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This Week's Sustainability Shout-Out
Price Gougers at 1052 Portage Ave - Kevin Kaiser of Synerge Properties.
Congratulations on the garish choice of hideous blue paint on this Shitbox located on a superbusy arterial highway in Murderville you seem to think has increased in value by 600% in the 8 months and $0 of work you did on it! It's MOST generous appraisal is $225,000 with a range of $175,000 to $225,000, but hey why not be The Problem, right? We can't hold it against people who were born and raised here for never evolving past Self-Interest. Thanks for contributing to the homelessness epidemic, the hoarding of resources that are human rights, and commodification of shelter and community, burning this ladder to property ownership behind you for other people when you already have your own, and for your entitlement. Loser.ooooooo
Op-Ed Opinion • Culture & Class
The Hyphen Hustle: How Nepotism Got a Feminist Makeover
By: R.J. / 10-15-2025
There’s a new kind of virtue‑signaling making its rounds at the altar — and it’s got punctuation. The hyphenated surname, once a dusty aristocratic flourish, has been rebranded as progressive, egalitarian, and modern. But beneath the surface lies something a little stickier: the enduring instinct to preserve access, lineage, and legacy under the polite guise of equality.
On a lark this morning, I asked google "What reasons do men have for hyphenated last names?" Google's AI wrote me back this thinly veiled plaintive bleating for the good old days of feudalism.
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AI OverviewMen have hyphenated last names to preserve both their paternal and maternal identities, avoid choosing between names, carry on a family legacy, or maintain professional recognition. Hyphenation allows a man to keep his original surname and incorporate his spouse's surname, showing unity and equality in the marriage. Reasons for hyphenating last names
- Preserving identity and legacy:
- To keep a family name alive, especially if it would otherwise go extinct, often linked to inheritance in a family tradition.
- To honor both sides of the family by including both paternal and maternal surnames.
- Professional reasons:
- To maintain professional recognition and identity associated with a birth name while still showing unity with a partner.
- Equality and choice:
- To avoid having to give up one's birth name, allowing both partners to retain their identities.
- As a reflection of evolving gender roles and a more egalitarian approach to marriage.
- Traditional and cultural reasons:
- In some cultures, hyphenated surnames are a tradition for passing on both paternal and maternal surnames to children.
- Historically, in aristocratic families, it was a way to continue an illustrious name when a daughter inherited an estate and married.
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The traditional story goes like this: a man hyphenates to “honor both families,” to “preserve his identity,” or to “reflect evolving gender roles.” It sounds noble enough — until you realize that most of these reasons boil down to a soft form of dynastic branding.In plain English: we embrace nepotism, we just use better fonts now.
“Preserving identity and legacy” is code for keeping the family name alive because it still opens doors — once a deed to land, now a password to partnerships, donor lists, or a seat at the table.
Likewise, the bit about “keeping a family name from extinction” isn’t romantic — it’s PR for the bloodline. If the family used to own half of Pittsburgh, extinction isn’t the fear; obscurity is. And the so‑called “professional reasons” argument? That’s capitalism in lace gloves. People don’t want to lose the name they’ve already monetized — whether it’s attached to published research, real‑estate signage, or a blue‑check handle. The name is no longer a personal identifier; it’s a brand. A hyphen simply keeps the money flowing smoothly from one monogram to the next.
Even the seemingly egalitarian motives — “equality and choice,” “honoring both sides,” “evolving gender norms” — often come preloaded with social calculus. These are gestures designed not just to balance identity, but to balance access. To keep both families happy, both sets of social capital intact, both branches of the family tree pruned and visible in the public garden.
Historically, hyphenation thrived in aristocratic circles where women with estates combined surnames so their property wouldn’t “vanish” upon marriage. It was a loophole in patriarchy — a way to retain visibility in a system designed to erase them. Repurposed today, the logic looks less like liberation than legacy laundering: the moral dry‑cleaning of inherited privilege.
Of course, there are honest, uncalculated reasons to hyphenate: love, identity, autonomy, self‑expression. But it’s worth asking: how often are we witnessing equality, and how often are we witnessing branding? In an era obsessed with optics, the hyphen has become the punctuation mark of polite nepotism — the dash that connects past wealth to present virtue.
The other, stupid part of this, is, what legacy? We're literally all temps here on borrowed time between two meteor impacts. even if your "legacy" lasts 100,000 years, nobody is going to remember who you were. Earth was here for 5 billion years before we evolved 5 minutes ago. We will die, or the Earth will die, eventually the universe itself will die but your legacy doubtless still stands! Get over yourself and make your stupid kids put in the work.
We may be done with coats of arms, but the instinct remains: to make sure the name — and everything attached to it — never fades quietly into lowercase.
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