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Anecdotally this is just wrong. My wife’s Dad was a real piece of work. In a country like SA she would never have gotten away from him. She met me online. The d

Anecdotally this is just wrong. My wife’s Dad was a real piece of work. In a country like SA she would never have gotten away from him. She met me online. The day after she graduated college, without ever discussing it with her father, she moved away with me across the country. Her choice. She decided to take my last name, for simplicities sake, but it was a rational choice we made. Every step of the way it was her choice. Amongst my peer group almost all married women are in a similar situation. The level of freedom is orders of magnitude difference IMO.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
I chose to take my husband's name and kept it when I divorced him. But the tradition is rooted in that idea that she left her clan and joined his. That's the origin story for it. I don't have a simple solution for that one. I don't think it's inherently bad that women typically change their last name. But the reason it is done is because the way women get treated the world over has some things in common. The level of freedom is debatable for Western women. But I already said Westerners don't like to hear that and it got downvoted and dismissed out of hand. So I'm not really up for trying to argue it, given the climate.
- watwut 6y ago
  I think that you are underestimating level of control that exists in the countries we originally talked about. Comparing women being imprisoned and tortured right now because they did not followed the rules to name changed in western countries smells bad faith, honestly. Hence, some of downvotes.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    You never speak to me except to attack me, speaking of bad faith. So maybe just leave me alone. The men here are brutal enough without women here "eating their own."
    - watwut 6y ago
      Disagreeing with you or telling how it looks like when you commented on downvotes is not "eating their own". I do tend to comment more when I disagree which is fairly normal here and pretty much everywhere.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        Women are so often collectively their own worst enemy. Yes, your overall pattern of behavior boils down to "women eating their own." I have damn little support here from the men. Most women that I can readily ID as female are openly antagonistic, as if they are jealous of my status, which is a typical female social dynamic. I've studied this stuff in depth. I discuss it regularly with my sons who are also quite knowledgeable. The best way to destroy someone is to do it politely and all this shit, completely within the fucking rules so it looks like they are entirely in the wrong. This gets done daily around the world to women and other marginalized peoples. And having not eaten and yadda today because eleven years here and being the top ranked woman isn't sufficient to get me connections adequate to establish a middle class income, I'm a tad frayed around the edges. So I'm having a little trouble politely going along with this BS today.
        watwut 6y ago
        This is hard no from me. I dont have to team up with you just because we have same gender. There is no corresponding expectation on men to agree with each other either. They are free to be individuals. Also, I dont know why you think I should consider you higher status or even be aware of your nick when i am responding. In that, you are literally trying to use sexist stereotype to make me do what you want. The sexist stereotype that invalidates what i wrote and my opinions, using imaginary status instead. That is tripple hard no for me, I refuse to play this game.
        DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I'm not trying to make you do anything. You are free to do as you please. And so am I. That includes letting you know that I don't like the way you treat me and wish you would leave me alone. So far, I haven't asked the mods to intercede. But with you doubling down on asserting your right to harass me, that is likely to be my next step. Please, kindly, leave me the hell alone. Justifying downvotes is a violation of the guidelines. If you just followed them, we wouldn't be having this argument.
