Who’s the daddy: Has Portia taken Ellen’s name in vain?
by Plava
I recently found out that our reigning celesbian married couple have now become as homo-norm as you can legally get – yes, Portia has officially taken Ellen’s name. They are now the DeGeneres’s. Doesn’t roll off the tongue, exactly. I can understand wanting to self-define in a way that reflects your married identity, but what’s wrong with Mrs. DeGeneres and Mrs. de Rossi?
According to BBC News Portia is keeping de Rossi as a professional name, to which I say – why bother changing it at all? Ellen and Portia are obviously the most famous married lesbians in the world: Portia doesn’t need to adopt ‘DeGeneres’ to define her, if you are anything like me you know and love them and the fact that they are married, presumably they know and love the fact that they are married, if she’s keeping de Rossi for half the time anyway why not just keep it full stop? Like, de Rossi is an awesome name, why get rid of it?
It’s irritating beyond belief when straight women today continue the old tradition of changing their names, blindly, as if it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Frankly, we haven’t reached the stage yet, gender equality-wise, where marriages are so equal that changing one’s name can just be a lovely custom, devoid of historical context.
Replacing your name with your partner’s implicitly supports a conception of marriage as an contract of possession – whereby the man takes the woman into his family as a nice looking bit of property. Protest as people might that they simply didn’t like their name before (my mother’s favourite justification), the fact is that assuming one’s partner’s name implies a dynamic of possessor and possessed, of one party’s control over what should be a twofold identity. The concept of the ‘head of the family’, the ‘man as provider’, and so on, really hasn’t gone away. Physical and sexual violence are still rife within marriages, and where customs uphold the sexism that feeds these inequalities, I reckon they need to go.
Are Ellen and Portia conforming to stereotypical gender roles?
On the other hand, you might think that Portia and Ellen both being women alters the facts on the ground in some way. Like, if it’s lesbians it’s fine, right, because where there is no man it doesn’t matter who changes their name?
No way sailor-girl. Queer marriage is a relatively new thing, and people are still trying to shape it, and to make sense of it, and it’s not particularly clear to me that the adoption of another’s name, whatever genders you are, does anything to transgress or subvert. We’ve all experienced people insisting on viewing lesbian relationships through a straight lens: i.e. questions like ‘but, who is the man in the relationship?’ Worse, (and particularly infuriating if like me you can’t help looking femme most of the time), there’s still an assumption that the butch-er looking partner in any given lesbian couple is the dominant, manly one. Listen, whilst my attempts at butch gender presentation can often be described as laughable, however successful they might be, I am not the man in the relationship. But neither is my (nonexistent) girlfriend the man – in my (not currently happening) relationship, there is no man: capiche? It totally doesn’t help that Portia is the ‘femme’ one and Ellen is the ‘butch’ one, and that Portia is the one changing her name, this plays right into the notion that the more masculine partner is the man.
Words are powerful, and where words characterise identities, they are doubly powerful. It’s amazing that in some countries in the world lesbian marriage is legal, and I stand up for the right of all people of all genders and sexualities to marry whomever they chose. But if we don’t keep our marriages queer, we end up assimilating into the very heterosexist dynamic that gay marriage should – if we are right to bother campaigning for it at all – transgress. And that kind of behaviour fucks me right off.
This is a shame, you are attacking your own kind here I think…especially with the “Ellen is the ‘butch’ one, and that Portia is the one changing her name, this plays right into the notion that the more masculine partner is the man”. I thought lesbos/gays were all about equality and doing what they want?! If Portia gave up work and become Ellen’s dowdy housewife, and trophy at awards ceremonies, you may have a point but, as far as I am aware, this has yet to happen.
I agree with Nicole. I don’t think that taking a partner’s name in the year 2011, regardless of gender or sexuality, is something that plays into stereotypes anymore (only if we let it by thinking that way, if you see what I mean). I reckon/ hope we HAVE reached the stage ‘where changing one’s name can just be a lovely custom’ haven’t we? Aren’t we at the point now where everyone can do what they want and be who they want without the tags of ‘butch’ or ‘femme’ or any of the rest of it? I see it as we’re all lesbians, that’s it, who cares what ‘package’ that comes in…and if someone who is in love with someone else and has married them, wants to take their name as an extension or affirmation of this, we should applaud it…… Interesting piece though and good to make us all think! x
A Deep Field of Discussion, this marriage links us to the future we like to think. As an individual marriage is far from rubbish but it’s representing many things in the times we are living that we are not fully happy with.
Thanks for making us think, yes.
I think I agree to an extent, the tradition is patriarchal and oppressive at its root. But then there’s the question of simply wanting to define yourself as a family unit. If words are powerful tools then uniting one family under one name is not an insignificant matter. It provides an identity and a banner for a family, especially in the face of other people’s still-existent opposition. A nice alternative would be an amalgamation of names, maybe? Di Generes, De Rossi, DeGenerossi. Yeah….
Great article, great comments. Very torn on this, but I mostly agree with the OP. Obviously it’s Portia’s choice, but I do feel like this is a bit of an uncomfortable hetronormative overhang.
