How to Navigate Patriarchal Bureaucracy

So I haven't blogged in a really long time, but I thought I might update everyone on the name change in progress. We scored a major victory yesterday at the Social Security office. We managed to get my last name changed to our new hyphenated last name without having to show a court name change document or having to bribe any officials. While free married name changes are legal for both men and women in Texas, no one seems to be aware of this recent change in the law, so getting people to actually allow me to change my name has been a challenge. Here are a few of the highlights.

1.) People think I am crazy. They just cannot comprehend why I would want to hyphenate my last name. They (and by they I mean complete strangers, my students, and even close family members) assume that my wife is making me change my name. My only response to this line of thinking is, "What?!?!" See, when people make this assumption, what they are basically saying is that my marriage is not about equality, rather it is about me being enslaved to my wife. That is utterly ridiculous. If that were the case, wouldn't I just take her last name and drop mine completely? No one believes me when I tell them that I was the first one to suggest we both hyphenate our names. Either that or they think that my wife somehow used mind control to get me to bring it up.

2.) Most attempts at name changes have been easy. People at my job have made the change with no questions (some are even very supportive). The bank just needed a copy of the marriage certificate. The Green Mountain energy representative was utterly confused though. I must admit that I was quite surprised by that reaction. I assumed the people working for Green Mountain energy were a little more progressive than average (okay, I assumed many of them were hippies). I figured they would at least aware let alone hypothetically comfortable with the idea of a man hyphenating his name.

3.) The DPS was utterly uncooperative. The woman working there looked at me like I was insane for asking to change my name. She refused to cooperate. The highlight of that trip was when my wife told her, "That's discrimination." It is true. It is discriminatory to refuse a man the same right to change his name as his wife has. There is just something ironic about the fact that in this case, it was an African-American woman passing on this discrimination to a Caucasian middle class man. I should make the disclaimer that I do not blame her. She was rude, but she was just participating in bureaucracy, not designing it. I really just wanted to tell her, "The bureaucracy you are participating in right now is only reinforcing patriarchy by denying me the opportunity to change my name. As a woman, patriarchy probably hurts you more than it does me, but you are in the unique position of being able to do something about it, so join the revolution!" Alas, I did not say any of these things. Score one for patriarchy.

4.) Yesterday, however, my wife and I pulled out our hammers, on our mission to smash patriarchy. The official at the Social Security office at first did not want to grant our request. Her exact words to me were, "Sir, you don't have to change your name when you get married." I won't rant about how loaded that statement is because after some convincing, she decided to check on whether she could change it or not. That was all we really wanted because we knew if we could just get her to look it up that the law would be on our side. It was, my name is now officially hyphenated. Now I just have to get the other bureaucratic institutions to recognize my legally sanctioned rights - easy right?