Catherine Deveny writes ironically that her recent column on why do women still change their names upon marriage seems to have realised her “aim of whittling my readership down to three”.
It was a case of Team Deveny versus Team How Dare You. Game on! Poke that animal in the cage!
Now, some of the critics of Deveny’s original column had a point about it being judgmental, even though I’m a fan of women who keep their own names. Riffing off her discovery that Olympic medallist hurdler Jana Pittman is using her husband’s surname Rawlinson on the track now, Deveny did use some pretty pointed rhetoric.
Insecure or conservative or stupid women are bowing to the wishes of their husbands.
and
Why would you do something so drastic simply because you decided to delude yourself it was easier? Because you are deeply insecure, deeply conservative or deeply stupid. And in deep denial.
She was obviously looking for a reaction on that, and she would have expected some blowback. What surprised Deveny was the breadth and depth of the angry response to her column:
I’ve poked the cage of private schools, clipboard-carrying parents, unnecessary caesareans, 4WD owners, even God, and I have never been so overwhelmed by a response (equally positive and negative). Team How Dare You were extremely defensive and highly emotional. There was a stunning lack of clear rational thinking in every response. It was glaringly obvious that many women who have changed their names have a deep conflict about the true motivation behind their decision and the convenient excuse they present to the world. The blokes were just as illogical. And angry.
This week she argues that for all the hostility, nobody came up with a valid response to her original questions. From the first column:
I ask women why they change their last name. They tell me “it’s just easier”. It’s not. How easy is it changing the name on everything from your driver’s licence to your library card? It’s not.
I’ve never had a reasonable answer to that question when I ask it, either.
In the end, this paragraph in her original column, getting back to the issue of Jana Rowlinson, is probably what brought out the deeper underlying hostility about her questioning current marital arrangements:
Whenever two parents are working and the child is propped up on the sideline waiting for its turn, why is it only the woman who gets bagged, as if the father has no responsibility for the care of his own child? Why, when a woman is working, does she always get asked, “Who’s looking after your children?”, but the father never does? We need to take the focus off the role of mother and put it on to parents as a team.
Everybody wanted to ignore that part of her column so hard that they dialled up the volume to “vitriolic” on the more simplistic surname issue. 
Even the sainted Kerri-Anne Kennerley, apparently, was so offended that she resorted to broad-brush stereotyping of Deveny as someone who “probably couldn’t get a man”.
Deveny seems more bemused and amused than alarmed by the baying of the How Dare You brigade. Just as well, they’re probably going to be hanging on her every byline, looking for something else to be offended by, for weeks yet.
Today’s Australian has a much milder article on gender and surnames, “Why the ‘first bloke’ changed his name“, which examines some of the choices made by newly swron-in Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and her husband Geoff Withers regarding surnames and their sons. Elsewhere in the Oz, D.D. McNicholl waxes lyrical on “The Sheila’s State“: it seems that having a State’s Governor, Premier and four ministers of Cabinet being non-penised individuals is enough to bring forth uncomfortable echoes of Knox’s Monstrous Regiment, tongue-in-cheek though McNicholl may be.
An earlier version of this post (minus the final paragraph) was crossposted at Hoyden About Town.
My wife [oops possessive used] has always had her own name.
When my son and girlfriend announced their impending marriage I told her I thought she should stick with her existing surname.
She didn’t.
I didn’t say quite the same thing with my daughter cos she carried my name at that stage and I didn’t want to be seen to be applying such pressure.
The real problem is that either way the women’s name follows the patrilineal line anyway but at least a generation break can occur if women stick to their ‘maiden’ [yuk] name.
Interestingly my grandson’s [via daughter] password on his computer is my surname!
I must admit that pleases me.
The whole issue may appear trivial to some but it does relate to lineage, one half of a line is lost, ownership and identity sort of.
Some people I know went the double barreled pathway but I don’t really like that cos its cumbersome and maybe a touch of remnant reverse snobbery.
One pair of friends I know amalgamated their 2 surnames to come up with a cool composite.
Another pair simply ditched their old names and chose a brand new one, not a bad idea except for the lousy choice [IMO].
Complicated ain’t it?
Deveny is fast establishing herself as the Andrew Bolt of the Left, if not the Piers Ackerman.
She goes out of her way to antagonise, to provoke, to inflame and to infuriate. She doesn’t care what people think about her, or of she does, the more people hate her, the more she likes it. This is Bolt-Ackerman 101.
