Its not an unusual thing for lesbian couples to pick a new surname for themselves.
I’m pretty sure only people on the internet argue about this. No one actually cares what other’s do with their last name after marriage.
This post has 2017 reddit vibes. Not in a good way either.
People literally change their names because they feel like it, so I’m sure people do care outside the Internet, specially in circumstances of abuse.
Well, reddit turned to shit around 2014, so the fact it still sucked around 2017 can’t be a surprise?
People definitely care, but not about which side of the family or if it comes from mommy or daddy. Most people just want an “original” name.
with no ill will for you, OP, genuinely fuck this boomer ass “joke”
a woman’s name is her name. she lives with it for 1 lifetime, absolutely no longer than her grandfather does. “male” is not somehow the default human identity. stop trying to enforce that standard.
Love the little respectful preamble you put there, can we make that internet discussion standard plz.?
I think the point of the joke might be more that an attempt to start a matrilineal naming scheme is foiled somewhat from the fact that the maiden name of the mother is derived from her father, i.e. you can’t escape that the last names all come from patrilineal sources for generations.
…yeah? exactly what i said? i don’t disagree at all except you possibly ignore that the butt of the joke is the woman, normalizing the very repression she attempts to subvert. it’s undermining and mocking the woman’s identity intentionally by asserting the dominance of patriarchal schemes over her own life and decision. (perhaps unintentionally, but nevertheless really.)
in America, historically Black names are also historically dominated by historical slavery and white supremacy (different functions, but the end result of subjugation is parallel). i would post a similar comment hating on a post mocking Black folk for resisting these patterns as well! :)
… just pass on the mother’s name to your children? Eventually it matters as much as that your ancestor was a smith. (and that’s besides the “not everyone wants to lose their name on marrying” point)
If a woman is committed to the idea, she could break the patrilineal naming convention simply by creating herself a new last name, and encouraging her children to take that name instead of their father’s.
This is true, but who decided that a woman keeping her maiden name is just using her father’s name? That idea comes from patriarchy. If I inherit something at birth, like a rare coin, it’s mine, whether it came from my mom or dad. The same goes for a woman’s name—it’s hers because she’s had it since birth. Suggesting she doesn’t own it, and must create a new name to escape, reinforces the idea that only patrilineal identity matters and undermines her autonomy in making that choice.
The important part is that it is her choice to do so or not. My suggestion is just one possible solution that could be used by those who choose to do so. I’m not pretending that it’s the only solution, nor am I pretending that it’s even the best solution.
love it :)
yes, though I think a naming system like this isn’t an individual act as much as occurs on the level of social norms and rules; a single individual won’t introduce a competing matrilineal naming system just by convincing her children into it…
Either way, I somewhat agree with the criticism of the joke that the last name coming from a patrilineal origin isn’t a gotcha, though maybe that’s actually the point of the meme since Homelander is the one posing it as a gotcha (and he’s a villain, so it would make sense to symbolize a misogynist with him). The name would still be inherited in a matrilineal way even if it started as a patrilineal name further up the chain.
I guess there is a question of whether the name’s origin matters at all when we are concerned with the patriarchial nature of a practice where women lose their family names and men don’t. That practice being disrupted is what matters, not what the actual name is.
in my friend group we have a guy we describe as “default {name}”, in order to differentiate him from the other {name}s in the group. He’s a cisgender heterosexual white christian male (a rarity among us). Mostly it’s a joke, because we all agree that being mildly offensive is kinda funny, but it’s also a commentary on society at large. If you’re online talking to people you know nothing about, it’s a safe assumption (christian less and less as the years go by though).
It is absolutely ok to not be “default settings”. You’re not doing anything wrong by not confirming to that standard. I didn’t decide what default is, I learned it by observing society.
appreciate your insight! i fully agree with everything except perhaps:
You’re not doing anything wrong by not confirming to that standard.
still a correct statement on its own, but needs the clarification that it’s not chill to mock or hamper the efforts of that “Othered” community to subvert or reclaim their repression. while it’s certainly not wrong for a woman to conform to the patrilineal system, it’s not chill to “gotcha”-laugh at this woman for using the same name she and her mother have owned their whole lives.
it’s a very Rush Limbaugh-esque “you claim to he a feminist, yet you live under the forces and histories of the patriarchy, curious 🧐” joke, in that it’s not wrong, it’s just intensely and obviously comes from a place of ignorant disrespect.
deleted by creator
Sorry OP but this kinda gives “EPIC: WOKE FEMINAZI OWNED ON CAMERA” vibes.