- brabel 6y ago
  My wife decided not to take my name, and I was cool with that (there were very practical reasons to avoid a name change). I have a male friend who took his wife's last name, actually (his reason was that his surname is basically the most common in the country, which made his full name highly non-unique)! I never understood why modern women still tend to change their name. It's definitely not something anyone expects, in my experience at least.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    I never understood why modern women still tend to change their name. It's definitely not something anyone expects, in my experience at least. I took my husband's name largely because it was a cheap, easy and very private means to stop having the same last name as someone who molested and raped me. I kept my married name when I divorced on the socially acceptable reason that it's the same name as my children. It's a valid reason, but the firmer reason was that my ex's last name is less objectionable than my rapist's last name as a moniker for myself. Should I ever remarry, I am highly likely to again take my new husband's last name to try one last time to wash off the shit of my past. Child molestation or other abuse by relatives is sadly all too common. I doubt anyone has formally studied it, but I would be shocked if it turned out I was the only woman who chose to change my last name for that kind of reason. If we want real equality, we will also need to stamp out the gendered trends in sexual assault. It is typically a male assaulting a female and this can have lifelong negative impact when she is assaulted at a young age.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      It’s awful that this happened to you, and I appreciate you providing your insight as to why you personally decided to go through with it. However, I’m still curious why most other women do so–those who have no reason to separate themselves from their family.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        It's socially acceptable. It's tradition/habit. It makes it easier to identify your new family unit of you, your spouse and children. If we start hyphenating all last names, it won't be too many generations before all have last names of three pages long. I don't know a nice, neat simple solution for this issue. There are some good points to "me, my spouse and kids all have a family name together and it's reasonably short." We also tend to trace inheritance via the father's family line. Some women trade their middle name for the maiden name and take their husband's last name as a solution, like Hillary Rodham Clinton. That seems to be a mostly upper class tradition for women with more of a public life where they have a real need to have some kind of continuity with their past identity in their own right. Trying to bring women out of the shadows of the very private lives as only full-time wives and moms and into the public sphere -- which is de facto the trend here as women live longer, have fewer kids and need to occupy themselves somehow other than just cooking and cleaning -- is complicated. When I don't completely hate my life and wish I had never been born, I occasionally think it's a great experiment in how to resolve some of these questions. There are no easy or simple answers for how to move an entire world rapidly and well from one system to another, which is more or less what the entire world is in the process of doing. How we used to handle it made logical sense for the social fabric of that era. And our social fabric is changing and what worked at one time is now seen as all wrong and bad and I worry that we are throwing the baby out of with the bathwater here. I guess literally, because trying to give women some kind of rights and just handing them a male model is clearly shafting mothers and children. And I think we need to do better than that. I think we urgently need to do better than that.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  I do agree women and men are far from equal in western society (America in particular), but it’s a strained comparison, which is where I think your downvotes came from. There are some parallels, but they are far apart.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    An American friend of mine was living in the Middle East, I think married to a Middle Eastern man, and I think she had a baby. Some other woman at the hospital had triplets and everyone was gaga over the triplets. My American friend was uncomfortable with the situation and said something about it to someone to the effect that "It's cool now, but when she is home and caring for triplets alone, this will be a terrible burden." The person looked at her like she had completely lost her mind and told her "She is never going to have to care for triplets alone." I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I supported my husband's military career and raised and homeschooled our special-needs sons. And since the divorce, life has been extremely hard. My stats tend to be out of date, but I spent a lot of time reading a lot of stuff to try to sort out how and why my life went so very wrong. I was one of the top students in my graduating high school class and won a National Merit Scholarship, etc. The last time I looked at stats, women who were childless and unmarried made about 97 percent of what men made with similar education and experience. The minute she had either a husband or child, the average dropped to two-thirds what men make -- the same the Bible quotes a woman as making 2000 years ago. These are American stats and European women tend to fare somewhat better. It's also less bad these days, from what I gather, then it was 30 years ago. But I continue to be stymied in my efforts to establish an adequate income for myself and my sons. And I'm quite clear my gender is a very large part of that. I do not self-identify as a feminist. I was a homemaker for a lot of years and most self-proclaimed feminists I meet are openly hostile towards me, a la that scene in "Mona Lisa Smile." Women still are heavily burdened by the issue of childbearing and childrearing. And in the US you mostly have some kind of "equality" with men if you choose to not have children. And if you do have kids, your life can be completely flushed down the toilet over it and other people will shrug and say "Well, you shouldn't have had kids if you couldn't afford them." It's also not a policy that is sustainable. If we actively and successfully encourage all women to stop having kids, this is the last generation of humans. We have to find some means to give all people, regardless of gender or age, some kind of decent quality of life. We shaft far too many of our people and then wonder why there are headlines on Hacker News about the social fabric coming unraveled. They are only "far apart" if you have a narrow view of quality of life. I don't and my life experience tells me it is far more complex than most Westerners want to believe who like to claim we are the height of civilized achievement for all of human history and don't make us uncomfortable with niggling details about how mothers get shafted or something.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

I chose to take my husband's name and kept it when I divorced him. But the tradition is rooted in that idea that she left her clan and joined his. That's the origin story for it. I don't have a simple solution for that one. I don't think it's inherently bad that women typically change their last name. But the reason it is done is because the way women get treated the world over has some things in common. The level of freedom is debatable for Western women. But I already said Westerners don't like to hear that and it got downvoted and dismissed out of hand. So I'm not really up for trying to argue it, given the climate.

