To STILL be considered odd to keep my maiden name, even though it's 2018?

[jamoncrumpets]

I married DH in 2013. I kept my surname for a number of reasons: wasn't that enamoured of DH's, feminist reasons, I just really like my own surname.

Didn't make a deal out of it at all, but did mention to family and family-in-law that I'd be keeping my name. Kept the explanation brief 'I just like my name', and left it at that.

So why am I STILL receiving post from family addressed to 'Mrs DHSURNAME'?! Even from my own DF?!

Then today I was talking to one of my aunts and she was utterly shocked that I was happy to have a different surname to my DC 'But he's your SON, how can you not want the same name, you're a FAMILY?!' - tbh it never entered my head to care! I adore my DS, and my husband, and don't feel like our name is the vital thing that links us together.

AIBU to just be a little bit fed up of having to explain myself over and over again to people?! How can I politely tell these people to fuck off?

[LadyFairfaxSake]

If you want to change your name, change it. If not then don't. It's perfectly fine for you not to.
However, deliberately or not, if you don't change, you're bucking years of convention. This will always lead to people who either write to "Mrs DH initial, DH surname", because that's the convention & they don't know you've not followed it.
There will also be people who think that by not changing, you're being "difficult" or "making a point". They will press you on it on the basis that if you are pressed enough you'll "see sense" & come round.
I guess my point is that it is impossible to please all the people except by doing something that you don't want to & don't have to. However you came to your position, it'll always be unusual to some people & some of them will be unable to keep quiet I'm afraid.

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

" it'll always be unusual to some people "

for goodness sake it's 2018.

[Teachtolive]

@jamoncrumpets I'm in the same boat as you, more or less. Kept my name cos DHs is foreign and hard to spell. Got grief about it where I work (which is a female dominated industry! Side note- cut my hair short once and a senior staff member asked me if I asked DH first!!) And I get Christmas cards in his name, from my friends!!

Our children have his name, is it awful that I kinda hope they'll take my name for convenience when they grow up?

[Teachtolive]

Sorry, there's a lot of exclamation marks there.

[VixenAbroad]

When I got married I kept my name. I never get addressed as MrsDH but because I work here and he works away my DH does sometimes get addressed as MrVixenAbroad :-)

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

i never changed my name, and nobody has called me Mrs Anything, because i am not a school teacher.
Hard pushed to think of any other situation where people need to address you as anything, apart from bills where of course they need to know if us silly women are married or not.

[Limoncell0]

American - why would you assume that women who make different decisions to you are less enlightened? Maybe they are in some cases, but maybe in other cases, they have passed through and gone beyond your concept of "enlightenment" and they're simply being honest about how they feel in the contact of their relationship. They're doing what feels right to them. You don't need to "live with that" because it's not your relationship.

[Americantan]

Unless for official form filling where titles seem to remain necessary, if I’m ever asked if I’m Mrs/miss etc I say “just American”

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

yes i have tried that American, saying 'its just Four' ....

[Americantan]

Limincell0 as an earlier thread on this point demonstrated, many enlightened women acknowledged that in changing their name they made an unfeminist decision, one that is unhelpful to the progression of women generally, so in the wider round, it’s not only the woman who changed her name that has to live it, women as a class have to live with it. They at least accepted that was the case. But this is MN where can be found some fierce intellects and highly enlightened women. My experience IRL is that the women changing their name are unaware of the roots of the tradition. Those that are have not or would not change their name. It is a discussion I’ve had often on my own journey into feminism.

[BertrandRussell]

Isn't it just fuckibg outrageous that after all this time using "Ms" is seen as "making a political statement"?
Oh and before someone says "oh but I don't know how to pronounce it" - you don't struggle with the equally vowelless Mrs, do you?

[AlmostAJillSandwich]

The only way i would keep my own surname is if the person i marry has one i dislike even more than my own.
If i had my mothers Maiden name as my surname, i'd probably keep it if i married.
Nothing feminist about it for me, i will just take whichever one i think sounds the most flattering to me personally. If my partners surname was also really short like mine, and they flow well, i may even double barrel :P

[VladmirsPoutine]

Crikey american, some women wanted to take their husbands name because they just did. I'm not sure they even stopped for a second to think about their feminist credentials or their enlightenment. Or perhaps they did, and decided that feminism means they are entitled to make the choice to take their husband's name and doing so has no bearing of their 'enlightened' feminist status.

it’s not only the woman who changed her name that has to live it, women as a class have to live with it.

