I'm listening to All the Single Ladies, a tracing of feminism in America. I'm only a couple hours into it, so I'm not really reviewing the book, but listening to some of the struggles that women have had to deal with in the United States reminded me of another book about important steps in the feminism movement: Wonder Woman. The book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, is an interesting read that's focused more on the bizarre, somewhat eccentric life of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. With the new movie (please be good, please be good) on the horizon, now's a great time to get into what was happening in the background, before the comic became one of the mainstays of the DC brand.
The book, however, treats the personal, familial dynamics more thoroughly than as an analysis of the character, which is fine (though I was hoping for more of the latter when I read it), so there were a lot of different pieces that were unexpected in the story. For example, I didn't realize that Marston was a bigamist throughout much of his life, and the women that he lived with had sundry reasons for sticking around in their unorthodox family. Not only that, but the polygraph test--you know, the lie detector--was invented by Marston. The Lasso of Truth that Wonder Woman uses might make sense in that context.*
I don't devote enough time to feminist thought, so I'm rusty at some of the finer points, and the people who matter the most in the narrative of women's rights are difficult for me to remember. (That's part of the reason that I wish I could teach a class about women throughout history, specifically modern iterations of feminism. Of course, there would be a fairly big irony to having a cis-het white guy do that, so I probably will never get to make that class.) Because of my sieve-like mind, I can't remember the specifics of what's quoted in Jill Lepore's book, but there was one concept that really stuck with me. At one point, there's an argument about whether someone (a daughter, I think?) should take the man's name in the marriage or if she should keep her maiden name. One of the mothers said something along these lines: "I don't have a name that isn't my father's. No woman has a name of her own."
That hit me really hard. I asked my wife, before we got married (and long before I considered myself a feminist of any stripe**) if she wanted to keep her name or change it to mine. She seemed a little surprised, but said that she'd always planned on changing when she got married, so she didn't see why she should shift plans. Since she was content with the name change, that's what we did.
But this additional take on the naming conventions has been eating at me since I read Lepore's book. We have a long-standing tradition that asserts the man's possession over the woman via a literal application of children's logic: "It's yours? I don't see your name on it?"
My wife is from a family of all girls, and none of them has their family name. To say that the family name dies is an affront to the value of the four children that my in-laws raised. Yet that is, in a lot of ways, what's happened. There are more tangible ways for a family line to die off, but not when all the children lived into adulthood and had children of their own. On my side of the family, there are two other brothers to "carry on the family name", though my sister, I daresay, will likely keep her maiden name. But even if she did change it, none of the boys did. Why should we? We're carrying on the name.
It seems absurd to me that male names swallow up the female names. There are precious few women who have a name to pass on that wasn't given them by a male. Even if a mother kept her own maiden name and used that for her daughter, the maiden name stems from the maternal grandfather. In other words, it's still a guy's name. There are likely some women who have picked their own names, legally changing them so that they can truly give to their daughters the name of their mother, but those women are few and far between.
"But who cares? It's just a name," I (imagine to) hear someone fuming at his (likely) or her (less likely) screen.
Well, Juliet can give a pretty concise rundown of why names are irrelevant, but aside from a Shakespeare allusion, there's also this idea: If you're a male and you're unmarried,*** are you going to ask your future wife to take your name? Are you going to ask her if you should take her name? If the answer to either of those is No, then obviously you care about the name. You have some sense about the tradition that makes you want to preserve it. Now, if your defense of tradition is, "Well, it's tradition," then you don't have a defense; you have a rationalization for oppression.
This isn't to say there isn't an explanation for the woman taking the man's name. It definitely helps me as a teacher when the parents and child share a last name, for example. But because there are benefits to the current system doesn't necessarily mean that the system should be followed thoughtlessly. And it doesn't mean that a better system couldn't be created as well. And it certainly doesn't mean that a patriarchal system is the best or only system. Indeed, a matriarchal system makes a lot more sense when it comes to names and "true blood" of an individual. One can suspect whether or not the child is the father's, but there's never any doubt that the child is the mother's. If monarchies had cared so much about legitimate birth, they would've followed matriarchal lines every time.
----
* If you want to know more about Marston but don't have time to read the book, shame on you. Here's a video that takes you through Wonder Woman's history in a rapid-fire, five minute barrage. That's a good primer.
** Growing up how and where I did, I associated feminism as another "eff-word" for much of my early years, if I thought about the term at all. Which I basically didn't.
