Why are so many women hellbent on acting against their own interest?

@TrashedSofa unfortunately things like these often do end up ranked, because those that less people care about are such an easy smoke screen to take attention away from more serious issues

Besides, this is my experience as much as it is yours, and I can say that to me this is absolutely a non-issue.

I was married before where I didn't change my name, sometimes I had to explain it, sometimes I still have to explain it ("have you ever been known by any other names?...but you were married before?") and I used to use Ms quite frequently back then too, so I think I can speak of my own experience.

It's odd the way some feminists feel the need to respond to this existence of this type of misogyny being discussed by telling us where they rank it. I've yet to hear any woman who's subjected to it say they think it's more important than any of the other forms of sexism that get brought up in an attempt to minimise it. Much more time is spent dispelling this argument than making it.

There's a reluctance to allow it to be simply an experience of misogyny that some of us have and want to speak about. It has to be ranked, strawmanned at, frequently by people who it doesn't even happen to anyway. It's bizarre.

I agree, I think time is actually going to solve this one for us. We already seem to be moving to a world where titles are used much less often.

" Maybe married women at that time in your area felt that using 'Miss' was disrespectful? The male teachers would never have been referred to as 'Mister'; they would have had the more respectful 'Sir' ( certainly at secondary)."

Well, they may have been referred to as Mister Surname. They're not really comparable as Miss is a stand alone title as well as one that can be accompanied by a surname, as opposed to Mr and Mrs.

I imagine that responses to to the use of titles for women will change across time and society - as attitudes towards women change. Maybe married women at that time in your area felt that using 'Miss' was disrespectful? The male teachers would never have been referred to as 'Mister'; they would have had the more respectful 'Sir' ( certainly at secondary).

I think that is why at one of the schools I taught at the children were trained to refer to the female teachers as 'Madam' , which was seen as being the female equivalent of 'Sir' and would also prepare pupils to refer to women respectfully within the community.

My initial post may have given the impression I went to a particularly strict school, but it actually had a very incompetent head and was pretty undisciplined in most ways. There was no policy on what to call teachers. Men didn’t object to Sir or to title and surname. Women wanted title and surname and were usually quite fierce about it. I suppose they had to be.

That's because most women were married off by the time they were in their twenties.

Have to say I'm married, but cannot stand to use the title Mrs. I also use my own name. Maybe it's my age - but i grew up in the 1970's when women were certainly not embracing Mrs and change of surname upon marriage.

Anyway, my experience of teaching is that at secondary school, in the classroom, female teachers are referred to as 'Miss' and nobody has an issue with it.

@RebelliousCow - Mrs is short of Mistress, and Miss was used when referring to young lady of the house. Most households had a Master and Mistress, so Mr and Mrs

Edit: to me it's the direct opposite in terms of what I would want to be referred as, probably due to my family background. Even if I was unmarried I would not take kindly to being referred to as Miss. Ms or Mrs is fine, but Miss absolutely not, and for "Missus" I may just throw hands 😂

I didn't mind it, it was quite endearing to be honest.

That's certainly not my association. To my mind 'Mrs' equates with Master's - as in the master's wife ( she also takes his name). 'Miss' has far more authority for an older woman, I think. It denotes singularity and independence. Men don't change their title upon marriage.

"Ocassionally you'd accidentally get called 'Mum' too......Edited"

You might prefer it to Grandma, but then maybe I'm being ageist :)

"That does sound unusual."

I had the same system as Jeeves in primary so I presume she just went to a secondary that used the same system as many primaries i.e. title and surname. It's not that they called female teachers Madam or something, as I first imagined from her post. They do use Ma'am in the US don't they. I presume also for unmarried women teachers.

This is normal.
Both Miss and Mrs come from Mistress.

That does sound unusual. I was teaching until 10 years ago and was always referred to as 'Miss'; likewise my daughter who is currently teaching. ( secondary school. Primary school you use title plus surname)

Ocassionally you'd accidentally get called 'Mum' too......

Ah OK, I see.
We had title and surname in primary, so an unmarried woman would have been Miss X, but not just 'miss' on its own and then 'sir' and miss' in secondary. There was a programme called 'Please Sir' and miss and sir were definitely common on TV and at the other schools my contemporaries went to.

I don't understand why you would have been eaten alive though. In the 90s it was common for people to use 'miss' to get a young woman's attention - I heard it a lot working in a cafe.

I started the infants in 1972. It was definitely drilled into us to use title and surname.
In secondary school, there may have been the odd woman - maybe newly qualified or in training - who didn’t object to Miss, but it was rarely used.
At the same time, representations of school on television and so on perpetuated the idea that everyone called women teachers Miss.
That’s my experience: Miss was absolutely never allowed in primary school and rarely in secondary school.

The Lady of the ( grand) house, who generally ran the household and its staff was referred to as the Mistress of the house - even if married.

Likewise, even if married a female headteacher was a Headmistress not a Headmissus.

I only partly agree. As I said, there is sometimes an expectation for middle aged people to be fat, depending on the context.

I also think it's part of attractiveness.

@Gwenhwyfar I think someone's size is yet another angle that is somewhat separate from the whole question of attractiveness - society is pretty fatphobic in that negative personality traits tend to be assigned to overweight people

@Gwenhwyfar I guess it depends as to whether the title is associated more with youth or being married

@WhatWouldJeevesDo I like how the custom changes with times, I went to secondary school in early 00s. We've had a married couple as teachers, both nearing retirement, and everyone called wife a "miss" even though she was neither young nor unmarried, I don't think anyone questioned it at the time

I think both Johnson and Cameron are OK looking.
Ok Johnson is fat, but that can add gravitas to people of a certain age and in certain positions.
I do wonder if someone like Cyril Smith would get elected now though (because of his size, not because of the allegations that came later).

What? When was your day? Female teachers have traditionally been addressed as Miss in the UK when using a stand-alone title and not title and surname (equivalent to Sir in English rather than Mr).

I'm not sure it's a complete non-issue for feminists in those countries.
I live somewhere with no Ms so my travel tickets in English show Mrs. I'm called Mrs by everyone because of my age, but if someone asks me my title in that language, I'm not sure what to say because technically I'm Miss, but prefer Mrs and there is no Ms option.

to be honest, I think only Sunak and maybe Blair are / were good genuinely good looking. The rest was perfectly average, not as ugly as Johnson, but I wouldn't look at Cameron and think him a model material.

I suggest the Idealism of 'equality' and the imagination that there are no real differences between the sexes is what lies beneath a lot of women camapaigning to erode women's spaces and services, and to deny the integrity of women as a distinct category of human being.