Yeah… it can be interpreted that way. But even as a feminist myself, it is a dumb performative sort of protest. Paternal surnames are the least important fixtures of our patriarchal society, and, unless it was created wholecloth, there are no surnames that aren’t patriarchal historical lyrics, as the meme points out.
If they think their actions are having much effect, sure, but otherwise I think you’re making assumptions and overreacting. Not everything is for show, people can do things like that just because they personally want to.
The context of the meme implied she was doing it because she’s a feminist and that taking her mother’s name was somehow an expression of that. Of course she can do that, but it isn’t achieving anything if that was the goal
she is achieving and asserting herself, a right that is denied to her on most every other level.
names are symbols. taking ownership of your name may not be material, but it is meaningful. if names were meaningless, trans people wouldn’t change their names, African-American communities wouldn’t change their names, et cetera. but they do, and feminists do, because achieving oneself, having domain over oneself even to the extent of identity, is meaningful especially against a history where that right is restricted against you in favor of the dominant class.
Sure. It would be personally meaningful. Changing your name is always meaningful, I would hope. But it is not contributing to the the dismantling of the patriarchal norms. Not every action has to be, of course. But the conceit of this post is implied to be that her intention was just that, a rejection of patriarchal naming conventions. If that was her intention, it was misguided and failed to achieve that goal.
you take a conservative (lowercase c) approach to the concept more than i do, and that’s fine.
but from a holistic perspective, the very fact that we have this conversation proves my position. the symbols stand for something. they promote dialogue and awareness of patriarchal repression by subverting it. little girls can look to the woman who takes her own name and derive conviction of self worth and autonomy.
none of this means that taking one’s name is the ultimate be-all feminist act, but i just take issue with your characterization of it being “dumb performative.” i encourage you, as a self-proclaimed feminist, to reconsider heaping that kind of abuse onto people just extending their reach to where generations before was impossible. at worst you appear to be recentering patriarchal narratives, at best you’re being mean.
Okay, and? Why is your immediate thought to mock that?
I didn’t mock it. The meme did.
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to call you a misogynist, just point out how the meme might look at first glance.
Wasn’t my post, just advocating for OP
oh, right
I think that’s the intention, but in an ironic/satirical fashion.
It’s one of those posts that IS funny, but makes OP’s viewpoint ambiguous. And if this was reddit and then incels come out of the woodwork to support the meme.
That’s the point, but satirically. The fact that homelander is the second frame immediately means the take is bad.
Sweet child… The amount of people who don’t see homelander is scary
on reddit, sure. on lemmy?
Lemmy is no better than Reddit in terms of sexism and media literacy
[email protected] in particular has a weird propensity to anti-feminism that i don’t see elsewhere. i’ll get about 60% downvotes on this comment just as everywhere else in this thread just for saying so lol
something about the old school “relax librul it’s called dark humor” mindset is specially present here
Good point! But I also never saw it. Just know it from the comics and the news.
Also, the amount of people who don’t GET homeowner is scary…
Yeah, those homeowners and their… *checks notes Homes!
OP’s comments don’t seem very satyrical :')
this lol. i would not be in this comment section if OP wasn’t obviously taking the side of homelander here. if there was ever satire in the post it was lost as soon as OP got their hands on it.
Homelander is acting in character in this meme but Firecracker certainly is not.
I don’t think that’s obvious to anyone who hasn’t watched that movie/series/whatever. At least it wasn’t obvious to me, because I don’t know that guy.
Not so sure. It may just as well be that OP thinks Homelander is the cool guy and the meme is meant unironically. Their comments here suggest that and their posts are mostly comprised of golf and borderline sexist / boomer jokes
I already had you tagged as “insane misandrist”, thanks for the confirmation lmao.
Make up your own surname to assert dominance. Or go by your internet handle.
Reminder that surnames didn’t exist before the middle ages, you just had a singular name that people shouted to get your attention. Since you lived in a community of several dozen people, you didn’t need to do much to differentiate yourself from the other “John” in your town because everyone knows each other. You lived and died just as “John” and would be remembered by your kids for a generation if you were lucky. There was no need to keep track of genealogy, you were a pair of hands and legs, you were supposed to get out there and plow that field and that’s all your baron or lord cared about.
But somewhere after the black plague ravaged Europe and we lost a sizeable chunk of the human population, suddenly workers became in high-demand. Industrialist lords and landowners suddenly didn’t have people smithing their horse shoes or making their bread, so they had to go poach people from far away towns and suddenly workers had power and options. As a way to get noticed for your family’s tradeskill, you would have been wise to advertise this to wealthy employers, the best way was to attach your trade to your name. You were now John Baker to differentiate yourself from John the Drunkard if anyone came looking to hire someone who could cook bread.