It’s a badly missing segment from the commentary market. Lefty commentators in the MSM are so earnest.
It’s only a matter of time before she gets a radio gig, if not TV.
“There was a stunning lack of clear rational thinking in every response… The blokes were just as illogical. And angry.”
Why this person thinks she is a judge of logic and rationality is rather beyond me.
So, ’stupid,’ ‘insecure,’ and ‘conservative’ are categorically of a piece. Well, whaddaya know! I’m sure Cicero himself would be persuaded by that howler. Nothing angry or illogical to see here, folks, move along.
“They tell me “it’s just easierâ€?. It’s not. How easy is it changing the name on everything from your driver’s licence to your library card? It’s not.”
Well as long as your categories concern only piffling things like the writing on legal documents, and exclude things like family formation and the metaphysics of marriage as a state of being, well, I guess “easy” is as easy does. The Mistress of Logic strikes again!
“We need to take the focus off the role of mother and put it on to parents as a team.”
If she’d had the intellectual courage to replace the words “we need” with “I want” then I might have had a smidgen of respect for her. As it stands, though, I think I’ll continue on my merry, stupid, insecure, conservative, angry, illogical way. At least the company on this bus has some manners.
I don’t agree with everything Deveny says but I like her style.
Family formation? Metaphysics?
Next up: changing religion - which gender should capitulate?
How can anyone write about “insecure or conservative or stupid women” and not expect a backlash? If I thought she was writing about me when she wrote those words, I’d pen a venomous response.
Yeah Spiros. I mean seriously, why even devote a column to it? (mind you, my opinion of opinion in papers couldn’t possibly be any lower).
Sure, people can’t offer a good reason, but that’s the thing: they don’t have to. We all of us do irrational, sometimes pointless things in a lives for no real reason, or certainly not one we could articulate.
Does it make us ‘insecure, conservative, or stupid’? Probably not. But even if it does, so what? It ain’t a crime, and I don’t really see why Deveny (or any stupid op-ed columnist) see feel compelled to be the judge and jury on this (or any other of the multitude of things they proclaim as Good Things or Bad Things). It’s not like she’s a sociologist or anything, or has anything interesting to say about it.
I about 150 words, Hannah’s Dad was more interesting than her whole column on the issue, and I might add, a little more charitable in his interpretation.
Meh, a pox on op-edders’ houses. All of them. Her only defense - trying to rattle the cage, or poke it (wtf?! Who pokes cages?!) is horse shit. It’s a harmless lifestyle choice, who needs some judgment on it from a perfect stranger who know little or nothing about it? I could ask my friends and family for the same opinion, and it would probably be more reasoned and definitely more relevant.
the metaphysics of marriage as a state of being
A state of being requiring one (female) identity to be subsumed within the other (male) identity, apparently.
[Apology in advance for long comment]
When Deveny says it’s ‘not difficult’, I can’t help wondering if she’s actually tried it herself, because if she hasn’t then a nice hot cup of STFU is in order.
Changing your name does indeed present certain difficulties, but getting married and then not changing your name may still, even in the enlightened noughties, present others. It certainly did when I got married as a child bride in 1973, the sad tale of which I’ve told at Troppo in response to a post of Nicholas Gruen’s, thus:
Now, while I am quite sure that things have changed a lot since 1973, the point is that every adult is entangled with an astonishing number of entities — legal, social, whatever — to all of which one must report when changing one’s name. But one must also report to most of them when changing one’s married status. And back then, at least, it was taken absolutely for granted that one would change one’s name, and all of their systems were set up accordingly. This was the crucial point. If you got married and tried not to change your name, you made all their clerical staff’s heads explode.
This, of course, is the definition of a patriarchal society: one in which everything from the taxation department to the local primary school assumes a nuclear family with a husband/father at its head, and sets up all its operating and records structures accordingly.
I take Deveny’s underlying assumption to be that falling into line with the husband’s-name thing reinforces this patriarchal structure in people’s minds by colluding with its effects, and I agree that that is probably true. The most stupid thing about her argument is that she is placing blame at the individual level, which is not where blame should lie — even if this were a matter for blaming, which it isn’t. However disapproving a rabbit one might be about it, surely what people want to call themselves is their own affair.
Yes, it’s Deveny’s job to be a stirrer. She’s not the best writer on the planet, but she does what’s she’s paid to do.
Love that picture. I can so relate.
How about the idea of a new surname just for that particular family. Thus all family members adopt the new name, and when the kids grow up and have their own families they adopt a new name.
