Has Dh out-feministed me, what do you think?

As a medical doctor, I don't use Dr in a non-work context.

Negotiating Miss/Mrs is much better than being asked about someone's rash or being told about how their cousin has cancer.

Totally agree - women have a right to speak out without being subjected to misogynistic abuse and also a responsibility not to shit on other women (trolley dolley FFS).

But personally I think Dr is for work only and I'd also view men using the title as wankers and that means you DH too

As I say, I was unfortunate to see some of the abuse before it was removed by Twitter and it was of the violent, misogynistic, abusive variety that women in public life experience a lot, including stuff superimposed on her image. You honestly think when having memes circulating with your face and abusive violent words (I don't want to repeat them) on it, 100s of them, she should have been jumping on the 'trolly dolly' remark.

Women who speak out in public have to be a) completely right and b) completely blameless. They cannot mispeak, or suggest views or ask questions or do anything without vitriolic and frankly scary levels of abuse.

This is the feminist issue here, the issue of not being called Dr has now paled in comparison!

Pretty much the only reason I'm sticking with my PhD is so I can get away from Miss/Ms/Mrs. And when/If I complete, I will be using Doctor at every opportunity ...'that's Dr Mummy, darling'

I'm sure she was more concerned with the large quantity of sick abuse than correcting this other academic

I'm not buying that for one minute. This woman took the time to make a public fuss about a trivial incident but couldn't be bothered to correct a far more insulting term.

Incidentally the poster of the offensive comment was a Dr Mel Somebody or other- is she a woman?

Presumably however she could have commented on how offensive it is? Given how quickly she took offence.

It seems to have taken others to point it out. The tweet is now hidden but only after the responses it got from other people.

I know the person concerned here. She had to shut down her Twitter feed/ask Twitter for help as she received exceptionally abusive (think the C word and worse, saying appalling things about her appearance) memes and abuse for what she said. She didn't even use the term 'trolly dolly' herself, but I'm sure she was more concerned with the large quantity of sick abuse than correcting this other academic.

This is why women academics don't want to use Twitter. What she received back could NEVER be justified. It was just the most appalling abuse. Women in public can't discuss anything without receiving this. That is sexism.

Lass no, it was a reply to her initial tweet. It was not written by her or retweeted by her. She can’t delete another person’s tweets. That is not how twitter works.

I agree with some previous comments about ditching titles.

There seems to be quite a bit of power play going on, or it is easy to interpret as such in the interaction/interpretations of it.

I know several women who use the title Dr outside of the professional context purely to avoid the Miss/Mrs/Miss issue. As a result they can evidence sexism through frequently being assumed to be male. Conversely, they also experience discomfort through unnecessary deference from both males and females, demonstrated through speech being punctuated with 'doctor' at the end of most sentences.

It would be great if we could have a gender neutral generic term that people could use to refer to others in a way that signified respect/politeness ( e.g and equivalence of ma'am or sir). For me, being gender critical involves treating people equally in all contexts except for those where biological differences are significant.

Can I just point one thing out? The woman in question, Dr O’Dwyer, did NOT refer to anyone as a ‘trolly dolly’. That was a fellow academic

I thought that deserved to be in bold as so many people are saying Dr O'Dwyer wrote it. She didn't

But it appeared on O"Dwyer's twitter feed. I don't know how twitter works but presumably she can delete it?

I wonder if this is the first time such a thing has happened to Dr O'Dwyer. I suspect not.
If it happened as she said - double take then swift decision to use 'Miss' - it's no wonder she's annoyed.
That would never happen to a man who had 'Dr' on his ticket, whether it was a medical title or not.

After reading the few comments just above, I shall withdraw mine! I still think making a fuss of that is in very poor taste.

I’d say the reaction of the customer, to not only he initial “error” but also her use of the derogatory term afterwards, is very revealing about her own insecurities and obvious superiority complex. She’s not better than the flight att meant, but she likes to think she is.

Can I just point one thing out? The woman in question, Dr O’Dwyer, did NOT refer to anyone as a ‘trolly dolly’. That was a fellow academic

^ I thought that deserved to be in bold as so many people are saying Dr O'Dwyer wrote it. She didn't.

I kind of agree with what the 'male medical doctor' said...

Also, medical consultants are not 'Dr Smith' they are Miss Smith or Mr Smith (not sure I've come across a Ms or a Mrs at mine) which kind of takes away from it a bit. I'm not sure what it would say on their boarding passes, sounds like it could be Dr but I'm not sure if they all use that or stick with Mr/Miss etc. Maybe the medical lot like to go unnoticed!

To be fair, the trolley dolley tweet was from another academic.

That said, according to the good doctor who can read minds, the flight attendant, who was boarding hundreds of people, read her ticket, looked back up at her, reread the ticket and decided she was not a doctor and it must be a mistake, and called her miss. I mean really? This did not happen. Sounds like someone who spends their life searching for microaggressions.

I hate it when upper class or women in academia try and get working class women in trouble at their work. Similar thing happened on an American airline last year when a harried FA supposedly misgendered someone. The offended was straight it Twitter to get that women in trouble with her work too.

The article linked is super unclear as to who actually said "trolley dolly", but I think you're correct that it was the other academic tweeting in support who said that.

How do we know that the flight attendant would have said "Dr" to a man? Isn't that a massive assumption?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)

Interesting stuff re the Dr title. But yeah, the PhDs definitely had it first, so Dr O’Dwyer is more than entitled to use it.

Can I just point one thing out? The woman in question, Dr O’Dwyer, did NOT refer to anyone as a ‘trolly dolly’. That was a fellow academic who responded to her initial tweet. I thought that comment was pretty disgraceful but the academic in question has now deleted it and made her page private.

Also FYI, medical doctors get given an honorary doctorate title after completing an undergraduate degree. It’s actually the PhD which is the ‘real’ title. Just saying....

I don’t know what happened but there are a lot of assumptions on here that the poor flight attendant was just so stressed that they misspoke and it couldn’t possibly be sexism. At the same time, women are still being asked if ‘the man of the house’ is in when someone calls. Every time you are just dismissing the narrative of women complaining of sexism, you are adding to the problem.

I am fairly sure I've never checked whether my boarding pass had a title on it. I know the recent Air France one didn't but only because it's still stored on my phone.

Why are people so fussed about titles?
Asks MrGHardy ...

Do boarding passes usually include a title?

I think they always used to but don't now ... I just did an image search for boarding passes for BA and virgin - it looked as though some did, some didn't. Maybe depends whether e-pass, or where issued?

Why are people so fussed about titles? Neither of my parents expect others to call them Dr. ...

Do boarding passes usually include a title?

Should I complain that last week Air France just printed my name with no title?

The use of trolley dolly just shows that you can be highly educated yet remain ignorant.

@Whwhywhy reminds me of that scene in Friends when they’re in the hospital and Ross introduces himself as Dr Ross Geller, Rachel says “Shut up Ross, that actually means something here!”