Dear reader,
March is here, blazing heat in tow, and I’ve had a week of encountering the patriarchy a little too often for my liking. It doesn’t help that I also came across some news involving a married woman’s surname. So I’ve been wondering if I should take the plunge, and speak about these things.
I’ve noticed that women sometimes shy away from speaking about their personal experiences because it makes life difficult. But as women, it is so important to take time out for ourselves, to put ourselves first, because we’re taught all the while not to. We’re groomed to look at the big picture, to accommodate, to make so much space for everyone else that we end up stifling our own selves.
And I’ve done that to myself too, in order to build better relationships.
But a part of being brave is also foolishly hurtling down paths that you are not yet ready to conquer, not yet ready to even stroll down. So while I’ve refrained from writing about my feelings on the patriarchy thus far, buckle up, this one’s going to be a bit of a wild ride.
As a woman who is married, and who does have two families, I find myself asking this question a lot: Is my marriage a merger, or an acquisition? And props to P here, for he has done a lot to make our marriage more of a partnership, but this post isn’t about him; it’s about the societal structures that insist that a marriage between a man and woman, should resemble an acquisition of the woman.
So let’s talk about a few of the double standards that prop up along the way.
When it comes to surnames, I’ve found that our systems and our traditions are aligned.
Marriage registration forms include a spot for Name Post Marriage for the woman, but not for the man. And general expectations ensure that I’m often addressed by my husband’s surname, even after I’ve politely (and impolitely) corrected people.
It was unfathomable to a lot of people that I’ve retained my surname. I quipped jokingly once to an elder relative that I’d change my surname to my husband’s in a heartbeat, if he changed his to mine. A swap, if you will. That basically horrified the people who were present. The idea of a man changing his surname (and therefore his identity?) is horrifying, but when we ask a woman to do so, don’t we often cajole her by saying it’s not a big deal, it’s just a name? So why is her name lesser than his?
Even seven years into being married, people ask me how my husband and I would be looked at as a unit, how we’d be a family, if we didn’t share the same name. But is a name all it takes to be family? (And if yes, as a desperate measure, for the “greater good”, why aren’t we asking him to change his?)
For a marriage to work, it needs to share respect, a common surname is purely optional.
We’ve been on a spree of renaming our cities - to remove the stains of being colonised by Britishers (Bombay becomes Mumbai), and to revert back to a specific time of our past, erasing certain periods of our history (Allahabad to Prayagraj). We take great pride in this. The logic being that our essence, our roots were taken over by others, and renamed, so reverting to who we truly are matters. So then why do we rename our women?
Isn’t the idea of getting a woman to change her surname rooted in control and in the erasure of her identity and her connection to her past life. Doesn’t it flow from an ideology that asks her to accept her new family as her only family, or as a priority at least; so she knows her place in life at all times.
The other thing society does is automatically append an MRS. before my name; which of course I take grave objection to. Men don’t suddenly require a change in designation that indicates their marital status. But wives, who are not supposed to be their husband’s property, still do.
And I’ll tell you why appending an MRS. before my name is a problem for me - it’s the documentary version of adding a mangalsutra around my neck. No part of a married man’s physical appearance or his salutation require an upgrade upon marriage. So why am I not afforded the same privilege?
Adding the MRS. is so ingrained in our psyche, that when my husband linked his bank account to mine to set up a family network, much to my frustration his relationship manager automatically updated my salutation from Ms. to Mrs. It’s been five years since, and I’m still signing rectification forms to remove the MRS. from their various departments.
Ask yourself this - why do we need our women to clearly indicate their marital status but not our men? Does the very act of getting married reduce the freedoms available to a woman, and the same is required to be signalled to the world?
I have nothing against the women who choose to change their surnames or their salutations, for they have made the choice to do so. And I hope that they haven’t had to choose so out of pressure. What I resent is the expectation that we all do so and the automatic assumption that we have all done so.
In a conversation that involved the family tree, as I was getting acquainted with far-flung branches that made up the family, I brought up this one uncle I knew, only to be informed he wasn’t part of the tree, because he was a daughter’s son. That branch was pruned the moment his mother was wed.
But do people stop being our family simply because we’re related to the female parent, and not the male? I don’t believe so, and I certainly haven’t seen so.
Ideologies of what constitute a family differ so drastically from the reality that you have to stop and ask yourself - who are we attempting to fool here? As a society, we’re so committed to a narrative that has been handed down to us over the years, that we refuse to look up and see the actual state of things.
Filled with hope in my heart for a better future, I mentioned in this conversation how things would change eventually and family trees would carry the lines generated by the women too; only to be met by grave disapproval - it would get unmanageable and messy I was told.
Yes it would get very very messy, but it would be very beautiful too - a family forest, filled with many, many interconnected trees.
And I hope that we build and detail out our gorgeous forests. I hope we rewrite the definition of a family. For these things may be small and symbolic, especially when the world is inundated by bigger problems, but aren’t small steps how we make giant leaps?
I’m guilty of asking a lot of questions, I know (both in life, and in this specific post). But I’ve seen that when my questions don’t elicit any answers, any hesitation or second thoughts I’m experiencing quickly disappear.
Our systems are rooted in our traditions, but given the world we live in today, they make little sense. And we can’t simply trudge down the paths our elders in the seventeenth century took; we have to stop and look around, and ask ourselves - can we do better? And I have a sneaking suspicion, the answer to that will always be yes!
Until next time reader, and I hope you always find the courage you need to stand up to the patriarchy.
Love,
Ms. Patny
😁👏👍