She's so hard to please, but she's a forest fire

Eagle-eyed friends and acquaintances may have noticed by now that I didn't change my last name after I got married.

I considered it. (It's impossible to get hitched without at least acknowledging the choice, since marriage applications encouragingly offer fields for you to write your married name into. In our county, both GR and I were prompted to enter new names as applicable. More old-fashioned counties -- in addition to clinging to the gay-unfriendly labels of "bride" and "groom" -- provide space only for brides to indicate a name change.) That said, I don't recall doing a lot of hemming and hawing. I like my name. I am my name. When I thought about changing it, I felt an internal, knee-jerk NOPE twinge. GR was content to honor whatever I decided. His family are warm and wonderful people who I was pretty sure wouldn't take my declining as a personal insult.

Two and a half years later, there's been zero fallout. If any sass or side-eye has been directed my way, I'm oblivious to it. I've received no concerned and/or indignant questions from older relatives. A couple well-intentioned mistakes have occurred, in the form of mailed Christmas cards or invitations addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Rapp," but even those were counterbalanced by other, cheeky friends who've sent us mail addressed to "Dr. and Mr. Martin."

In my personal circle of loved ones, the percentage of women who've taken their dudes' surnames seems to be hovering around 50-60%, which is much lower than the national average (80%). I'm lucky to live among folks who made either choice feel uncontroversial and fine. (Though it's worth pointing out that none of us are yet lucky enough to be living in an age where men changing their surnames isn't vanishingly rare. You're more likely to meet a vegan on the street than a man who took his wife's name. (Not a lot of people are vegans, guys.))

Other women tell stories of affronted in-laws and social backlash and husbands who pout and stew. Some communities really go out of their way to make both women and their husbands feel like crap for declining to participate in patrilineal naming. The only reason Hillary Clinton didn't stay Hillary Rodham is because political advisors insisted that her audacious name-keeping was losing her husband votes in the Arkansas gubernatorial race.

To be fair, other women also tell stories of feeling something like divine bliss at the prospect of taking their husbands' surnames. My sense is that these women don't tend to think of themselves as pawns of patriarchy. There's something really lovely about uniting with your spouse and embarking on your married life together under the same name! And not everyone feels particularly attached to the name they're born with. A lot of couples just like the idea of having a common family name, and adopting the dude's name is by far the path of least resistance to that goal. (Also, look at all the adorable "Mrs. X" merch you can get for your wedding day!)

Again, thanks to mostly luck and a bit of choice, my monkeysphere is mostly one that doesn't try to crush me with the weight of gendered expectations. When it came time to consider changing my name, I was granted relative autonomy, feeling neither the threat of social punishment nor the giddy comfort of conformity.

To put it another way: The air I breathe on a day-to-day basis is flavored feminist.

I didn't start using feminist as a term to describe myself or my views until I was well into undergrad, but when I did, it wasn't because I'd experienced any particular shift in perspective (or "consciousness raising," for the hippies among us). It was because I came to understand feminism as a word that accurately reflected all the things I already did and believed, plus all the gripes I had about how things should be. Embracing feminism was effortless because (twist!) I'd been a feminist the whole time. It was like searching around the house for your glasses, only to realize you're already wearing them.

I feel like I was born into a sort of atmospheric feminism, I guess. Even if no one called it that, and even if no one did it on purpose.

I've received some praise for keeping my surname -- not, like, trophies, but affirming comments from friends, who compliment me for doing my bit to topple the patriarchy. And while I agree that patriarchy-toppling is an admirable goal, it feels clear to me that the most "feminist" thing about my choice was the relative peace and quiet I was afforded when making it. My gratitude is directed at the air.

Please work with what is left

Have you ever seen a photograph of Gertrude Stein? Or looked at that portrait of her, painted by her buddy Picasso? Some people's faces don't match their names, but she really looks like someone named "Gertrude Stein." She's got the visage of a stern German aunt, or a Jazz Age Grumpy Cat. Stein didn't even have to grow into it -- she looked like that as a teenager.

