Patriarchy, or Self-Responsibility?

So, this morning I was hanging out in the lobby of Planned Parenthood, where a number of volunteer patient escorts were waiting to see if any protesters would show up and oblige us to go out into the freezing cold to escort patients (none did). The conversation turned to the choices people make about changing their names, and naming their children, after getting married. And one woman complained about how, when she'd gotten a divorce, the law had required her to get her husband's permission to get her maiden name back after the divorce.

She described this as "patriarchy," and thought she should be able to do this all on her own -- even though she acknowledged that she could have done so anyway once the divorce was completed; she just couldn't get it done as part of the divorce process by a unilateral choice.

I sensed that her logic was flawed, but didn't feel like trying to argue the case on the fly. But, upon reflection, I'd point to at least two problems with it:

I haven't read the law in question, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that it applies exactly the same to men and women; after all, if it didn't I surely would have heard it mentioned as a feminist talking point by now. I expect that if this women's ex-husband had taken her name when they married, and not she his, it would have been he that needed her permission to get his family name back as part of the divorce process. If that doesn't happen much, it's just because wives take their husband's names far more often than vice versa, not because there's anything sexist about the law.

The other symmetry she's overlooking is that between the marriage and the divorce. She got her husband's name not by unilateral action, but a mutual agreement resulting from a negotiation (at least an informal one) between the parties. Why, then, does she think undoing the results of that agreement shouldn't also require negotiation -- especially as part of a process that in its entirety is negotiated?

It strikes me that this is a very typical example of how feminism induces women to refuse responsibility for the consequences of their own choices. No one forced her to take her husband's name when she married; she presumably did so because it was agreeable and convenient for her. Yet, she doesn't accept that making that choice logically also meant that, if she later decided to divorce, she'd have to negotiate to undo all the same things she'd negotiated to do -- simply because that wasn't convenient for her.

Instead of acknowledging that she'd brought this inconvenience on herself by her earlier choice, feminism gave her an easy out from that responsibility, by blaming "patriarchy" instead. And that could be seen as a microcosm of what a lot of feminism is about these days.