MIL not using correct name

[SkyBlue1987]

So I didn’t change my name when we got married a few years ago - which the in-laws definitely know and have never said anything bad about (that I know about). MIL is also on Facebook so would be reminded every time I post photos of the kids of my actual name. However, every time she posts something to us (they don’t live close by) it’s addressed to Mr and Mrs XYZ. Wondering if I should just let it go, it does bug me because I don’t know if she’s doing it deliberately or just because she’s old fashioned.

I addressed my cousin wrongly for years! My uncle had told me she only kept her maiden name to use professionaly (Dr) and to use Mrs Husbands name........that wasn't right. I inadvertently addressed cards wrongly for 30 years.

Please tell her how you want to be addressed, then if she continues you know it's deliberate!!!

They are definitely more sexist in some ways but they are less sexist in this way! We can all learn how to be less sexist from different cultures.

@RiderofRohan I don’t think it’s a less sexist naming convention really just different. You would be named first name, fathers name, grandfathers name in most Muslim countries I think. But Muslims don’t change their names on marriage as far as I know.

To be fair though, that's just another sexist tradition. There's a reason why it's the mens names that are passed on.

Edit: Wait, I misread. That's what you're saying, right? Nevermind. 😂

My mil does this too! She’s not a nice person thou, so might actually be doing it on purpose 🤣

I think that’s what I said?

It is. I just edited! 😂

Yes but you have ignored again that in the west not only is this the case, but when you marry you are expected to shed the name you have built your identity/reputation your entire adult life around to replace it with that of the man you marry. It's a double whammy of sexism

I’m not sure I see that in the same way. To me your first name is yours and surname etc are choice. Keep, change, they all have roots that are not passed down through the generations of women.

Yes but the sexist part is that no one expects men to be so blasé about their surnames and keep, change, whatever.

Exactly. I think this is willfully ignoring the obvious to prove a point. In the west, you, a woman, are changeable, depending on whichever man you are linked to at any given time.

You can choose @RiderofRohan my point was they are both sexist traditional choices so I don’t think choosing to change your name to your husbands is a necessarily any more sexist than choosing to stay with your birth name.

If your premise is they're both mens names, then I would argue yes that is more sexist to twice be named after a man than just once

Even if the second time is your choice?

Yes, we have recognised that both societies are patriarchies but one exceeds the other when it comes to sexism in naming. Father's name is given to all children, both boys and girls, in both societies. Yet only in one, western society, is the woman and solely the woman expected to change her name to match her husband's. This comes from a time a woman was considered her husband's property. Fact.

I get it. It's tradition. It's hard to wrap your head around why it is wrong and the first instinct is to make excuses for it because the sexism is normalised in your mind. Same reason you'll hear women in Saudi Arabia defending wearing a full face veil. We've all been brainwashed by the patriarchy to defend it to death.

My in laws do this. At first it irritated me and I corrected them a couple of times. Now I just let it go.

I kept my own name. The dc are double barrelled. It's nothing horrendously long, think xxx Lee-James.

At first the kept calling me Mrs Hisname. After corrected it was MrsHisnameHername. Even though I'm not double barrelled.

Now they've just taken to addressing me by my first name so I have no surname 🤣

In their case I don't think it's deliberate. I think it just blows their minds. They probably think it's not really legal to keep your own name and I'm pretending.

Mil also refuses to acknowledge if dh has done something feminine such as cook dinner, bake a cake or clean a room and will tell me the cake I've made is lovely, even though she's been told dh made it.

Dh 'works very hard' and I'm a housewife (yes she's actually called me that) even though I work.

I’m not sure I’m defending it (against what?) I think I was just saying keeping you fathers name or taking your husbands name are not one sexist and one non-sexist. Personally I chose which name to be called after marriage. I’ve been married for a while so I would imagine most women have been able to choose for a fair few decades. I can’t imagine all of those choosing husbands name over fathers are doing it because they are cowering in the face of convention. Certainly that wasn’t the case for me.

It’s not my father’s name. It’s my name. The one I’ve been known by since birth, and have built up a considerable professional reputation under.

. As I seem to say with boring regularity on these threads, how come men get to own their own surnames, as no one is suggesting men just use their fathers’ names?

Exactly.

Yet again, it is not keeping your father's name, it's keeping your own name. Alternatively, it is keeping your father's name as an alternative to taking your FILs, because if you don't get to call your name your own then neither does your husband. This isn't difficult.

The name (presumably) references your fathers and was handed down to you. You chose to keep it. You could have changed it but you didn’t want to, you could have changed it to your husbands or to something completely different. I can understand why you might want to keep it for professional continuity but don’t see that as morally superior to changing it for another reason.

It's so telling that people who claim a woman's name is her father's but her husband's is his own can never explain why.

So much over thinking of names on this thread.

For me it's about family units, a name that makes it known we are a family group. I don't personally like a family with different names.

Genealogy will be impossible in years to come. Then no one will know who or where they came from.

Why will it be impossible? Even before the advent of home DNA tests vastly expanded options, people were hardly restricted to tracing only those ancestors on the fully paternal line.

Have you seen genetic testing these days? You can find out exactly who your mother's, half brother's, illegitimate nephew is in a matter of days. We don't need outdated traditions based on female subjugation to know who we are related to, especially as these tests become more common place.

You didn’t ask? I don’t think it’s anything to do with this discussion really but Dh doesn’t have the same name as his father.