I know a bloke who created a hyphenated surname by taking on his wife’s name (and she vice-versa). He writes poetry so I guess he’s not a normal bloke.
“The most stupid thing about her argument is that she is placing blame at the individual level, which is not where blame should lie — even if this were a matter for blaming, which it isn’t. However disapproving a rabbit one might be about it, surely what people want to call themselves is their own affair.”
Good point, but we are all members of society and if that society has dictated that women must change their name, well, it says heaps about that society (and the women and men within it).
It’d be cool to be like Brooke from B & B, though:
“Brooke Logan (previously Forrester, Chambers, Jones and Marone)”.
I’d be willing to change my name rather than my wife… but then, I’m a Smith. I could do with a better name anyway… and wouldn’t want to force it on anyone else!
My surname is my mother’s (she kept her name after marriage and my dad is a feminist), and I would never change it, for all the obvious reasons. Assuming that the father of my children agrees, I’d like to pass my name on to any female children we have, and give his name to any male babies. I’m surprised that this option hasn’t been explored in the many debates I’ve read recently.
Sorry, this is wrong, of course — that word ‘nuclear’ should be removed. (As in so many other contexts.)
Of course.
But if 99.99% of the population are making the same fundamentally irrational choice, then surely something is going on.
There was only one interesting response in the paper that gave a pretty valid reason why the fathers name was preserved. None of the other responses addressed why it was the woman who was responsible for eg “being a family”.
I’m not. It im(or is it ex-?)plicitly assumes a greater degree of connection between women/daughters and between men/sons. If it ever became the norm, it would also rick ostracising the kids of a single parent.
I don’t know what the solution is (maybe just letting people call themselves whatever the fuck they like?) but that ain’t it.
Well that’s the point isn’t it?
If it’s a free choice, why does almost everyone choose the same thing?
It is in fact one of the most clear examples of a powerful interplay between indivdual choice and social pressures. Neither blaming the individual nor a retreat to the defence of individual choice are sustainable.
My partner’s a Jones, Cliff. I asked him the other day if he’d change his name to mine if we ever got got married. He actually laughed.
I find a couple of things interesting about the issues in this kerfuffle (not at all interested in judging Deveny’s style and method, etc)
One is that the debate seems to be focused on naming via marriage, not so much on naming of children. (Symbolic?) patriarchy persists through both mechanisms. Do we continue to give children patronyms?
The other is that while we seem to agree that taking the man’s name is no longer the standard / norm, there is no sign of a new post-patriarchal norm emerging to replace it. Instead there seems to be a sort of cultural vacuum, where it’s left to individuals to make their own decisions. Given what most of us would agree about the immense social importance of kinship markers, I think it’s revealing that no real consensus has come forward about how to consistently acknowledge them. So we still have the patriarchal model, if only by default.
Let a thousand surnames bloom!
As Deveny in fact pointed out, if it is all about “individual choice” then we should see all kinds of different schemes operating: mother’s name, father’s name, hyphenations, mothers/girls and fathers/boys, mothers/boys and fathers/girls, whole family changes to new name, Spanish style surnames…
We don’t all have to individually choose to be the same.
I already said this at Troppo. In Iceland no names change at marriage and children don’t have the same surname as their parents. Instead their first name is regarded as the all important one, and the surname is a composite of the parent’s first name suffixed with -son or -dottir . The norm is that the father’s first name is used, (eg, Peterson) but increasingly people give male children a patronym and female children a matronym. And peope just go by their first names anyway.
This why Bjork is just called Bjork. It’s not a fashion statement.
My wife kept her surname and I kept mine, largely because we share the same first name. Trying to get my head around the reasoning though-
-family names have value, it might be irrational but no more irrational that any other family v. stranger valuing emotion.
-this is going to be a source of conflict in choice
-those looking to continue their family name get a fifty-fifty chance (with odds improving with more kids)
-people will accept the whims of fate (boy or girl) for the termination of the line of their family name over an unpopular agreed decision.
Something very well may be going on, but the thing is, it doesn’t really matter (what are the consequences?) and frankly, it’s not a decision we have any right in judging.
I suspect Deveny has not stumbled across one big reason (and this may be following along the lines of the whole kids’ names thing): It’s just a name. Many people don’t think it’s that important, and those of us who do (I guess I’m lucky, having a very unusual surname), acknowledge the importance we place on it, is in fact just if not more irrational than the desire to change it.
