Sans Fig Leaf
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"Naming rights"
8 June, 2006
I was named after my two grandfathers. I was given the first name of my paternal grandfather, and the middle name of my maternal grandfather. This is hardly unusual.
The problem was that my dad is a junior. So I had the same first name as both my dad and his dad, and by coincidence, the same middle initial (though not the same middle name). People frequently appended a roman numeral three to my name on documents both official and not. I would try to correct it, with varying degrees of success. One of my dad's cousins had the same first name. And he lived in the same small town where I had been born (the town where my grandfather lived most of his life), which my family moved back to when I was in the seventh grade. Many of my teachers had been my cousin's teachers, just as many had been my father's before that. Because my dad had been in high school when this cousin had entered first grade, the cousin had started going by his middle name, Tom.
I decided if he could do it, so could I. So I started asking people to call me by my middle name, Eugene. Which fairly quickly got shortened to Gene (though a small number of my friends preferred to call me Euey). Not everyone was willing to go along with it. My paternal grandmother declared that the people who really cared for me would keep calling me by my "real" name, Paul. Which to me seemed absolutely backwards. If I didn't like being called "Paul," folks who cared about my feelings would make some effort not to do it. If a woman named "Elizabeth" asks you not to call her "Lizzy" you would respect her wishes, right?
I suppose my grandmother was thinking that this was the equivalent of not letting me run with scissors or call other kids cruel names. As an adult relative with at least some responsibility for turning me into a functional member of society, she wasn't supposed to indulge my every whim. I'm sure she thought it was just a phase I was going through. She was wrong, not only wasn't it a phase, but many years ago I got my name legally changed.
She wasn't the only one who had problems with my request. Even after the legal name change, there are people--not all of them family members-- who insist that "Paul" is my "real" name. "It's what your parents named you, after all."
I have two problems with that argument. The first is rather trivial: my parents gave me two names. I'm still using both names they gave me, I've just changed the order (and shortened one). The more fundamental problem I have is when does my life become mine? Both the law and social custom recognize me as an adult capable of making legal decisions. I live on my own, gainfully employed and paying my own way. So why do these folks think that a decision my parents made 45 years ago about which name would go into which space on a legal form trumps my own wishes?
This nonsense made more sense to me after I came out of the closet. Because then I noticed a very interesting pattern: the same people who kept insisting that Paul is my "real name" also insisted that I'm not "really" gay. Or that it's not the "real me." I was suffering from a delusion, victim of the manipulation of others, according to these folks.
To them, who we are is determined by a limited number of inflexible factors. Little boys grow up to date girls, get married, settle down, and become fathers. Little girls are expected to grow up, catch a man, and become mothers. The more a person's life deviates from that, the less "real" they are, according to these folks. Don't believe me? Ask any straight woman who has decided she doesn't want to have kids. Ask any straight guy who has decided not to marry. If you really want an earful, ask a transgendered person how some people have reacted to their gender reassignment.
Real life isn't simple or uniform. Who I am is much more than my name, my gender, my job, my sexual orientation, my race, my age, or any of the other facts that someone can assemble about me. And whether I'm called Gene, Paul, Euey, The Elf, that crazy guy, honey, or hey you, it doesn't change who I am. I understand that.
I decided to change my name. You can think my reasons are silly, you can think my choice is poor, but it's my choice, not yours. I don't believe that sexual orientation is a choice, but living out and proud is. It's a choice that doesn't hurt anyone else, or take anything away from anyone else. Again, you are free to think it's a poor choice, or an immoral one, or whatever, but it's my life, not yours. I am in a committed relationship with another man and I choose to call him my husband. You can think that's an inappropriate term, you can think something's wrong with us, or whatever. But it's our life, not yours.
When confronted with this distinction, some folks have countered by saying, "If I want to call you Paul, or Idiot, or Tinkerbell, it's my choice, not yours."
But whether another person recognizes my right to make decisions about my own life says more about who they are than about me. A person can ignore my decisions. They can refuse to address me by my chosen (legal) name. They can refuse to acknowledge the equality of my sexual orientation with theirs. They can refuse to recognize my relationship. That person isn't simply choosing not to respect my wishes, they are choosing to disrespect my very personhood. It's rude and uncouth, but it doesn't change anything about me.
If I'm not willing to put up with their disrespect, if I cut them out of my life, that's my choice. It's also their fault. Just as I would be partially to blame if I repeatedly subjected myself to that disrespect.
The same parents who gave me that original name also did their best to teach me to stand on my own feet, to be my own person, and to live life to the fullest. I wouldn't be showing much gratitude or respect to those lessons if I let other people dictate who I am, what I think, or how I live.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
--John Stuart Mill
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