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 shorter than her grandfather does. “male” is not somehow the default human identity. stop trying to enforce that standard.
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 dominated by the history of slavery and white supremacy (different functions, but the end result: subjugation, is parallel). i would post a similar comment hating on a post mocking Black folk for resisting these patterns as well! :)
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.
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.
Love the little respectful preamble you put there, can we make that internet discussion standard plz.?
Lol a lot of people don’t like this realization
No one is off-put by the realization. Just the attitude the post represents.
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 father instead of the mother and that’s still working fine.
You literally commented first.
Looks like somebody doesn’t like the consequences of their actions. Poor baby.
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 historically, 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
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to call you a misogynist, just point out how the meme might look at first glance.
That’s the point, but satirically. The fact that homelander is the second frame immediately means the take is bad.
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…
Unpopular opinion: Last names are inherently patriarchal and so is marriage
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”
“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
(edit: by “that user” i mean @rooty, if that wasn’t clear? @shneancy@lemmy.world you are totally correct)
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?
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.
It is weird because we as a civilization believe women are persons and corporations are not. And sooner or later, Molotovs will be thrown in support of this notion, since silence is being interpreted as consent.
Whoops. That was my outside voice.🪀🪀💣🪀
Been divorced twice, neither of them gave much of a shit and never changed their surname back. My wife’s Filipino and was very proud to take my surname. Ran right out and changed all her documents. Her enthusiasm was touching!
I’m in the opposite place! Met my dad when I was 20 and he really wanted me to change to his surname. Sorry dad, that would have felt really weird.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sigh. Lemmy in a nutshell.
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.
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.
Notice they didn’t use ‘maiden name’ because then the joke falls apart