(Funny story: My mum changed her name by deed poll to get rid of her middle name, which she hated. Her middle name! Drove my nana bonkers. God knows why either of them cared that much)
Works for me, Laura.
The Icelandic thing is cool, isn’t it? And you’ve got to respect a script that still has a place for ð.
“I don’t know what the solution is”
Maybe to just admit that there ain’t a problem?
Even if there were no consequences, something going on to make people defend as an individual choice what clearly is not a free choice is inherently interesting, no?
ButI think there are consequences: women are still growing up in a world where they are expected to be the ones to be subsumed to the family.
Again the logic can be reversed: if there are no consequences, and it is “just a name” then why are so few men changing their names and indeed so many men being reported as saying that they never would?
Eh, screw it, let’s just give everybody serial numbers.
As long as I get one that has an “X” and a “9000″ in it somewhere.
Or Indian names. That would be cool.
I know more than a few people whose Indian name should be “Really Wants to Direct.”
This reminds me of seeing (in 1993) an old newspaper article from 1970 in which Joan Kirner was referred to as “Mrs. Ron Kirner”.
A few years ago Elspeth Probyn pointed out that this particular issue didn’t really get her going for the reason that hanna’s dad mentioned, namely that she didn’t see much daylight, from a feminist perspective, between taking a husband’s name and continuing to be known by a father’s name.
I love the fact that the boys seem to think it doesn’t matter.
Hmmmm.
Silkworm has just accused me and Tigtog of producing trivial posts. The patriarchy is not trivial is you’re a girl.
From my wife’s experience I think I’d say its definitely easier these days not to change your name (at least in terms of the short term paperwork you have to do). In retrospect my wife might not have done it if she knew how much work it was going to be - there doesn’t seem to be standardised amount of proof you need. We got married overseas and the passport office refused to accept a weddding certificate (although the marriage is recognised in Australia) and insisted on her paying for a name change.
I’ve never been a fan of hyphenating names, mainly because it doesn’t work in the long term. A few generations down the line and people will need a whole page of paper to write their surname
Your wife’s name is Anthony, Anthony?
“I’ve never been a fan of hyphenating names, mainly because it doesn’t work in the long term. A few generations down the line and people will need a whole page of paper to write their surname.”
Didn’t seem to bother the ancient Hawai’ians, who took great pride and pleasure in reciting their full genealogies when introducing themselves, so I’m told.
“I love the fact that the boys seem to think it doesn’t matter.”
Actually I happen to think it matters a great deal, just not in the way that you’d agree with.
Ah no it’s Toni, but I used to get called Tony a lot in my youth so I think we decided it was like marrying ourselves which, as far as narcissism goes, wouldn’t have been a bad effort.
Back to the kids’ names. My hunch is that this is where problems appear and pressures emerge.
A commenter on tigtog’s original post mentioned the pressure she’s feeling to give her (gestating) child her partner’s surname, though her own surname is more fun, rather than to spend the rest of her life having to explain that no, there is no secret emasculation message encoded, it’s just a name.
Elspeth Probyn is wrong. The fact that we grow up with our surnames is much more significant than the fact that they got to us via our fathers (NTTAWWT, of course) so it’s hella big to *change* that name.
j-p-z and Spiros
My daughter suggested Miss Deveney was trying to be the Andrew Bolt of “The Age”, some months ago. Nothing to do with surnames. Lady Deveney had opined that persons who attended the Grand Prix in Melb should all be shot. She went on to smugly describe how SHE would be gracing Sydney Road Brunswick, communing with Muslims (preferably refugees).
That piece was a gem of hysterical bile, with her self-praise and priggishness but the icing on the top. Yesterday (13/9) “The Age” published a letter along the same lines.
I believe that many married men who read Lady D’s latest piece were annoyed that she felt it necessary to describe their wives as “conservative and stupid”. The idea of NOT changing one’s surname has been common for decades. By now, many couples will make their OWN decision, fully aware of the arguments on both sides, and don’t require a Pronouncement from Lady D on the matter. It’s as if she feels she must deliver Fatwahs on the Ignorant.
But it’s not just her ranting that annoys me: it’s her very poorly written arguments. Most LP posters are more polished. She’s not just aggressive. She’s barely literate. A blot on “The Age”.
Piffle!
Sheesh, way to through out a generalisation there, dude.
I feel quite confident you will find plenty of boys and girls who think it’s not a crucially important question in there lives, just as you will find some who do.
tigtog
“everyone wanted to ignore that part of her column”
with apologies to Mr Ruddock and his Leader:
“We will decide which parts of a column we wish to comment on, and the manner in which we respond.”