So surnames are advertising. It’s all it’s ever been. There’s nothing ancient and special about your name, it was just how your ancestors tried to make a buck.
🤓
To be fair, even before the plagues, workers were way in demand (and hence every single adult that reaches majority, or youth that wishes to pretend). Throughout the agrarian age, societies suffered from a stark labor shortage, which is why even bastard kids were not too frowned upon, and even those with disabilities were sought for anything they might be able to do.
That all changed in the industrial age, when fewer people were necessary to run machines that did work.
In modern day, this is an issue with religious movements (cults whether dangerous or not) who decide to create their own commune. Either the intentional community has too few people to complete all the necessary tasks, or enough that renegade behavior (corruption, antisocial behavior, etc.) becomes a problem, since security details cannot help but become political.
/🤓
Unpopular opinion: Last names are inherently patriarchal and so is marriage
Last names are inherently patriarchal
They’re worse, they’re inherently capitalistic. They were made to promote someone’s business or trade in the days just after the Black Plague when skilled workers were highly sought-after.
If you live in America or Europe, your last name is an advertisement. That’s all they’ve ever been.
Except that it’s older than that, even in Europe, there was quite some time between the Black Plague and capitalism. But they originate in China where they are much older. Sure, capitalism is composed of many aspects and maybe China had some aspect associated with capitalism back than as well and I’m not too sure about the connection between Europe and China regarding last names. I donno.
In The Second Sex, De Beauvoir quotes Engels as he argues that patriarchy (as we know it today) likely arose with the advent of private property. So there is some relation to capitalism (of which private property is a core component), but it goes back way further than the Black Plague and marking it down to “trade promotion” is over-simplistic at best in that it’s wayyyy worse than that.
What you are saying is that private property laid the basis for patriarchy and (much later) for capitalism
That is what I am quoting De Beauvoir and Engels as saying, yes.
that’s right, promoting your trade is capitalism folks
Sigh. Lemmy in a nutshell.
is that an unpopular opinion, or just a well-known fact?
Maybe all my downvotes come from people who say it’s the latter? I’ve been in bubbles that see it as a well known fact, I’ve talked to left leaning people who didn’t. Maybe it’s just a wording I used to attract attention, maybe not, we will never know for sure.
my instance doesn’t show downvotes, so all I see is that you have lots of upvotes 😊
I suspect downvotes would come from people who disagree that marriage is patriarchal, tbh - I think a lot of people don’t really understand patriarchy or feminism, so they might thing you are being hyperbolic, like claiming marriage is akin to beating your wife or something.
Or they could just be responding merely to the language and not even the content, i.e. by talking about patriarchy at all or posing it in social terms they might think you have been duped by woke propaganda.
Whether it’s an unpopular opinion just depends on what crowd you are in. I think a lot of people understand marriage is a patriarchal institution, that a patrilineal naming scheme is part of that patriarchy, etc., but I’m sure there are lots of people who think that is false, or over-stated, or who aren’t entirely sure what ten-dollar words like “patrilineal” actually mean, lol.
I think the downvotes come from a semantic disagreement, based on a strong or weak definition of the word ‘inherent’.
huh, that sounds like a rationalization, a way to find a problem with a critique that sounds more defensible or reasonable than defending patriarchy
my instance doesn’t show downvotes, so all I see is that you have lots of upvotes 😊
In that case: the majority is still upvotes so I’m not complaining or anything :)
On Spain we have two last names, one for the father other for the mother.
And while before the father’s was always the first, since many years couples of newborn babies can choose the order of the surnames.
Is the latter your mother’s first or second last name?
First last name. Example:
Mother: Maria García Perez
Father: Juan Rodríguez Domínguez
Their kids can be named:
Adela García Rodríguez
or
Adela Rodríguez García
Ans once selected the order with the first kid all the kids from the same couple must follow the same order.
So it’s the mother’s father’s name, or the names of both grandfathers. Still patrilineal
I mean, if you go that way, when surnames where created in the middle ages it was the name of the man.
All spanish surnames ending in -ez mean “son of”. And it’s always male names.
But change has to start at some point.
Some cultures trace heritage both patrilineal and matrilineal, so taking the first last name of your father as your first and the second last name of your mother as your second would be that.
I’m curious, which country does it like that? Seems pretty interesting.
Why would that be the case? How would marriage between two equals in a non-patriarchy be patriarchal? What about marriage between two women? What about last names in a society of beings without gender?