*** If you're already married and you've made the choice--maybe without even thinking about it--apropos of naming conventions, strike up this conversation with your wife. See if she would be interested in changing her name back. Or maybe you changing it, with her. Then explore why she and you feel the way you do about the decision. It'll be an interesting conversation, I can guarantee, and you may learn something new about your spouse.
The book, however, treats the personal, familial dynamics more thoroughly than as an analysis of the character, which is fine (though I was hoping for more of the latter when I read it), so there were a lot of different pieces that were unexpected in the story. For example, I didn't realize that Marston was a bigamist throughout much of his life, and the women that he lived with had sundry reasons for sticking around in their unorthodox family. Not only that, but the polygraph test--you know, the lie detector--was invented by Marston. The Lasso of Truth that Wonder Woman uses might make sense in that context.*
I don't devote enough time to feminist thought, so I'm rusty at some of the finer points, and the people who matter the most in the narrative of women's rights are difficult for me to remember. (That's part of the reason that I wish I could teach a class about women throughout history, specifically modern iterations of feminism. Of course, there would be a fairly big irony to having a cis-het white guy do that, so I probably will never get to make that class.) Because of my sieve-like mind, I can't remember the specifics of what's quoted in Jill Lepore's book, but there was one concept that really stuck with me. At one point, there's an argument about whether someone (a daughter, I think?) should take the man's name in the marriage or if she should keep her maiden name. One of the mothers said something along these lines: "I don't have a name that isn't my father's. No woman has a name of her own."
That hit me really hard. I asked my wife, before we got married (and long before I considered myself a feminist of any stripe**) if she wanted to keep her name or change it to mine. She seemed a little surprised, but said that she'd always planned on changing when she got married, so she didn't see why she should shift plans. Since she was content with the name change, that's what we did.
But this additional take on the naming conventions has been eating at me since I read Lepore's book. We have a long-standing tradition that asserts the man's possession over the woman via a literal application of children's logic: "It's yours? I don't see your name on it?"
My wife is from a family of all girls, and none of them has their family name. To say that the family name dies is an affront to the value of the four children that my in-laws raised. Yet that is, in a lot of ways, what's happened. There are more tangible ways for a family line to die off, but not when all the children lived into adulthood and had children of their own. On my side of the family, there are two other brothers to "carry on the family name", though my sister, I daresay, will likely keep her maiden name. But even if she did change it, none of the boys did. Why should we? We're carrying on the name.
It seems absurd to me that male names swallow up the female names. There are precious few women who have a name to pass on that wasn't given them by a male. Even if a mother kept her own maiden name and used that for her daughter, the maiden name stems from the maternal grandfather. In other words, it's still a guy's name. There are likely some women who have picked their own names, legally changing them so that they can truly give to their daughters the name of their mother, but those women are few and far between.
"But who cares? It's just a name," I (imagine to) hear someone fuming at his (likely) or her (less likely) screen.
Well, Juliet can give a pretty concise rundown of why names are irrelevant, but aside from a Shakespeare allusion, there's also this idea: If you're a male and you're unmarried,*** are you going to ask your future wife to take your name? Are you going to ask her if you should take her name? If the answer to either of those is No, then obviously you care about the name. You have some sense about the tradition that makes you want to preserve it. Now, if your defense of tradition is, "Well, it's tradition," then you don't have a defense; you have a rationalization for oppression.
This isn't to say there isn't an explanation for the woman taking the man's name. It definitely helps me as a teacher when the parents and child share a last name, for example. But because there are benefits to the current system doesn't necessarily mean that the system should be followed thoughtlessly. And it doesn't mean that a better system couldn't be created as well. And it certainly doesn't mean that a patriarchal system is the best or only system. Indeed, a matriarchal system makes a lot more sense when it comes to names and "true blood" of an individual. One can suspect whether or not the child is the father's, but there's never any doubt that the child is the mother's. If monarchies had cared so much about legitimate birth, they would've followed matriarchal lines every time.
----
* If you want to know more about Marston but don't have time to read the book, shame on you. Here's a video that takes you through Wonder Woman's history in a rapid-fire, five minute barrage. That's a good primer.
** Growing up how and where I did, I associated feminism as another "eff-word" for much of my early years, if I thought about the term at all. Which I basically didn't.
*** If you're already married and you've made the choice--maybe without even thinking about it--apropos of naming conventions, strike up this conversation with your wife. See if she would be interested in changing her name back. Or maybe you changing it, with her. Then explore why she and you feel the way you do about the decision. It'll be an interesting conversation, I can guarantee, and you may learn something new about your spouse.