Rosy

There's been a barnstorming and fluttering in the blogosphere on various topics this week that push certain of my rage buttons.  And there is some good writing on those topics. There is also a fascinating (subscription-only, alas) article by Jeffrey Toobin about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the New Yorker, which I highly recommend if you can get hold of it (the link I've put in is to an accompanying slideshow).

But the one that is closest to my heart comes from Kate Harding on changing one's name - in which she adeptly points out that feminists sometimes do the non-feminist or, indeed, anti-feminist thing, that it doesn't make you a bad person, but you need to own that changing one's name is not a feminist action. To be honest, I'm not even a fan of double-barrelling/hyphenating - to me, that seems a little of a cop out - you know the feminist thing is to keep your name, but you really do want to take his name. If he does the same, great - and some of my friends have indeed done that. But it's a very, very, very rare man who does that. And when they are asked whether they would, often the most enlightened, ardent women's equality supporting male will react as if it's the stupidest question in the world - "why would I?" So why would I? Oh, that's right - I'm a lady. I forgot for a moment.

Like Kate I got married, too, and I enjoy being married, much to my shock. But one of the main reasons I did not want to be married was because I'd get hit with the assumptions that are made about a married women, and shortcuts taken about women that simply don't exist for married men.* Losing both my surname and first name at the first wedding we went to as a married couple caused me to cry with rage, I was so furious; the articles about married women taking their husbands' names indicate I'm still very much in a minority, however.

* There are tired tropes about married men, but a lot of those stem from lazy assumptions about women, again - for example how men are forced into doing things that they have ownership in - the house, food, their children - and it's just oh, so awful, and life would be better without her indoors nagging away and just ruining everything. Women, eh?

Me, Myself & I

Jezebel has a somewhat incongruous, but lovely, article about the name Grace. Which obviously intrigued me.

Right now, it's hard for me to connect with the little girl who absolutely loathed her name. But that's what I was. For years, I dreamed of being called the same name as whomever I hero-worshipped at that point - "Elaine" after this girl who worked at the stables I went to every week, I remember, when I was about 6 and thereafter I can't really, but it wasn't Grace. My mother and her friends despaired. How could I want such names when I was so lucky to have such a pretty and unusual name? And therein lay the problem, at least in part. It shouldn't matter that the only people you knew with your own name were old ladies, but when everyone else associated it with them, and let you know, it wasn't so much fun.

Then something changed. I have no idea how or why or when, but at some point in my teens, it stopped bothering me. Perhaps when I went to secondary school and met another Grace, two years older. I then became a bit more protective of it, and started huffing and puffing when every time I went to the doctor's surgery, I would hear the name called and assume it was me, but it was directed to a child under five, and not me.

And then I grew to love it. And I really, truly do. I think it's a genuinely lovely name. It is elegant, and short and sweet. It is feminine and strong simultaneously. Whatever that means. It's fairly rare, at least for women of my age, and so I feel that I get to truly inhabit and make it my own. And then there are amazing namesakes, like Grace Kelly and Grace Jones,* who get to be so utterly different and yet it is not surprising that each has that name.

Although I think the real transformation was when I realised that, bizarrely, my name meant the same as my mother's. Which just feels right - a continuation of her, but as my own person. I love it.

* And it would include Grace Slick if she hadn't reformed Jefferson Airplane and did that horrendous Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. Although if I'm named after anyone, that's her, so... better to think of her in the White Rabbit days.

Everything Old Is New Again

GAH.


Just had a wash of notifications of marriages and, consequently, name changes. Whenever I log onto facebook it seems I get more notifications that various people I know - all successful, caree-driven women - have changed their names to their husband's. It clearly is one of my anger triggers - It really does make me quite remarkably incoherent with rage. I know I go on and on and on and on about this, but it is SO ANNOYING - not least because I have to change my address book to reflect your stupid gmail changes, as I discovered this morning. When you friend me on FB and we've not spoken for 10 years, I have no idea who you are. It's fricking inconvenient.

I also just don't get it. Just don't get it.

GAH.

Nominal

I am somewhat fascinated with the power of names - something my Philosophy prof would have disputed and mocked, having read my essay on Kripke's Naming and Necessity, but that has manifested itself here with my posts on first and sur and awesome combinations (see entry 84). Therefore this article called A Boy Named Sue - and Other Bad Names - in the NY Times caught my eye (on a day when I'm trying to ignore Spitzergate). It details studies on the effects of naming children certain things.

“Names only have a significant influence when that is the only thing you know about the person,” said Dr. Ford, a developmental psychologist at George Mason University. “Add a picture, and the impact of the name recedes. Add information about personality, motivation and ability, and the impact of the name shrinks to minimal significance.”