I think you didnt mean ‘inherently’
Unpopular opinion: Patriarchy as defined by feminists is a nebulous and unfalsifiable concept that can be replaced by “the devil” without changing the meaning of the sentence it’s used in.
Also, serious posting in a shitposting thread.
you could swap the subject of criticism with “the devil” in any sentence and it would be the same though?
“the devil (covid-19) caused a pandemic”
“the devil (billionaires) is pushing more people into poverty”
“the devil (adhd) is making me procrastinate doing the dishes”
“the devil (you) has really weak criticisms of feminism, since if only he read about it, he’d realise he can see and feel the effects of the patriarchy everywhere. and the way he talks right now makes me believe he only knows the concept from strawman memes”
In these examples you used “the devil” as a placeholder for explainable phenomena with varying causes, none of them being unfalsifiable. Now consider the following sentence:
“The wage gap is causes by the patriarchy” – Surely there are no complex causes being substituted by a nebulous concept here, is it?
the concept is only “nebulous” to people who are talking out of their asses, when they haven’t even bothered to look past the word definition and strawman memes about the patriarchy
man, please, stop making yourself look like a fool, go read about it, it’s really not that hard
none of us would judge you @[email protected] if you picked up and perused this free copy of Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks right now. in fact that would be really cool.
“i refuse to listen to what feminists say, and because of that i have no concept of their actual positions and it’s all really nebulous and confusing to me” —that user
Which feminists are you even referring to exactly? There are different waves of feminism and different strands (like liberal feminism, marxist feminism, black feminism, …). Either you picked a few straw(wo)men who have a shitty definition or you are confused by the variety of definitions and approaches and that confuses you.
my comment was about @rooty who said “Patriarchy as defined by feminists is a nebulous and unfalsifiable concept” not you or anyone else. because of course, people who actually read any wave or subsect of feminism will immediately find feminists have a whole host of concrete and evidenced conceptions of the term patriarchy.
i was seeking to laugh at @rooty who has clearly never done any work to listen to any feminist and gets all their undestanding of it from straw man memes.
it seems people like yourself are misunderstanding my language to mean the opposite, sorry for any confusion.
Sorry, I didn’t read the username and thought it’s rooty again
ohh that might explain some of the other downvotes too lol
yep and it’s good that opinion stays unpopular
I donno but this sounds like something the devil would say
Okay well, whats the benefit to the male?
An aspect of patriarchy is patrilineality. Belonging to your fathers lineage rather than your mother’s or even being stripped of your heritage and being a mere adjunct to your husband isn’t materially benefiting the man but lays the ground for that
the patriarchy doesn’t benefit the male. in fact, most men are overall harmed by the forces of patriarchy.
the goal of patriarchy is to subjugate and repress an “other,” that is, women. it’s true that patriarchy gives privelege to men, but equating privilege and benefit is to misunderstand the core components of the system.
Yeah I’ve always thought it was weird that women are supposed to give up their identity to a man to be married. I’m not really sure why hyphenated names aren’t as popular in the western world or why people don’t occasionally chose to take the woman’s name. I know that women don’t have to change their names, but then often you’ll have the kids as the same name as the father anyway but not the mother. So I’ve heard many women say that they did it so their kids would share their last name.
Hell, I don’t even like my father. But my name is who I am and I like it.
Hyphenated names are too long. One of my good friends has one and people just refer to him and his siblings by the initials of their last name, like “Tim MP”
with hyphenated names: what would the children do then? you can’t keep adding more and more names like that (both practically and legally in some cases). serious question because I’ve also thought about that
You clearly haven’t met Brazilians
My name is Maximus Decimus Arnold Garfield Butcher Smith Hendrickson Meridius, and you shall have my name.
I think it varies with culture, but from my understanding, usually they take the first name of the two hyphens for their own marriage.
So you have John Doe and Jane Smith. They hyphenate their names as Doe-Smith and the children do as well.
Say they have a daughter Sally Doe-Smith who meets Tim Johnson-Star. So they marry and hyphenate their names as Johnson-Doe. Both Smith and Star get dropped.
Yes, in examples like this, it still ends up as getting rid of the maternal aspect of the lineage in the very end…but the point is still that both parties are keeping part of and changing another part of their names. It’s not an all or nothing total switch of identity. The lineage is male, but the here and now is an equal compromise of identity.
Not enough to balance things out
Maybe not quite, but iml it’s certainly leaps and bounds better that altering your identity entirely in submission of a partner.
In Canada, you legally pick up to 2 of your parents’ last names for your last name
How do hyphenated names work after the next generation? Seems like that would get out of hand quickly when people with hyphenated last names start having kids with each other.
