Last Names and the Patriarchy
Matt Yglesias approvingly cites Kay Steiger:
Furthermore, I never really understood, if it’s such an important issue for families to all have the same names (because how would you know you belong to one another otherwise?) why it has to be the woman that changes her name. Why can’t the man? I’ve yet to hear a good response to that one. Changing names to become a “unit” is silly. What if you were asked to change your name each time you changed jobs or professions? People would say that’s silly, but for me it’s no more silly than changing your name each time you change partners.
Well I think that’s silly, so I guess that settles it. Not very satisfying, is it? It’s not clear how Steiger could ever be persuaded to judge a defense of patrilineal nomenclature to be ‘good’, given her inability to see any relevant distinctions between ‘units’. For the same reason that utilitarianism is stupid to try to measure things in utils, shaping an argument about names, membership, and allegiance around ‘units’ is a mistake. Of course patrilineal naming makes no sense in a world where all group relationships are equally unit-ish.
What Steiger wants to argue is that men should not be recognized as the leaders of their families, because as far as I can tell that is the only real purpose of Taking the Man’s Name. But Steiger doesn’t want to stop at cultural criticism, i.e. her point isn’t just about society. It’s a claim that the individual choice to Take the Man’s Name isn’t worthy of respect — an admirably intolerant position, no doubt, but one that calls into question the respect we are left presumptively according to people who keep their own names. We’re one step away from people just naming their own damn selves. Once again, celebrities show us the way to enlightenment: although even they just as often need agents to steer them toward the right name.
Bottom line, the reason for patrilineal naming has to be that individuals, families, and the culture they compose want fathers to lead families, so much so that they are willing to tolerate the cognitive dissonance involved in bad fathers still being able to spread their names. This is acceptable to me because under reasonably healthy cultural conditions it helps enforce some minimum standards of excellence or virtue among men. But under conditions where a culture really does not want to be stuck with itself, the relevance of those standards begins to weaken, and without a doubt there seems little reason to expect or even want today’s culture to maintain patrilineal naming. Still, I thoroughly expect the practice to remain strong among a robust number of strong families — and strong individuals, male and female. What do I care if people opt out? (A case study in libertarian cultural conservatism!)