I know, no posting, bad blogger, sit in the corner. I've just been having a busy, sexless, and sort of down time. My body's beat up and my mind's all stressed, it just hasn't been inspiring.
Um... ever notice how sometimes people will refer to men by their last names but women by their first names? What's up with that? (Partly that female names have more diversity; there are so many "Chris"s and "Tom"s at my work that last names are more useful. But that's not all because people will say "blonde Sarah" or "Sarah H." rather than refer to duplicated Sarahs by their last names.) I think it's sexist.
men's last names and women's first names never change.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that, and it irritates me, too. It's especially weird because my husband often goes by an abbreviation of his last name, which is now also my last name. So when people call that name, couldn't it just as well mean me, not him?
ReplyDeleteApparently not.
On my all-women soccer team, we have several people who share first names, and we've talked about using their last names during the game. I've done it a couple of times, but to be honest, it hasn't really caught on, despite the confusion that first names can cause.
OneFaller - Women's last names change maybe once or twice in their lives and it's an awful big deal when they do. It's not like it's going to switch every Wednesday and you'll go crazy remembering.
ReplyDeleteJust as counterpoint anecdote, I've never noticed this. It could be because the IT field is less formal in general, but even when we have 3 Chris's and 3 Roberts in the room we go by first-name-last-initial. Women also go by first name, and in the predominantly male workplace I can't recall two names ever overlapping, but I'm sure their names would be handled equally. "redhead Sarah" seems pretty rude.
ReplyDeleteAs another anecdote, I attended an all-boys private school. We were made to first introduce ourselves by last name in class, and the names mostly stuck for 5 years, but I always figured it was just formality for a conservative school. We would speak of boys from outside the school by their first names, not last. (Well, often by full names, but only because first alone would overlap someone from school and cause confusion.) It never occurred to me that it might be any different in a similarly conservative all-girls school.
Anyway, it's an interesting observation but if it is a sexist institution I feel it's on the way out. At least in my circles.
I know a number of women who've happily referred to other women or been referred to by their last names. I don't think it's a particularly rigid thing, although it has a certain callous locker-room quality.
ReplyDeleteAs a counter-point, no one has ever consistently called my by my last name, despite my lifelong involvement with sports. When there's been name confusion, it's been resolved with adjectives or last initials.
If you're going to call yourself Holly Pervocracy, I don't know how you'll manage to convince people to call you Pervocracy. "Perv" is certainly a possibility, though.
Anonymous - My field isn't characterized by formality, but there is a lot of tough-guy bullshit. I don't know about private schools, but when I was in public school the teachers would often call on male students by their last names and females by their first.
ReplyDeleteBruno - I was more talking about real life, in which my last name is not "Pervocracy."
I am, however, amused by the concept of you being "big Bruno."
Men tend to call each other by their last names in conversation more than women do. Men use first names, too, but it seems like women use first names almost exclusively. Dunno why; maybe women think that sounds more girly and compassionate.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe The Patriarchy tried calling women "boy" and it just didn't work out.
Since I work in a school, we're kind of a special case. We don't call each other by first names in front of the students as a rule, so we all use last names a lot when they're not around, too. But even then, you can still see the women using first names more often. Actually, though, now that I think of it, the women all call me "Don" and the men all call me "Gwinn."
Most last names sound much more like mens' names than womens.
ReplyDeleteIf I said, "Hey Murphy!" you'd assume I was yelling for a guy. Same thing with Smith, or Johnson or Miller or Rodriguez.
You see sexism where none exists.
The very most you can say about this is that it isn't fair that surnames were originally taken from fathers rather than mothers, and you're...let me see...about a millennium late to legitimately complain about that.
Kendrick
Anonymous - So, uh, we associate last names with men because we associate last names with men, huh?
ReplyDeleteAlso, "a millennium too late to complain?" I don't care when it started, if it's still going on, I can complain, buddy.
We associate last names with men either because they're patronymic - Johnson = John's son - or because they're drawn from professions that were at the time dominated by men - Smith, Miller, etc.
ReplyDeleteMy point was that these are the names that were chosen when we started using surnames centuries ago, and it's too late to change the tradition. And whining about something you can't change is...just whining.
It's not to late to complain, but it is too late to complain and expect your complaint to have any effect.The fact that you took time out of your day to call this sexism is strong evidence that you have not experienced any actual sexism. Complaints like this are the reason that nobody takes feminists seriously.
Kendrick
Jesus, Kendrick, I'm not exactly marching on Washington over it.
ReplyDeleteNice point about the name thing. I know Robert Parker made a big deal out of it in one of his Spenser books, hating that Spenser's girlfriend went by "Silverman" sometimes instead of "Susan" (but then, his whole name was "Spenser").
ReplyDeleteI try and think of myself as reasonably enlightened, maybe this is just a leftover of DER PATRIARCHY. Hey, call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner!
I first noticed it during the last election when everyone was talking about "McCain, Obama and Hillary."
ReplyDeleteMy job likes to show that management is on the same level as everyone else so we all go by first names.
ReplyDeleteOverlaps are clarified by full last name.
Oh, and @writeinlight, I noticed that too but attributed it to Clinton branding herself as Hillary.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hillaryclinton.com/
Look at the logo on her website. I don't know if it was to distance herself from Bill or to appear more approachable or what have you, but it seems to be the way she wanetd to be referred to.