It’s just free speech, tigtog. If Lady Deveney can’t express herself civilly, how much respect is she owed by anyone, female or male?
Oh man, what is it with my typos lately! Apologies to all who tried to read that.
One does rather wonder why conjungal union should be seen as a matter for losing a name rather than acquiring more.
How can The Age, which prides itself on being a serious and intelligent newspaper for well-educated people employ Deveney? Her subject matter aside, she cannot write, she persistently reveals a low level of education, shows no journalistic experience, and does not understand the society she lives in.
While I understand why many here cannot stand Albrechtsen and Devine, surely it cannot be too hard to find left-wing female columnists who at least have the education and literary skills of A and D. It really worries me, that maybe Deveney’s employment reflects the fact she is “as good as it gets.”
I encouraged my wife to keep her family name, as all of her siblings are female and the one who is married took her husband’s name. However she chose not to, one of the reasons being it looked better for our purpose of getting her Permanent Residency.
I don’t know what annoyed me most about her first article.
First was the “insecure, conservative or stupid” jibe that she levelled - a sweeping generalisation that didn’t take into account individual feelings and situations some might have.
But nearer the end of her first article was a pretty ordinary implication that men might just want to pick up an equal share of the housework so they can “get lucky”, rather than as a normal part of a respectful, sharing and loving relationship.
Both really stuck in my craw.
But, paid stirrer or not, she lost me with her second column.
She asked: “Who’d give a monkey’s about what a stranger writing in a newspaper would think about their choice?”. The reply’s pretty clear - “Those who were annoyed at being labelled ‘insecure, conservative or stupid’ in her original column”.
In the end, Catherine Deveny might be “happy with her choices” and not “give a rat’s” if someone had a go at something she did. That’s fine.
But at the same time there are others who might be equally happy with their choices - choices which are different from Catherine’s - and who might want to stand up to those who are critical of them.
Leone, help me with your Latin: is a Fraudati-filius a right little b*stard?
I’m not married [which is the preferred option in all this] and for the 10 years I was with my SO before parenthood, it would never have occured to either of us to change our names. Same when we became parents, but then the issue of surname for the children came up. This is where I think Deveny is onto something:
My theory? Many women want the same name as their children. They know their husband won’t change or they don’t want him to change (in fear of his being branded henpecked and/or she as a femonazi), and they are certain that he won’t accept the children having her surname or hyphenating. So change it is.
Although I don’t especially like my surname, there was no way I was going to produce a child who didn’t have the same surname as me. My SO’s surname is nicer, but it was not going to take precedence. So the kid has a hyphenated name, with mine first.
The issue of ‘my name came from my father’ is just about irrelevant. The main issue for me is ‘I’m not taking on someone else’s name and I want my children to have the same name as me’.
It doesn’t matter to me what surname any grandchildren I might end with have, so my kids can do what they like with the surname if/when they hook up with someone.
At school, I’d guess up to 50% of the mothers have kept their own name - but the kids almost always have the dad’s name.
My impression is that name changing is very much a generational thing.
It has been universal among my group of friends (basically baby boomers born after the mid-1950s) for the woman to retain her surname when she married. In most cases, the kids have been given their father’s name as a surname, but I know of one family in which some of the kids have taken the father’s surname and some the mother’s, and it all seems to work ok.
In the places I have worked I have met many successful and often highly-educated women from Generations X and Y who, like Jana Pittman, have chosen to take their husband’s surname after marrying. Often they have no definite plans to have kids, so that’s not it.
It seems to me that it has simply become the fashion again and younger people are tending to want to conform, as they always have.
I’m not sure that it is any more patriarchal than the concept of marriage itself or even the concept of surnames that are handed down from generation to generation. My taste runs to that of my generation for women not to change their surnames: but I don’t know that the issue is exactly at the cutting edge of the struggle for women’s rights.
Chris
Spot on. She shows no respect. She seems unaware of complexities. Hubris, I’d say. But it’s the insults that are hard to take. She can dish out harsh criticism but can’t bear the response.
As for the public reaction to her provocation:
cet animaux est tres dangereux….
“this animal is very dangerous: if you attack it, it defends itself!”
au revoir
Simón José Antonio de la SantÃsima Trinidad BolÃvar y Palacios
that’s the spirit, Se~or Liberator!
