is where my bias comes into place, but I have a gendered, foreign name...the amount of confusion it creates and the fact that I had people try and tell me how to spell my own name makes the Ms/Miss issue so trivial in comparison (especially since I never actually had a person question my use of Ms) that I can't help but think that it is a bit of a non-issue.

If enough people did it everyone would get used to it is the fundamental point here. Enough people don't. That's why the choices other women make have a detrimental impact on those of us who don't use the more patriarchal models.

Also, those of us who actually experience this behaviour are the ones best placed to decide how big of a deal it is. In the same way that women who've taken their husband's names and/or use Mrs are best placed to say whether it was in their interests or not.

Ultimately, it's still a form of sexism and one that men don't have to worry about it. There isn't a way for anyone to say we should pick our battles, which generally boils down to telling us you don't want us to say it, that doesn't in itself amount to both policing and social pressure.