Is misgendering worse than calling someone Mrs?

So as we were - it is officially okay to hate women.

Fucking great, eh?

Thank you funk; I thought I was going mad!

When I had to do an old CRO check to help out at my DDs school, the online form refused to allow an input of “Ms” if you recorded yourself as married. I phoned up and had a long, circular argument with a male council worker. I could only input “Ms” if I was single.
“But the WHOLE POINT of Ms is that it DOESNT announce marital status! ” I replied. “ You can put yourself down as unmarried”, he suggested. “But I AM married! You’re telling me to LIE on a criminal record check!” In the end I demanded to speak to a manager, a woman who had much sympathy (I read out to her an online dictionary definition) but couldn’t change “the system”. I gave in out of sheer xhaustion, but asked her to register a complaint.

Sex is a protected characteristic.

I am cutting and pasting from cps.gov.uk:

"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity."

It doesn't mention sex.

Do you have information which contradicts this because even PENNY is clearly under the impression that sex isn't one of the categories.

But you can hate women because they are not a protected species, sorry, group.

Sex is a protected characteristic.

I’m married and use Ms and get referred to as Mrs all the time, including from school who have been given Ms from the start and our DD has a double barrelled name. It is infuriating to me that married women are assumed to be Mrs.

"Ms" isn't hard to pronounce: it's just /mzzz/

I got mis-titled on another MN board recently, and had to correct the poster: that's Ms Tiggywinkle to you!

It never really took off in the UK, did it, compared to the US. I wonder why. It seems a useful default, so officials don't have to ask questions for which there is no need.

Hmmm...that's one possible line of attack. Data protection legislation. UK organisations are forbidden from collecting or storing information unless it serves a purpose. They are not supposed to ask "fishing" questions. So when any official asks a question to type your answer into their database, you are entitled to ask, for what purpose? Why do you need to know my marital status? Will it affect the service I am attempting to purchase?

Indicate even.

I insist on Miss as an act of defiance, I'm not married entirely by choice and I refuse to conceal the fact because society decides being "rubber stamped" by a significant other makes me a more valid human being.

I would be delighted if we dispensed with titles altogether, they're mostly used to ndictae marital status and that really is no one else's business.

How the fuck are we at a place where I can go to be questioned for accurately assuming someone's sex or deadnaming but not for misnaming and announcing me as OfDh.

Because trans people are one of the protected groups when it comes to "hate" crime and so you can't hate them. I think that's how it works. But you can hate women because they are not a protected species, sorry, group.

I was the one who asked that Penny Mordaunt really nicely if women could be added to the list so that it would make it a bit harder for people to hate women and after all she is one so come on but all she said was blah, blah, long grass, blah, blah, back burner, blah, don't really care. I think that's what she said, it was last week.

Hate Crime seems like a bollocks idea anyway but let's at least include all of the people at the shitty end of the stick right?

I've had bank tellers tell me it was illegal for me to be Ms Smith. I had to be Mrs Jones.

I got cross at that.

Please don’t shout at the call centre people though. Do you have any idea how bloody hard it is to say Ms?

I call all women Ms and all men Mr until I have found out otherwise. Once a lady shouted at me for saying Mrs although I said Ms and then it turned out she was a Mrs. For some reason lots of men get offended if I check if they are Mr, I’m just not an assuming person.

I'm not married to DP, and yes, I got miss-named and miss-titled with great frequency in the UK.

Now I'm living in Ireland, and, for all the desire to be progressive, I have to explain myself much more often regarding my marital status/names of me/DP/kids, and when I just went to book a car service, the online system would only accept Mrs or Miss.

Being the person I am, I only point it out if there's going to be repeated communication with a person, or if it looks like that means they're making assumptions they perhaps shouldn't (eg. for Tax or whatever). It's annoying, but it doesn't threaten my world like Knick says, but I also think that's the healthy way to be. If being assumed to be married was that upsetting to me, then I'd think there was something there to be worked on.

I think it's time for me to start looking into a PhD

Denial of reality eh? When it protects your own personal identity as 'liberal, progressive' etc.

It's not just the preserve of trans activism.

The thing is, I'm not sure why misgendering is offensive? It's not meant harshly, but if someone looks male you describe them as 'he'. Nothing personal tbh people make mistakes

I get called Mrs 'Smith' . DH is Mr 'Jones'.

Which confuses the hell out of people. DH has been referred to as Mr Smith.

He never wanted me to retain my own name. He now denies ever having had that position which is odd to see him say with 100% sincerity given the arguments we had before marrying.

I think after seeing me have to produce documentation to the bank to say I was no longer miss but had never actually changed my name and him being referred to as Mr Smith and generally how he gets better treatment than me from authority and institutions has opened his eyes a bit.

He doesn't want to admit to himself that, that was him too once upon a time.

Ms has been around for decades but people still wont use it as standard in this country.

I regularly meet new people who refer to themselves as Ms (or Mrs) and everyone just complies with their preference.
Never known it to be an issue. I think some Ms's may have been mis-pronouned as Mrs a few times, but no one has taken offence.

Argh, you're quite right Eresh . Sorry, I always confuse the two. One Canada, one USA.

Canada, amazingly not

US, Vancouver, using the USA equivalent of the UK EA

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-island-university-fetish-student-professor-fired-1.4400306

And this more recent one, Arizona: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6166961/Arizona-man-30-allegedly-told-caregivers-Syndrome-baths-diaper-changes.html

Btw in case anyone hasn't read the case and thinks I'm exaggerating about the computer programmer, a man with a sexual fetish has already tried to use the equality act to force his college tutor to change his nappies while he attends on site.

What? Link please...

Knicknack I know I read about this before but can you remind me which country this is?