But the most interesting bit was yet to come:

“Researchers have studied men with cross-gender names like Leslie,” Dr. Evans explained. “They haven’t found anything negative — no psychological or social problems — or any correlations with either masculinity or effeminacy. But they have found one major positive factor: a better sense of self-control. It’s not that you fight more, but that you learn how to let stuff roll off your back.”

So what this study really implies is that calling a boy a more feminine name still means he gets insults, because it's bad to be a girl. Still, at least they're not fighting back. Whereas there are studies showing that women with more "masculine" names - end and possibly start with a consonant sound - do better at science, physics, that ones with "girlier" names - that end and maybe start with a vowel sound.

Also interesting is the behaviour of fathers, indicating that people really should get this out of their system by having pets before children:

[Mr Sherrod, the study director] said the waning influence of fathers might explain why there are no longer so many names like Nice Deal, Butcher Baker, Lotta Beers and Good Bye, although some dads still try.

“I can’t tell you,” Mr. Sherrod said, “how often I’ve heard guys who wanted their kid to be able to say truthfully, ‘Danger is my middle name.’ But their wives absolutely refused.”

But my favourite bit, of course, because I'm juvenile - the listing of unbelievable names that people really, genuinely, think are cool for their children:

even if a bad name doesn’t doom a child, why would any parent christen an infant Ogre? Mr. Sherrod found several of them, along with children named Ghoul, Gorgon, Medusa, Hades, Lucifer and every deadly sin except Gluttony (his favorite was Wrath Gordon).

Awesome.

On the to read list, therefore:

"Bad Baby Names." Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback. Ancestry Publishing, 2008.

"First Names and First Impressions: A Fragile Relationship." K.M. Steele, L.E. Smithwick. Sex Roles, 1989. (PDF)

Effects of Social Stimulus Value on Academic Achievement and Social Competence. M.E. Ford, I. Miura, J.C. Masters. Journal of Educational Psychology, Dec. 1984. (PDF)

"The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names." R.G. Fryer Jr., S.D. Levitt. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug. 2004. (PDF)

"The Effect of First Names on Perceptions of Female Attractiveness." W.E. Hensley, B.A. Spencer. Sex Roles, 1985.

"The Psychological impact of names."R.L. Zweigenhaft, K.N. Hayes, C.H. Haagen. Journal of Social Psychology, 1980.

"A Boy Named Sue." Shel Silverstein.

Oi, Missus - NO!

Or not, as the case may be. Recently, the guardian's gender section has been really rather good.

First, it featured the fabulous article by a woman who, to the horror of her relatives, decided that perhaps her children's identity should reflect their mother as well as their father. Yes, shockingly, she wanted to give her children her name. This is a very funny piece indeed, although desperately depressing in some ways. When women say "I just didn't care enough and he wanted it" - about the name change on marriage - it fills me (and others) with despair. How ill-defined a sense of one's own identity must a woman have to really not care about her name? My name is me; I am it. While some names might sound cooler, for better or worse, I am Grace Pickering and that's all there is to it.

The other one also pointed out, however, a flaw in this piece: Why do daughters "belong" to women, and sons to men? Why is it that perhaps men can accept this compromise to their masculinity as long as they get to keep their sons - the ones that matter? Our children will have both our names. That's all there is to it. If they choose to go by one or the other, that's the kids' choice. Obviously no pressure from us... both sets of genes, both names. That's it.

Second, today there was a piece about why we as women need to own the "Ms". It's a great piece, and hammers home exactly why it's important (albeit a tad bombastically):

Miss and Mrs are marks of the old world, reminders of women's second-class status as wives-to-be (Miss) or simply wives (Mrs). If you are a woman who doesn't use Ms - particularly a woman under 30 who has never even thought of it - then ponder this: how do you want to present yourself to the world? Are you an appendage or an appendage-in-waiting? . . . Choose Miss and you are condemned to childish maturity. Choose Mrs and be condemned as some guy's chattel. Choose Ms and you become an adult woman in charge of your whole life.

A Rose

It is a long-standing, firmly held opinion of mine that any daughter I have will have a woman's name. And by that, I mean a name that is not derived from a man's name - at least not quite so obviously as Nigella, despite her loveliness. I have a standalone name, to which it took me a great deal of time to become accustomed. I did not particularly like it - when I was growing up, only old ladies had my name. Now, it seems, every time I go to the doctor's surgery there is at least one child with my name who is roaring around and being yelled at; I think--no, I know--that I preferred the rarity of my moniker. I liked being the only one. And while I do not want my child to have a name along the lines of Ptolemy or Peaches, I would like her to feel special in the way I often did.

Anyway, it's moot now. As it turns out, I should avoid vowels and "feminine" names if I want her to be any good at science. So Nigel it is. That's bloody well rare.