I have a proudly liberal male friend who married a woman some years ago who asked him to take her name. They didn’t end up going that route, but my friend seriously considered it. I thought of him when I read an article headlined, “He said ‘yes’! Why aren’t more women proposing to their boyfriends?” and when I came across this new Booking.com commercial that shows a woman proposing to a man. Both are examples of rejecting tradition in the name of sexual equality.

When it comes to love and marriage, couples typically fall into one of two groups: those who embrace tradition and those who do not. Those in the latter group believe sex roles dehumanize women and thus seek to make the sexes more alike and more interchangeable. “I take every opportunity I can to smash the patriarchy,” writes Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato, author of the article above, “and my proposal felt like the perfect opportunity.”