I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

At least, most women outside of the scholarly community think it's dead. And this I find interesting.

The label 'feminist' almost has a nasty connotation to me in the current
media. Almost all women I know oustide the scholarly community do not
consider themselves feminist. After reading a great deal of feminist
thinking, I have some distaste in my mouth as well. But I still don't
understand mainstream women not forming SOME sort of coalition designed
to further their interests.

Perhaps you think that inherently sexist. But, studies continue to show
that all is truly not equal between the sexes. We still make $.70 to
the man's $1.00. We still don't break into top levels of companies at
the rate we should. Condi Rice is a senior cabinet member now. I
applaud this.



But why has there not been a woman president? In fact, not even a serious contender?



Why is the thought of this still so abhorrent after 100+ years of suffrage, and 30+ years of supposed equal rights?



See - it's not all equal out there. Don't kid yourselves.



But I use this as lead in to something else - a really antiquated form
of paternalism that I would like very much to see abolished:



The maiden name.



You are probably thinking, Oh, come on Sharonella. There are more important things to burn your brain cells than on this....



Hear me out.



The maiden name is from English Common law, which is derived from Roman
Common law, and it holds that a woman carries the name of her father
until she marries. After she marries, even if at age 14 (in those
days), she is no longer a "maiden".



Very well. But why, in this day and age of equal rights, does a woman have to carry any man's name? Why does she not have sufficient identity unto herself to have a
name of her own? And worse, *why*, even when she is raising a child
alone, does the child have to carry the man's name as though the woman
had no identity of her own to pass on?



In fact, under this system, that is precisely the assumption at work - the woman hasn't any identity of her own to pass to a child.



At least, not socially, and not legally.



And nearly all of us think this is normal, and ok. Most of us count ourselves in our father's clan, and our mother's contributions to our heritage are mostly under the radar. In fact, reading this, you are probably thinking, well what's wrong with that system?

See how these things get so embedded into the culture so that you
aren't even aware of them? Unless you are affected, that is.



A short example will illustrate clearly:



Years ago, I helped my future ex-husband bury his mother. She had chosen the plot between where her own mother was buried, and tragically, where her
daughter, killed at 16, was also buried. So here, then, was a
matrilineal line in the earth of three women directly decended from one another:
grandmother, mother, daughter. Men had unfortunately been rather a
fleeting presence in their lives. The grandfather had left when his
child was but little, so the mother in our story grew up in a single
mom home in the 20's.



That wouldn't have been the easiest time for this sort of thing, not that any are.



Then she married. She had four children,
the youngest who was the daughter that wouldn't live to adulthood.
Unfortunately, the marriage ended due to the husband's mental illness and subsequent death,
and following her mother's path, she made her way into the world by
herself, with her children carrying his name, but being
raised by her.



And when I looked at the three gravestones all in a row, there was no
way to know that they were related because they each carried a
different last name - that of their fathers, since all 3 died sans
husband. Three generations of women, who lived their lives largely unprotected by any man, would remain unknown in
their relationship to each other because of a paternalistic naming
convention which essentially denied them identities of their own.



I too have this very issue. I am divorced, raising a child alone. I have
little or no help from the father so must do this by myself, and it's a
labor of love I embrace wholly. I could take on the legal fight and
change her name to my own maiden name, but what am I accomplishing
here?



Nothing, because I am giving her yet another man's name - that of my
father - who is also not involved, even slightly, in raising her.



Wearing the man's name comes from the Roman and feudal systems, so that it was known under which man's household a woman lived.



But what man is protecting me now? Providing me a home? Not a one, I tell you.....



I find this extremely irritating, that even in 'modern' society, where
everything is supposedly equal now, I am still not permitted legally to pass my
own identity to my daughter in the form of a name. I am living within
the confines of a system which declares that I hold the responsibility for my child but the credit for her identity will be credited
to a man not much involved in her raising. His contribution, in the form
of semen, is legally and culturally recognized as granting ownership of her name. I
have no name to give, unless I invent one, go to court, and then piss
everyone off as a radical eccentric feminist.



When all I want is my own identity, and a chance to pass that to my child.


So, in the spirit of allowing a woman to be truly herself, I have decided to let my daughter make the decision to decide on her own
identity when she is older. She can pick any name she likes for herself
when she feels she has sufficient knowledge of herself to determine
what that should be....and it may be that she decides that is her current
name.



Be that as it may.

I shall likely create my own last name to serve as my identity very soon, though my dear old dad will be wounded by this act. It's not that his name isn't good enough. To carry it and nothing else negates my mother's contributions to my upbringing, and sense of self.

You can say, but this will wreck everything! We won't know who is who's child because they'll be wearing a million different names.

Well, isn't that how names arose in the first place? If you were the baker, you became Baker. If you were a smith, you became Smith. Names used to be more tied to profession. They were also tied to invading and conquering lords who seized lands you were living on. So don't argue with me about names and tracking bloodlines.


I conclude this little meditation on feminine identity with a brief note to scholarly feminists: Please stop writing about eco-feminism, cosmic feminism, etc. That's reaching into the nebula for far away insights as to the origins of our current dilemmas. Let's work instead to do away with the paternalistic conventions that keep us from realizing our true identity as women, ok?