Just to clarify - I was reporting Elspeth Probyn’s view, rather than endorsing it. My own view is that it matters greatly that women have been, and in many quarters still are, expected to adopt their husband’s name on marrying. As others have stated, the focus should be on the structural and cultural drivers of this expectation, not on insulting individual women over their personal choices.
“I encouraged my wife to keep her family name, as all of her siblings are female and the one who is married took her husband’s name. However she chose not to, one of the reasons being it looked better for our purpose of getting her Permanent Residency.”
Hmmm, I don’t know what that says about DIC/DIAC.
Sorry Patrick, I was just feeling a bit full on (and full of it).
Could my previous comment be released please. Ta.
Quite all right, it is Friday arvo, after all…
When my partner and I got married, she took on my name. Why? Because she spent her life trying, and failing, to get everyone to spell ‘Kretschmann’ correctly, and found ‘Norwood’ to be orders of magnitude easier. Me? I’d've taken hers if I could, because my father and his family are a bunch of bigoted, homophobic, racist asshats, and I am not proud to be part of them.
You could swap. Not too late.
On the conservarive angle, I know about the same number of married Liberal voting women as married Labor voting women. The Liberal voters overwhelmingly have kept their name, while about half the Labor voters have taken their husband’s.
And the Liberals are not social liberals either. Quite the reverse. But they’ve kept their names. The Labor voting name changers are socially progressive on the usual measures.
I kept my surname when I married my husband last year, and had no problems having that accepted. A friend of mine was married earlier in the year, took her husband’s name, and is still sorting out the paperwork. She’s kinda slack though.
I don’t get the idea that keeping my surname is still conforming to the patriachy because I’ve chosen my dad’s surname instead of my husband’s. At what point does my name become my own, instead of borrowed? Am I not entitled to be identified in my own right? I’ve had the same name for 30 years, it certainly feels like it’s mine now…
Julie
It feels like your name ‘cos it is. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
I once heard a small-l-liberal male friend BERATING an old friend of his wife. Hos wife’s friend was daring to adopt her new hubbie’s name. Seemed to me it was HER choice. I was astounded!
All of us are free to try and reduce the power of patriarchy, but it’s up to each of us to decide how we make our contributions. I for one don’t need Lady Deveney’s “Guide to Proper Behaviour”.
cheerio
This discussion has actually drawn my attention to the fact that I don’t really know a lot of married women in the circles I move in. Virtually all of my heterosexually active female friends and colleagues are cohabiting (including those who are mothers) or dating but not living with their other half. The two who I can think of who have been married (and both subsequently separated) kept their surnames. It’s stating the bleeding obvious but I think that both the incidence of legal marriage, and the incidence of surname switching, varies greatly across social milieux.
Like Gerard Henderson, Deveny gets her jollies from being able to dispatch a whole ‘brigade’ in less than a thousand words. Beats Gallipoli, eh?
It’s not clear why Deveny is so obsessed with other people’s names. It doesn’t matter whether “Deveny” is her father, her husband or a name she found in a book - but of course she’s not putting herself up for judgment, only others can be judged. How idle a life she must lead if changing a library card is so monstrously difficult, what passes for Kafkaesque nightmare in Bleak City today.
My wife had been married before she met me. She changed her surname from her father’s surname to her husband’s during that marriage apparently, then back again when first husband left. She’s built up an impressive professional reputation under her given name + father’s surname. I don’t care whether she takes my surname or not.
On the face of it, the above would put my wife in Team Deveny, in the very van of progress and sense and enlightenment and all things good. When people such as her elderly relatives address her as Mrs E, she does not roll her eyes and blast offenders with a shrill potted history of feminism from Mary Wollstonecraft to Catherine Dworkin. When she goes into hospital to have our child she’ll be going in under the surname the child will have, which will be the same as mine.
The surnames of the children of the Premier of Queensland is none of my business really, but it seems rather complicated and neither my wife nor I chafed under the names of our fathers (this makes us timid reactionaries, eh - a solid family grounding can make you able to bear insults), so we wouldn’t be doing something like that. It’s definitely not “easier” under anyone’s definition.
It still isn’t clear to me why she (or tigtog or anyone else) cares so much about Jana whatshername - apart from scoring a column and creating an Imaginary Brigade to set her lance at (and of course, the juvenile thrill of pissing people off, tee hee! Particularly conservative people, right on the eve of having the top two tiers of government not controlled by the conservative coalition, ner ner! See - the MSM is relevant! Is so! Is so!).
“the incidence of surname switching, varies greatly across social milieux.”
Shorter Norton: Greens live in sin.