So unless all women follow your orthodoxy of keeping their name then they're letting down the sisterhood? I can see why a lot of women are reluctant to call themselves a feminist when they're being brow beaten by the apparently 'enlightened' women.

I often link this whole name-debate to someone that describes themselves as a paragon of health because they ordered a diet coke with their big-mac meal.

[Limoncell0]

"many enlightened women acknowledged that in changing their name they made an unfeminist decision, one that is unhelpful to the progression of women generally"

Yes you can acknowledge it's an unfeminist decision, but if it's something you want to do regardless, as a woman in full knowledge of where the tradition stems from, then what does that say? How does feminism account for that because those women's perspectives are as real and as valid as anyone else's?

[Americantan]

Vlad, then they are either not enlightened or they are a liberal feminist. They just need to own the decision and the unhelpfulness of it. Feminists do sometimes make unfeminist decisions.

[Trinity66]

Do people think it's odd still? I'm 39 and more than half of my friends of a similar age kept their own name

[Americantan]

It says hypocrisy Limon, if the woman regards herself as feminist. No one’s perfect

[MizCracker]

I just wanted to add to Bertrand's excellent post from 17:54 yesterday: women who wanted to change their name because they're so proud to be married. It really makes me squirm to think that bagging a husband is still seen to be an achievement, as opposed to a completely ordinary thing that couples do.

[BertrandRussell]

"It says hypocrisy Limon, if the woman regards herself as feminist. No one’s perfect"

Not necessarily hypocrisy. Feminists sometimes make non feminist choices. The important thing is knowing it's a non feminist choice and acknowledging that you are making it for reasons that seem sound to you.

[Limoncell0]

So should women who feel they want to change their name just deny themselves that choice, simply to make a stance in the name of feminism? Or does feminism need to be more realistic about what some women actually want?

[VladmirsPoutine]

american "not enlightened" or a "liberal feminist." That is incredibly damaging talk.

They just need to own the decision and the unhelpfulness of it.

Choices aren't made in a vacuum to that end people make all sorts of decisions that don't necessarily corroborate with their adopted world view. No-one is perfect but you seem to have outlined a doctrine by which you are arbiter of 'good' feminists and 'bad' feminists. I'd argue that that's more of an unhelpful or unenlightened view than a woman somewhere that changed her name.

[BertrandRussell]

Change your name if you want to. Just be aware that it is an non feminist choice.
And before anyone misquotes me on another thread, that does not mean I am saying you are not/can't be a feminist if you change your name on marriage. Just that you have, on this occasion, made a non feminist choice.

[TheElementsSong]

I think Bertrand you nailed it on the first page (as was soon demonstrated ), and I hope you have that text on a clipboard ready to C&P immediately into all husbands-surname threads as soon as they appear

NB: I didn't change my name, and have somehow managed to stay married for over 14 years. If we ever split up, it won't be because of my ball-breaking lack of family sentiment and husbandly respect, but because DH keeps leaving his crockery on top of the dishwasher

[PaulDacreRimsGeese]

Yes, I dont think it's hypocritical. It is patriarchal and it does make things harder for those of us trying to engage in less patriarchal behaviour, but the reality is pretty much all women sometimes make compromises with patriarchy. Can't really not. Evidently one can be a feminist with one's husband's name, because there are feminists who have done it.

[Trinity66]

Change your name if you want to. Just be aware that it is an non feminist choice.
And before anyone misquotes me on another thread, that does not mean I am saying you are not/can't be a feminist if you change your name on marriage. Just that you have, on this occasion, made a non feminist choice

mmm I do agree with that tbf and I did change my name and still consider myself a feminist. In my defense I did it because I really liked my DH surname and always hated my own though, I'm 100% sure if I hated his name and liked my own I wouldn't have changed it