It is weird because we as a civilization believe women are persons and corporations are not. And sooner or later, molotovs will be theown in support of this notion, since silence is being interpreted as consent.
Whoops. That was my outside voice.🪀🪀💣🪀
Sorry I’m not understanding what you mean
The reason women take their husband’s name is because they’re property, and rights to their person transfers from their father to their husband.
That’s it.
And right now (at least in the States, maybe in some parts of Europe) there are large far-right movements trying to return society to those days.
Find your crew or your fam, and have them give you your given name. Then choose your surname. Break free.
Ah ok yeah your first comment was sarcastic then haha
So, just do what a few couples in my circle of friends did and use her last name after marriage?
I would think it would be just as weird to collectively switch to matronymic last names as a society. It would make more sense to me if couples just decided which name they liked better and went with that, be it coming from the man or woman. So a more even split of that sort of pattern is what I mean.
Yeah, that’s what people do here in Germany.
Ah I didn’t know that! Interesting!
The way that I’m gonna do it is whoever has the coolest/most unique last name is the one whose name is adopted. If they’re both equally cool, then hyphenated it is.
It’s a shit post, I’ll give you that.
Technicallly, it is still of her father.
If you didn’t know, Spanish people have two names: the first name of their father and the first name of their mother.
Since these names are their grandfathers names, here’s a better proposal : the first name of your father and the second name of your mother. In that case, your first name corresponds to a bloodline of men and your second name to a bloodline of women… Unless their was a same-sex couple in your family, obviously.
Bonus point, since you get your Y chromosome (if you have one) from your biological father and your mitochondrial DNA from your biological mother, your names correspond to your actual DNA… Unless you’re adopted or illegitimate, obviously.
You can actually chose to have them reverted (mother first, father second). Also, the wife does not take the husband’s surname.
Lol a lot of people don’t like this realization
No one is off-put by the realization. Just the attitude the post represents.
Today I learned that facts are viewed through the lens of an attitude
The amount of high horses in the shitpost community is much more than expected.
What attitude is that?
“Haha women weak patriarchy STRONK”
I guess. That’s not how i saw it.
mostly laughing at women it seems
I forgot we can only laugh at men. Sorry everyone.
Scratching my head trying to figure out how an undeniale fact is somehow a condemnation of women.
pointing out how someone’s mother’s last name is just their grandfather’s last name ignores the point the person was trying to make in favour of going “well akschually”.
a woman who feels more connected with her mother and prefers her last name over her father’s last name has made that decision based on her emotions associated with her family relationships. And it was a choice she had to make against the default way surnames are given.
people rarely do things like going through lengthy legal processes to get the necessary paperwork to change your last name for shit and giggles. Instead of “well askchanelyling” people’s choices, think a bit on why they made that particular choice, or you could also ask them
That character IS laughable, in all fairness.
Aren’t almost all the characters in that show awful?
Yup. She’s particularly bad, imo, because she keeps validating the crazy guy. She takes a bunch of drugs so she can lactate, because Homelander likes breastfeeding because he killed his mom during birth.
Isn’t it funny how a simple fact actually bothers people
It’s more that it’s kinda missing the point. Everything is something else if you try hard enough but in this case the intention behind it is to honour the mother instead of the mother and that’s still working fine.
Its a fucking shit post. Release the pearls.
You literally commented first.
Looks like somebody doesn’t like the consequences of their actions. Poor baby.
What in the hell are you talking about? What consequences? Yeah i know you responded to me. And I told you its a shitpost, stop clenching your pearls.
Why am i explaining this very simple interaction?
Yikes.
Lol this person has some imaginary conversation going on
They are one of the best imaginary pearl clutchers on Lemmy while never getting that they are being an asshole too.
/father ?
Fixed it haha
Homelander has the best guy resting bitch face I’ve ever seen.
I’m noes! People are doing things I didn’t agree to again.
Notice they didn’t use ‘maiden name’ because then the joke falls apart
I assume they did mean “maiden name”, how else does the joke make sense? The mom’s maiden name is the maternal grandfather’s last name …
You mean their father’s last name?
Does the bank ever ask you for your mother’s father’s last name as opposed to her maiden name? Sounds like a scene from a wes anderson film.
Yeah, my mom said she didn’t care about taking my dad’s last name, that it didn’t matter since, in her words “women don’t have last names anyway” they are just a way of tracing men’s family lines.
Jokes on you, my dad took my mom’s name
not just his name, but his DNA too!
Your dad took your mother’s dads name.
Turns out it was her middle name.
