Feminism’s Not Dead: Enlightened Sexism, Maiden Names, and Identity Politics in the Digital Age

I got married last weekend and, coincidentally, that same weekend, the New York Times published a trend piece that explores the fact that the number of women keeping their maiden names after marriage is on the rise. And I say “coincidentally” because I just so happen to be one of those women.

The writers of this New York Times piece posit—based on anecdotal evidence, a couple interviews with sociologists and historians, and what seems to be the writers’ own assumptions regarding the social and cultural climate surrounding the 22% of women who have kept their maiden names in recent years—that, for the most part, these women are doing so not for political reasons but for motivations based mainly on convenience and practicality. In other words, as the piece goes on to argue, “For many women, sociologists say, keeping their maiden names has lost its significance in defining their independence and its symbolism as a feminist act.” The writers go so far as to state, “Many women still find the decision [to change their names] hard, and some object to the name-changing tradition as patriarchic. But for many, the choice reflects a modern-day approach to gender equality. Basic rights have been achieved, so the gesture carries less weight either way.”

Okay, sure, absolutely, for some women, convenience may be a key factor in such a decision; I’m not saying it’s not. But what I’m wondering is this—are practicality and politicality mutually exclusive? And further, how does the idea of intention affect politics? Can one’s acts be political without intending them to be so? Can one’s actions further a feminist ideology even if one says they don’t?

Now, the above are questions that have been milling about in my head the past few days, but the very first question that came to mind after reading the New York Times piece was, “Wait, hold on—did they just say that the general assumption people have is that basic rights have been achieved?” Because that seems to be the foundation for the article’s examination of this maiden name “trend”—the writers seem to be arguing that these “name-keepers” motivations are representative of a larger cultural belief that basic rights have been achieved, gender equality has been achieved, so the retaining of one’s maiden name isn’t a feminist or political act. Such a stance, then, seems to presuppose that feminism is no longer needed since equality has apparently already happened. And such a stance is insidious, it’s dangerous, and it’s symptomatic of a larger cultural problem that is pervasive in a myriad of social spheres.

Such an assumption reminds me of Susan J. Douglas’s discussion of enlightened sexism, which is something she explores in The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild. As Douglas explains, enlightened sexism “is a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism—indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved—so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women” (9). And the construction of this illusion of full equality serves to lull us into accepting the idea that we live in a so-called postfeminist society; in other words, the prevalent assumption seems to be that women have made plenty of progress, which means we do not need feminism anymore, which means we do not need feminist critiques or application anymore, which therefore means, as Douglas puts it, that “feminism is now utterly pointless—even bad for you” (6).

This is the kind of logic that not only affects the lens through which a New York Times writer might consider matrimonial trends but also the various issues that we explore here at this site. This is the logic behind the decrying of the feminist critique of games as being enacted by those who are perpetually outraged. This is the logic behind the branding of games critics and scholars as oversensitive social justice warriors. This is the logic behind the dismissing of someone’s reaction to a game’s animation style as being written by someone who’s simply looking for something to be angry about.

It is the logic of enlightened sexism that seems to allow some to justify the ways they perpetrate anger and violence toward women in online spaces—such as the kind of vitriolic harassment of women that we see happening in situations like Gamergate. And this is where the danger of enlightened sexism, the danger of the assumption that gender equality has been achieved, the danger of the belief that the world we live in is a postfeminist one, is made visible. But perhaps even more dangerous than such violent visibility is the fact that such assumptions render marginality invisible, a nonissue, something that no longer requires addressing. So, even though such considerations have been addressed on this site before, I want to address it again because it bears repeating. Marginality and inequality are not non-issues, and we don’t live in a postfeminist world; we live in a world in which feminism—especially one sensitive to issues of intersectionality—is more important than ever.

Indeed, such feminist interrogation might allow us to think about the manner in which the retention of one’s maiden name might function as a feminist act and whether or not one’s motives (whether they be overtly political or not) affect the manner in which such an act comments on gender norms. It might also allow us to interrogate the manner in which cultural trends might reveal the various ways that ideologies and political identities begin to shift and manifest themselves. And it might also allow us to think about how it is that enlightened sexism shapes our interactions—be they in person or online. That’s one reason why feminism is important. And that’s one reason why I’ll keep writing about it.