George Clooney votes for and financially supports Democrats who want free and unfettered access to abortion on demand so we know he has a "get out of jail free card" from feminists everywhere for any roguish behavior he me exhibit. But his latest anti-woman action might just crack that firewall.
His new bride, 36-year-old international human rights attorney Amal Alamuddin has officially cast aside her name, nay, her identity, to follow centuries of patriarchal oppression. She is now re-branded as Amal Clooney.
The NY Daily News broke the news of Clooney's re-assertion of medieval tradition:
Amal Alamuddin has professionally changed her last name to Clooney, according to the website for her law firm, Doughty Street Chambers, in London.
The site now shows a stunning photo of the newlywed and her bio reads "Amal Clooney."
According to the law firm's bio, the new MRS. (Not Ms.) Clooney is a champion for basic human rights around the world. But, apparently, she has no one to speak out for her as the misogynistic patriarchy rears its head across the breakfast table in the form of her husband.
It's common knowledge that women were considered property in the early days of marriage. A woman was moved from her father's home (often with a cash or property payment) to her new husband's home. She didn't deserve her own identity; she belonged to her father and now she belonged to her husband.
As "Jill" writes at my favorite blog, Feministe:
There is a loss of identity when you change your name. For a lot of people, name-changing in a non-marital context is entirely about changing who you are, or selecting a name that better represents the person you’ve become. It can be a great thing when it represents a personal evolution, or a more accurate reflection of who you’ve always been. But when it represents losing your own identity so that you can be absorbed into your husband and his family? No thanks.
Name-changing also reinforces hetero marriage practices — after all, this would be a very different debate if people were allowed to marry any consenting adult, regardless of gender. And name-changing does help to reinforce cultural assumptions about marriage that make the fight for marriage equality even more difficult — the assumption, for example, that the man is the head of the household and the woman is absorbed into him.
Or, as Lynn Harris at my second-favorite website Salon puts it in her seminal column on this issue, "Mrs. Feminist": "Taking your husband’s surname, traditionally, makes you an auxiliary, an adjunct, the cute female sidekick, a spinoff, a derivative, Mrs. Him."
According to a survey a few years back, 70 percent of American women are still brainwashed by the patriarchy and think women should take their husband's name. Fifty percent believe it should be mandated by law.
Like all responsible men in America, I look to Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Hillary Rodham Clinton (She is still using "Rodham," right?) as my role models for how to treat women correctly and avoid being labeled a soldier in the war on women. I am sure those two stalwart feminists will condemn Mr. Clooney face-to-face at the next million-dollar Democratic fundraiser Mr. & Mrs. Clooney host.