I never, ever understood changing your last name. To me, it would have been as unthinkable as changing my first name upon marriage. We're an Irish-Hispanic couple- changing my last name would have erased my heritage ( and as a woman, I am not merely borrowing a last name from my dad, thank you)! And I dislike how name changing obscures a married woman's history and background. Perhaps when people married just out of childhood, it was no big deal. But an adult woman changing her name makes things difficult professionaly and socially. Aren't these women proud of where they come from and what they have accomplished?

My daughter has both our last names on her birth certificate because she was born in Latin America and there children take on both last names. Her paternal last name is the one she uses everyday. While this system and other similar sytems in other cultures are definitely patriarchal, at least they acknowledge that children have two parents and two lineages.

Americans tend to assume that if the whole family doesn't have the same name then things will be confusing for their everday lives or for geneaolgists. Yet surely when a woman's background and history and name are respected and passed on to her children, even with secondary importance, there is less confusion. You only have to listen to a group of Spanish speakers figure out who is related to whom by paternal AND maternal last names to see that this is true.

Conserving maternal last names for children in other cultures is seen as a way of respecting family connections, not as a radical new feminist concept. There is room for conservative values in maternal name preservation!

St Fuad: Keeping my birth name, which came from my father, does not mean that I am in denial. I know that my name came from him, and that he gave it to me at birth. Are you saying that as a feminist I am supposed to reject my own father?

Surely you don't think that men are the only ones who are proud of their family background and accomplishments. Or that a woman who wants to end a disrespectful sexist old tradition might as well give it up and take her husband's name because she has male decendants.

Not to acknowledge the posting by the scary misogynist, but to respond to another poster: I have spent many years as US American expat, and I can tell you that the American mystique makes you a prime target for getting hit on by men. We even had a term for the men who chased American women: "gringeros". Then there are the men looking for the green card- I was proposed to by two taxi drivers! I think all foreigners hold a certain fascination for people- which is why creepy men everywhere like to put all their hopes on a foreign wife. They intuit that some economically disadvantaged woman's notions about an American man will occlude their creep vibes. It even works- I know two women, one Russian and one Chinese, who married the same violent man from my town, then divorced him. I wonder what he tells himself now?

Politic is about consensus and compromise. Want a president who is true to his principles? Try George W. Bush. Want a pragmatist who usually plays on our team and who is effective? HRC might be what the doctor ordered.

If you're not in High Scool, you should have figured out that all politicians are out for themselves to a greater or lesserdegree. A dem who doesn't compromise with the right won't win the White House, and a politician who can't hold onto power is useless. The question isn't whether you can have a president who gives progressives everything they want- it's if we can get a president who gives us some of what we want. So it has always been. To think otherwise is to vote for Nader instead of the electable Gore, thus putting Bush in the White House and doing irreparable harm to ALL progressive causes.

Those of us with brains should act smart about this, because God knows most people won't.

I prefer women. It doesn't have to be logical, and since I'm paying for it, that's what I'm going to ask for. It was only a generatino ago that women had to get ALL of their reproductive/ gynological treatment and info from male doctors. If I'm glad that times have changed, than so be it. Also- this is wrongheaded of me I'm sure- but I'll be totally honest here: I'm afraid that a male gynocologist might be a creep. I might have issues about the dark side of male sexuality, but I blame it on the myriad encounters with creeps that all women endure through life. To be honest and probably unfair: I've never clearly understood why a man would want to be a gynecologist. A woman gynecologist is as unremarkable to me as a woman surgeon, because presumably that part of the body holds no loaded significance as she has those parts herself and probably she is hetero etc.,. But why does a man decide to only treat female parts? What I really need is for physicians to explain why they happen to focus on treatment of one area of the body, and maybe I will stop worrying that there is a creep factor involved with male gynos.

I would have no problem with my father, or my husband, preferring a male to conduct their prostate exams. Why would I want to make my loved ones, or myself, more uncomfortable out of principle? We're talking about unpleasant, very personal exams. For that matter, if a person feels more confortable with someone of their own ethnic background, whatever floats their boat. We can all trust the intelligence of each other to have a preference while appreciating that there is no call for discrimination or disrespect.

Come on! With all due respect to the seriousness of misgendering, I'm not on board with this.