watwut 6y ago
I think that you are underestimating level of control that exists in the countries we originally talked about. Comparing women being imprisoned and tortured right now because they did not followed the rules to name changed in western countries smells bad faith, honestly. Hence, some of downvotes.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  You never speak to me except to attack me, speaking of bad faith. So maybe just leave me alone. The men here are brutal enough without women here "eating their own."
  - watwut 6y ago
    Disagreeing with you or telling how it looks like when you commented on downvotes is not "eating their own". I do tend to comment more when I disagree which is fairly normal here and pretty much everywhere.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Women are so often collectively their own worst enemy. Yes, your overall pattern of behavior boils down to "women eating their own." I have damn little support here from the men. Most women that I can readily ID as female are openly antagonistic, as if they are jealous of my status, which is a typical female social dynamic. I've studied this stuff in depth. I discuss it regularly with my sons who are also quite knowledgeable. The best way to destroy someone is to do it politely and all this shit, completely within the fucking rules so it looks like they are entirely in the wrong. This gets done daily around the world to women and other marginalized peoples. And having not eaten and yadda today because eleven years here and being the top ranked woman isn't sufficient to get me connections adequate to establish a middle class income, I'm a tad frayed around the edges. So I'm having a little trouble politely going along with this BS today.
      - watwut 6y ago
        This is hard no from me. I dont have to team up with you just because we have same gender. There is no corresponding expectation on men to agree with each other either. They are free to be individuals. Also, I dont know why you think I should consider you higher status or even be aware of your nick when i am responding. In that, you are literally trying to use sexist stereotype to make me do what you want. The sexist stereotype that invalidates what i wrote and my opinions, using imaginary status instead. That is tripple hard no for me, I refuse to play this game.
        DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I'm not trying to make you do anything. You are free to do as you please. And so am I. That includes letting you know that I don't like the way you treat me and wish you would leave me alone. So far, I haven't asked the mods to intercede. But with you doubling down on asserting your right to harass me, that is likely to be my next step. Please, kindly, leave me the hell alone. Justifying downvotes is a violation of the guidelines. If you just followed them, we wouldn't be having this argument.