However you look at it, when you take someone’s name, you are choosing to ‘give up’ something of yours. Traditionally, this was a symbol of ownership, and I’m afraid, although we’d probably all like to think we’ve surpassed that connotation, the concept of name-taking has never really evolved or been rebranded.
Basically, if a name is taken, one person looses a little bit of their identity, and the fact that it’s often the ‘femmey’ partner of a lesbian couple who gives it up just makes me feel a bit dodgy.
I wonder what Portia’s genuine reasoning was?
As far as I’m concerned if a person gives themselves to all, that person gives themselves to no one. This way that person gains more power to preserve what they have. As gayness is unusual and we all know that;then fighting for identity, equal rights and freedom is a constant struggle. They(celesbian couple), to me seem comfortable in their own skins. This enlightment, however, can be missinterpreted but there is no greater power that the power of unity.
I read that Portia’s genuine reasoning was that Portia de Rossi was a name she picked in childhood. She changed it when she was a child. It was because she was doing competetive running or something similar and her main competition was a girl with the exact same name as Portia’s! So she changed it! So de Rossi isn’t her family’s name.
I would like to point out that in the first paragraph of this article it says ‘Mrs. DeGeneres and Mrs. de Rossi’. Isn’t that a little heteronormative? Why not put ‘Mrs de Rossi and Mrs. DeGeneres’?! I don’t mean this as a criticism – it’s a brilliant article about a fascinating issue. I just wanted to point out how heterosexist we all are to the extent that we often aren’t even aware of it.
I couldn’t disagree with this rant more.
I’m taking my fiancée’s surname after our civil partnership in August and I’m incredibly excited to do so. I see this as an opportunity to define my family. I definitely wanted us to have the same surname, but we chose hers because:
* She has a son, and I want all of us, including our future children, to have the same surname for sentimental and practical reasons.
* Her surname is really, really sexy.
And for the record, we’re both extremely femme. Ted Baker stiletto femme.
Fun factoid: in the UK gays don’t have to change name by deed poll legally, we can use proof of civil partnership to change name w/ banks, etc.
Maybe Ellen told Portia she wanted her name because she loved her so much and thought it was a beautiful gesture? And Portia said “shit, I was going to tell you the same thing, damn you beat me to it” and so they decided to flip for it. And Portia won. Who knows, who cares. It’s their choice. And given how much they have publically supported gay rights, I believe they should be able to do what ever they want with their own marriage.
I’m thankful for the people that have fought for my right to marry who I like so I then have a choice regarding how I define that marriage. Not for someone to tell me I should ” keep my marriage queer” so I can simply assimilate to someone elses definition of what marriage is supposed to be and maintain the gay status quo.
i think it’s cool when both partners hyphenate… i’ve been thinking about a lot of the issues raised in this thread recently, because i’m engaged to my partner and we aren’t totally sure whether we’re going to change our names at all yet… but i agree to some extent with the comments about defining yourselves as a family unit… if we do change our names, that will be the main reason why. we did talk about just one of us changing names, or just one of us hyphenating (based nothing on our gender expression but more so on what sounds good) but just one of us changing makes us both uncomfortable. we think about it in the sense that we’re both entering into a new family, so to speak, so we like the idea of both of us changing our names to the same hyphenated name created by both our last names.
I thought long and hard about this twenty years ago. In Britain, nearly everyone’s surname is part of a partiarchal institution. If you change your surname to your mother’s ‘maiden’ (ugh!) name, then you have actually chosen your grandfather’s name, and so on. So we chose a completely different name that we both liked and both changed our name to that. Subsequently, a third partner joined our family who has also chosen to change her name to that surname: I’m sure she would have been less likely to do this if it had been a birth-family surname, for all the same patriarchal / ownership reasons. Our name defines us as a family unit, but is discrete from all our birth families and their patriarchal traditions. As an added bonus, nobody in our birth families can complain that we bring shame on their family name! :P
WRT Ellen and Portia: I think everyone should feel free to choose the name they want to be known by, and live in / define their relationship however they choose. I don’t think they should feel required to ‘represent’ their community in every aspect of their personal lives. Otherwise, where is their freedom to be themselves that we would want for ourselves?
Apparently Portia has no say.
It’s what happens when there is need of leadership.
As far as I’m concerned when you marry it ceases to become ‘your’ name. The fact of taking someone else’s name implies absorption more than ownership. The fact that the male conventionally keeps their own is indeed due to their ownership of property, but the female does not constitute a part of this property: she contributes to it. It’s a step towards the creation of a family, and I see no reason why everyone within a family of unified name cannot be treated equally.
I’m sure this is why Ellen and Portia decided to share a name. It would never have occurred to me that it had anything to do with an attempt to introduce hegemony to their marriage.
Regarding the decision to choose any one of their names over another, it could be down to aesthetic preference, it could be down to family ties or it could be down to the owner of the home in which they wish to reside as a married couple. It could be down to many arbitrary things when the conventions are not formalised.
I doubt they are calling each other something sounding like this -”Hottie, in my house!”- and answer – “Yes, darling, Im here dusting the furniture!”
It´s probably random complexities that play into their choice of name probably family ties etc,etc,etc
Who are they?
Didnt they get a divorce ages ago?
Well,it looks as though everything is formalized.