No wonder the country’s going to rack and ruin.
Andrew E, you were once a young liberal 25 million years ago. Now that golden age has passed, is it not possible to drop the smarmy self congratulatory Im so damn brilliant I know much more than anyone else on this site about anything grammar correcting veering at times to bitchy commentary? or is it a case of once infected with young liberal characteristics, always doomed to perform them?
Like meher baba (and possibly Ms Deveney), I’m from that generation of feminists that thought things like keeping your own name were important and so I made sure I did. I haven’t really ever come up against any problems because of it except for an ill-informed woman in the building society when we applied for a joint account who tried to assure me that it was impossible for a wife to have a different name from her husband.
It strikes me, though, that if one of the main objectives of feminism was and is to ensure that women (and men for that matter) have the maximum range of choices available to them in life, then we have no right to complain about the choices people actually make.
Deveney made it clear that she’s not really for a choice in the matter - you either dont change your name or you’re ignorant and stupid.
Femo-nazi, plain and simple.
I don’t care especially about Jana Rawlinson nee Pittman, but I thought the reaction to the first column was interesting (you must have missed the various discussions of it on radio and morning TV, lucky you) and uncovered an interesting sociological issue. Deveny’s stirring the pot in an overblown fashion and revelling in it, true, but the hive of bees was there to be stirred up.
And Julie’s comment about her name feeling like hers because she’s had it for 30 years pretty much sums up my feelings too. That’s why, even though my surname is one of those that people can’t spell if they hear it or pronounce if they read it, I couldn’t really see my way to changing it - it’s part of me.
But I don’t really care whether my children have the same surname as me - maybe that’s because I’m not a ‘real’ mother, I don’t know
I respectfully disagree with the implication here. Just because the bees got mad when someone poked the hive (or was it a pot? I forget) with a stick doesn’t mean the poking (or stirring) was justified.
I mean, some of the bees, near the surface of the pot, weren’t in danger of sticking to or stinging anyone. They were just going about their bee-ey business, stewing in their juices, what’s-in-a-name and all that, then some great galoot comes and smokes them out with her size ten ladle.
Michael - unfortunately there are lots of people across the political and social spectrum who seem to be personally threatened by the fact that other people make different choices in life. And I guess quite a few of them get to be columnists in the MSM.
However, like tigtog I think, I do find it interesting that so many women apparently have so little attachment to their birth name and so few men can really imagine a good reason for changing theirs. Maybe it’s something to do with the sex chromosomes after all.
Your surname isn’t YOUR name.
It’s your FAMILY’s name.
Neither my wife or I was particularly attached to ours, per se. We laughed about coming up with a new one. She decided to take mine but I was (honestly) completely indifferent either way. I also offered to hyphenate (sounds crap with our names though) or even take hers. I gather she was more focused on us as a family (ie not our parents) and liked the idea of us having 1 common name.
If you want to be genuinely independent why not come up with your own?
For an op-ed writer to call anyone stupid beggars belief. Just seems like utterly pointless baiting, and as for claiming to be surprised at the response; now that’s the most unintelligent proposition of all.
“Deveny’s stirring the pot in an overblown fashion and revelling in it, true, but the hive of bees was there to be stirred up.”
Pauline Hansen also thinks that’s a clever approach.
It should be relatively easy to distinguish between the style of Deveny’s article and its content but it seems that not too many people are interested. Personally I have no interest in considering or discussing the stylistic issues.
The content, however, I am fascinated in, and much as I hate to say it, but I really think the proponents of “individual choice” have confused logic.
Everyone agree that there is no systematic reason for choosing the father’s name over the mother’s: it is “fashion”, “just a name”, “of no consequence”.
Hence if it was a free choice between these options, with no underlying reasons, one would expect a relatively even distribution of choices.
But this is not what we observe; there is an overwhelming preference for one over the other.
Hence the choice is not free; there are social pressures that affect the choice.
Such pressures restrict the freedom of the choice.
People who are concerned about individual choice really should be concerned to identify and challenge the social pressures that restrict the freedom of people’s choices.
Why “even”?
The number of men who claim they would change names is large; the number of men who do change is tiny.
Why?
I agree with your penultimate comment Martin. Although I do think it’s more than fair to point out CD wrote her first piece in a trolling manner. She went wrong in making it too personal. You don’t get anywhere that way.But I’m not interested in all these comments about what a shrill harpy she is, etc. Adds nothing.