brabel 6y ago
My wife decided not to take my name, and I was cool with that (there were very practical reasons to avoid a name change). I have a male friend who took his wife's last name, actually (his reason was that his surname is basically the most common in the country, which made his full name highly non-unique)! I never understood why modern women still tend to change their name. It's definitely not something anyone expects, in my experience at least.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  I never understood why modern women still tend to change their name. It's definitely not something anyone expects, in my experience at least. I took my husband's name largely because it was a cheap, easy and very private means to stop having the same last name as someone who molested and raped me. I kept my married name when I divorced on the socially acceptable reason that it's the same name as my children. It's a valid reason, but the firmer reason was that my ex's last name is less objectionable than my rapist's last name as a moniker for myself. Should I ever remarry, I am highly likely to again take my new husband's last name to try one last time to wash off the shit of my past. Child molestation or other abuse by relatives is sadly all too common. I doubt anyone has formally studied it, but I would be shocked if it turned out I was the only woman who chose to change my last name for that kind of reason. If we want real equality, we will also need to stamp out the gendered trends in sexual assault. It is typically a male assaulting a female and this can have lifelong negative impact when she is assaulted at a young age.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    It’s awful that this happened to you, and I appreciate you providing your insight as to why you personally decided to go through with it. However, I’m still curious why most other women do so–those who have no reason to separate themselves from their family.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      It's socially acceptable. It's tradition/habit. It makes it easier to identify your new family unit of you, your spouse and children. If we start hyphenating all last names, it won't be too many generations before all have last names of three pages long. I don't know a nice, neat simple solution for this issue. There are some good points to "me, my spouse and kids all have a family name together and it's reasonably short." We also tend to trace inheritance via the father's family line. Some women trade their middle name for the maiden name and take their husband's last name as a solution, like Hillary Rodham Clinton. That seems to be a mostly upper class tradition for women with more of a public life where they have a real need to have some kind of continuity with their past identity in their own right. Trying to bring women out of the shadows of the very private lives as only full-time wives and moms and into the public sphere -- which is de facto the trend here as women live longer, have fewer kids and need to occupy themselves somehow other than just cooking and cleaning -- is complicated. When I don't completely hate my life and wish I had never been born, I occasionally think it's a great experiment in how to resolve some of these questions. There are no easy or simple answers for how to move an entire world rapidly and well from one system to another, which is more or less what the entire world is in the process of doing. How we used to handle it made logical sense for the social fabric of that era. And our social fabric is changing and what worked at one time is now seen as all wrong and bad and I worry that we are throwing the baby out of with the bathwater here. I guess literally, because trying to give women some kind of rights and just handing them a male model is clearly shafting mothers and children. And I think we need to do better than that. I think we urgently need to do better than that.
bitexploder 6y ago
I do agree women and men are far from equal in western society (America in particular), but it’s a strained comparison, which is where I think your downvotes came from. There are some parallels, but they are far apart.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  An American friend of mine was living in the Middle East, I think married to a Middle Eastern man, and I think she had a baby. Some other woman at the hospital had triplets and everyone was gaga over the triplets. My American friend was uncomfortable with the situation and said something about it to someone to the effect that "It's cool now, but when she is home and caring for triplets alone, this will be a terrible burden." The person looked at her like she had completely lost her mind and told her "She is never going to have to care for triplets alone." I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I supported my husband's military career and raised and homeschooled our special-needs sons. And since the divorce, life has been extremely hard. My stats tend to be out of date, but I spent a lot of time reading a lot of stuff to try to sort out how and why my life went so very wrong. I was one of the top students in my graduating high school class and won a National Merit Scholarship, etc. The last time I looked at stats, women who were childless and unmarried made about 97 percent of what men made with similar education and experience. The minute she had either a husband or child, the average dropped to two-thirds what men make -- the same the Bible quotes a woman as making 2000 years ago. These are American stats and European women tend to fare somewhat better. It's also less bad these days, from what I gather, then it was 30 years ago. But I continue to be stymied in my efforts to establish an adequate income for myself and my sons. And I'm quite clear my gender is a very large part of that. I do not self-identify as a feminist. I was a homemaker for a lot of years and most self-proclaimed feminists I meet are openly hostile towards me, a la that scene in "Mona Lisa Smile." Women still are heavily burdened by the issue of childbearing and childrearing. And in the US you mostly have some kind of "equality" with men if you choose to not have children. And if you do have kids, your life can be completely flushed down the toilet over it and other people will shrug and say "Well, you shouldn't have had kids if you couldn't afford them." It's also not a policy that is sustainable. If we actively and successfully encourage all women to stop having kids, this is the last generation of humans. We have to find some means to give all people, regardless of gender or age, some kind of decent quality of life. We shaft far too many of our people and then wonder why there are headlines on Hacker News about the social fabric coming unraveled. They are only "far apart" if you have a narrow view of quality of life. I don't and my life experience tells me it is far more complex than most Westerners want to believe who like to claim we are the height of civilized achievement for all of human history and don't make us uncomfortable with niggling details about how mothers get shafted or something.