Maybe this is why, among all of Stein's accomplishments, she's best remembered in American culture for something curmudgeonly: Stein coined the phrase "There is no there there," a line widely interpreted as a dis to her hometown of Oakland, California. (William Safire called it a "classic slander of the city of Oakland.") Even if you didn't know it was Stein who originated that phrase, or that she said it about Oakland, you've probably heard "There's no there there" used as a dismissive insult. Politicians tend to break it out when they want to accuse something of being without merit or substance, a big ol' nothingburger. It sounds like a Mensa-fied way of saying "ya basic."

Oakland isn't fond of being labeled the Nothingest Place in America. The city has installed at least two massive sculptures that were basically designed to flip Stein the bird. (One, named "HERETHERE," can be found at the Berkeley/Oakland border. Another, named "There," lives in the City Center plaza.)

Other peeved Oaklanders have taken a different tack, by attempting to argue that the whole thing is a Frost-caliber misunderstanding. The line "There is no there there" comes from Stein's 1937 autobiography, Everybody's Autobiography, from a passage in which Stein describes the experience of returning to her hometown after four decades away. When you look at the line in context, these people insist, you see that Stein isn't calling the whole city of Oakland a bereft wasteland; she's actually referring to her childhood home -- like, the physical house -- which had been razed in the intervening years. When she says, "There is no there there," what she means is, "There's no home there," as in, "My childhood has been demolished." Stein's words have simply been misconstrued, and the fine city of Oakland was besmirched for no reason.


My official ruling: That second group of Oakland-defenders are on to something, but they haven't quite pieced together the whole story, either.

Let's look at the passage in question. A Bay-area friend is showing Stein and her partner Alice Toklas around town. They go out for oysters, and then they visit a convent in San Raphael, and then:

...we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

Uh, okay. FYI, Stein's writing is always like this -- kind of rambling, non-grammatical, associative. The offending line comes at the end of a run-on sentence, but her wording is so weird it's impossible to say for sure what she means by it. The best thing to do is keep reading. After a page or so of digression, Stein gets back to talking about Oakland, and she describes visiting the site of her old house:

Ah Thirteenth Avenue was the same it was shabby and over-grown the houses were certainly some of them those that had been there and there were not bigger buildings and they were neglected and, lots of grass and bushes growing yes it might have been the Thirteenth Avenue when I had been. Not of course the house, the house the big house and the big gardens and the eucalyptus trees and the rose hedge naturally were not any longer existing, what was the use; if I had been I then my little dog would know me but if I had not been I then that place would not be the place that I could see...

This is probably the section the Oakland Defenders are referring to. Stein at first seems tickled to recognize her old street. But then, when she acknowledges that the house isn't there, it sends her mind spinning in a melancholy direction: Even if her house was there, what would it change? She's not the same person she was when she was young, when her dog greeted her at the gate. She continues on this train of thought:

...I did not like the feeling, who has to be themselves inside them, not any one and what is the use of having been if you are going to go on being and if not why is it different and if it is different why not. I did not like anything that was happening. Later much later... I wrote, what is the use of being a little boy if you are going to grow up to be a man. Well some do and some do not.
    If I remember what I remember then why do I remember that. I did remember that but it did look like that and so I did not remember that and if it did not look like that then I did not remember that. What was the use.

It gets intense, fast. Oakland, the house -- it's forcing Stein to think about the nature of memory. If our present selves grow out of our past selves, she asks, doesn't this mean we're kind of trapped? And if we're not slaves to the past, what's the point of remembering anything at all? And when you consider the fact that our memories are often distorted and prone to lapses, it all starts to feel like a house of cards. The experience bums Stein out. By the end of it she sounds deflated: "well anyway I had been in Oakland again."

The phrase "there is no there there" is tied to this whole emotional complex. (Arguably, it kicks it off.) It's not really about Oakland, but it kind of is. It's not really about her house, but it kind of is. It's sort of a lament for youth, but it's also terrified of the idea that our youths define us. When you try to pin down what the phrase really means in context, the best you can do is gesture vaguely to these paragraphs and the melancholy feelings they're intended to generate. (Also, Stein would like to remind you that nothing ever means the same thing to two people.)

That's the best I can do, Oakland.