The Name Game

In an equal world there would be no difference between you and I. In an equal world, a person's gender wouldn't matter.

We do not live in an equal world, and we all receive the most fundamental piece of this unequal world right at birth, a name.

Giving people gendered names instantly classifies a baby as a male or female. This identity then dictates what the child will play with, what will be his favorite color, what games she will play on the playground.

As the child moves into adulthood, the gender pressure will only increase. She will be given a range of acceptable careers to choose. He will be expected to show some emotions in a specific way and hide others altogether. She will be told that she can be strong, but expected to still display an underlying of weakness. And when this person dies, the tombstone will have the name that started this whole social process engraved on it, etched in stone.

'Men' and 'Women' are just caricatures. In a manner that is nothing short of totalitarian, our over-culture dictates to us how we are to behave and think based upon our gender. All the while, this tyranny of sorts masquerades as 'normal' and 'human nature.' There has rarely been a more insidious form of oppression. This whole process starts with a person's name-the presumed core of their identity.

I wonder how many couples sitting around me at Thanksgiving will be little more than unions of two gender stereotypes rather sincere unions of two individuals? What will happen to them when their role-playing runs stale? If a person is truly committed to liberation from the dictatorship of culture, then he or she should not give his or her child a name that symbolically sets all the social expectations in motion. They don't say that one in the parenting books.

Obviously we live in a time when some social gender norms and expectations are less rigid. I acknowledge our advances and the increased right to choose our own paths. However, progress must never be mistaken for resolution. Huge gender norms have yet to be dismantled and the need, no the requirement, to give a baby a name that is either a man's name or a woman's is one of them. Actually, it is the first big one.

What's in a Name (Change)?

When many gay couples marry, one of them changes their last name and adopts the last name of their husband or wife. Is there anything wrong with this and does it even matter?

One clear advantage that I've come across is that it represents a precaution to the dreaded hospital-rejection scenario. For example, if Latisha Amoretta is dying of coma in the hospital that is not gay-friendly, her wife, Kira Amoretta, formerly Kira Vancouver, can simply say to the workers that she is Jane's sister. The convenience of a name-change is undeniable in that sort of situation.

Gay couples who change their name also add great symbolic weight to their situations. If Buddy Henderson adopts the last name of his husband, Gregor de Oliveira, their marriage seems to be formalized even more. Their union is even more like the majority of heterosexual marriages.

This may seem like a nice gesture on the surface, but the act of changing one's last name to his or her spouse's seems to me the wrong thing to do. It is a gesture that recalls the worst aspect of traditional heterosexual marriage-fundamental inequality based on gender.

Why do wives change their last names to their husbands anyway? They do it because the act is a throwback to the time when wives left their families upon marriage to begin their lives as a member of their husband's family-til' death do they part I should add. She no longer belonged to her father's family and now she belongs to her husband's family. The justification for this action is the underlying assumption that women are inferior (or at least must defer) to men. This is the true symbolism of the last name-change: family unity through deference to the man.

The concept of ownership in a relationship ought to be dead by now. Human beings don't belong to one another no matter what the circumstance. Marriage is an emotional investment, it is no longer viewed as an ownership contract.

Modern couples, and explicitly Homosexual couples, have the luxury of choosing which traditions they will accept in their marriage and which they will not. This luxury must not be wasted by retaining the vestiges of oppression and inequality. Yes it seems nice, yes it is romantic. But last name changing is also antiquated and symbolic of the wrong ideas. How can the thinking person accept it in the long term?

If you want to make a symbolic statement, yet still be romantic, hyphenate your last names in alphabetical order. For example, our couples from before should be known in their married lives as Latisha and Kira Amoretta-Vancouver and Buddy and Gregor DeOliveira-Henderson. It's not as traditionally romantic as one of them completely changing their last names, but it is healthier and fair.