I think ‘we have freedom of choice’ rhetoric is what needs to be dispassionately scrutinised. The choice is free, but the options are not equally clear-cut and attractive.
It seems to me that the choice isn’t all that free and equitable, because the choice is not between a patriarchal naming protocol and a post-patriarchal naming protocol. You can take the man’s name, or you can do your own thing. Those aren’t quite the same thing are they? I’m having trouble expressing this as clearly as I’d like. At the moment, the desirable attributes of tradition, family unity etc are still associated with the patrilineal naming tradition. All you get when you go with another alternative is the dubious distinction of being ‘modern’, ‘independent’ etc - not things that are compatible with marrying.
JG @ 3.25pm
I agree. It’s not just her baiting, it’s her lack of writing ability. Is “The Age” deliberately ‘going tabloid’ by employing Lady Deveny? Certainly their online version is heading downward to celebrity gossip, TV gossip, raunch etc
cheerio
PS: was Pamela Bone any better? I used to think so, until she went ballistic over Muslim women in Melbourne wearing head scarfs etc. Sounded like Fred Nile.
Original article - not interesting (like many commenters I don’t like Deveney’s writing and logical positioning - she used to be employed as a humourist before she became an opinionist and wasn’t very good at that, either)
This thread and its responses - really interesting.
Marital status - not formally wed
Names of both partners - as born
Kids - 3
Names - my surname. Their middle names are my partner’s surname.
Hyphens - None
My surname - common
My partner’s surname - rare
Kid’s reaction to their middle name - at times quite negative - surprise (not) they’re all boys.
I expect them to grow into it - all children and adolescents are extreme in one way or other. We worry when societies behave in the same way as children, acting without pause or consideration.
Expectation when the kids were first named - it gave them the choice to later formulate their name in the way they most felt comfortable.
Expectation - don’t care about the name they choose to be called by (the oldest offspring is Jonesy), but if they turn into patriarchical, lazy shits who expect to be waited on by their eventual partner, co-habitants, main squeeze, I’ll be peeved.
The Age loves Deveney - heat is better than light. I prefer light.
I married a man named Foot. I did not change my name. He had a friend named Gasparinatos. Now there’s a name. (I didn’t go on to marry him too, btw) but in the name-change stakes I had cause to consider the whys and wherefores. I don’t agree with women changing their names, I think it sucks. I think patriarchy sucks. (I have had enough death and destruction, thank you very much,–for that).
My sister changed our name to Roach and I can never remember whether its with an ‘e’ or not and frankly I don’t care too. Either way compared to our family name, Foot and Roach just don’t quite cut it. But Gasparinatos? I could be talked around. (And she shaves her underarms). I’d actually describe her as conservative and stupid and god knows where she got it. So, if you shave your underarms and change your name your conservative and stupid? Not necessarily but there’s a definite likelihood that you’re dull and conforming.
Women can quite happily take another surname on marriage because it is has the huge advantage and attaction of not being their father’s name.
At the generally youthful, child-bearing age of marriage most women have little interest in their own paternal family history so don’t care about changing from one paternal name to another. And upon divorce, the consideration of children aside, what better rite-of-passage and husbandly repudiation than to resume ones’ maiden name and perhaps (for Catholics) even pull an annulment as well.
The dubious freedom of choice of surname on marriage has today about as much to do with female self-determination or feminism as does John Howard’s neverending quest for power with democracy.
A much better idea is for women to renounce the individualised namesakes inherited as an unwished for accident of history, biology and gender and choose a meaningful common surname, such as “Egg”, like the famous Tasmanian women’s counter-cultural feminist collective, Chook.
No marital or other status.And yet , sometimes,in a quiet and overwhelming moment out of a disappointment in myself about how good mum was considering..her first name Mavis and her surname Welch…sing for me when I cry the loneliness of seeing her life full of disciplined and unsatisfactory requirements! I wasnt there as her final moments met their passage.Who would want to remember their mothers as the woman working the copper basin and nagging about spilling the starch,or a very bright summers day wringing the clothes through the ancient wonders of washing machines.Committed and simple to the point of a wrenching self defeat..like Dad I knew my mother and her limitations,which considering were simply not activated ..Frank and Mavis song-birds the world kept building smaller cages for.Their names are free now..if somewhat forgotten.
I wish to be known hereafter as ‘Lazy-fat-bastard-who-spends-most-of-his-time-in-the-hammock-on-the-verandah-with-a-mango-daquari-in-his-hand-and-never-mows-the-lawn. Esq.’
Thank you.
I changed my name when I g