Mr Mrs Miss Ms ---Asking for your support

[PleaseCallMeMs]

"Ms" is a title that means "Miss or Mrs". It is the equivalent of "Mr", a title that can be used by any girl or lady that does not reveal anything about marital status. As some people put it, its short for "Mind your own businesS".

I have been trying for some time to get my bank to change my title from "Miss" to "Ms". When managing my account online, I cannot change my title directly. It defaults to "Miss" when I input my marital status as "with partner and children". I have emailed customer services a few times but got no reply. When I telephoned, the customer rep had to bring in "a specialist" to help out. They decided that I needed to take proof of my status to a branch to get my title changed!!!? When I asked what would be suitable proof that I'm a "Ms", they didn't know.

You may not think its a big deal, I'm not married and I should be happy with "Miss", but I really do find it offensive. I don't want to get married, but I'm in a committed relationship and I'm an older lady. I think its well within my rights to use the title of my preference and that our society should respect that. That's all I'm asking for. I agree it is only a little thing, but there is a deep issue here about the way we define women by their marital status. For example, a child will automatically know whether their female teachers are married or not, but won't have the same personal information to judge their male teachers. I believe that to create a truly equal society, it is important that we change the little things as well as the big things. Wouldn't it be better if, by default, when no information is known, a lady would be referred to as "Ms", instead of a guess being made about whether she is married or not? Those who wish to can, of course, use "Miss" or "Mrs". I'm not arguing that everyone should be forced to use "Ms". But those who want their marital status kept as their own business, should be able to do so.

There's been a few threads about "Ms" on Mumsnet in recent years. On one of them it was mentioned that someone should campaign about this. I thought I'd give it a go. So I've set up a twitter account in order to post about my experiences with the bank. I'd be glad if you would follow me, PleaseCallMeMs. I need a little momentum before I start to tweet to the bank's customer department. I'm hoping that if I get enough retweets, the bank will take notice! I'm new to twitter, so any advice will be gratefully received!!!

I agree that everyone should have a choice - I don't! Well, not unless you want to introduce three automatic options for men as well: "Would that be Mister, Master or Murr?"

Meanwhile, I like Fatman's scattergun approach and may resume that myself

It's bloody ridiculous, though. My bank demanded marriage and divorce certificates, because they insisted my personal account name had to change when we opened a joint account - hang your head, NatWest! - and the ex had made a fuss about the joint account being Mr & Mrs Fuckingtwat. Now I'm back to normality; my card says Garlic J Blooms, and they address letters to Ms G.J. Blooms.

I want to live in the forrin place that doesn't use titles :)

RedToothBrush it was Nationwide that put Ms on the children's accounts.

Back in the day Ms was devised to be an alternative to Mrs when someone divorced.
So if you were Miss Jones and became Mrs Smith, you wouldn't want to be Miss Jones with children. So Ms Smith.
It was back in the 80s

I am Mrs. I'm not Ms.
And it's really awkward with older patients who get really narked if I call them the wrong thing (if their status hasn't been updated on their records)

Some don't like being addressed by wrong title.

Ms isn't actually short for anything

It's short for Mistress. The idea is to replace the other two abbreviations for Mistress, which are Mrs and Miss, with one that does not refer to marital status. Ms parallels Mr by taking the first and last letters of the word for the abbreviation.

"My idea was that people default to Ms when they do not know are too scared to ask whether to you are married or not" - but why would people need to know that in the first place? If the situation in question has special "married women" and "single women" options, then I could understand (although can't think of any such situations at the moment), but otherwise?

To the poster who said we shouldn't have a choice - why should other peoples' choices be forced on me? No one made me change my name, I chose to. Surely my decision should be respected in the same way that I respect those who chose not to change their name, to double barrel, for the husband to change his name?

Back in the day Ms was devised to be an alternative to Mrs when someone divorced.

You are wrong. As a PP noted, this New York Times piece is a good source for the history of Ms.

www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=1&

I don't do twitter but do support you.

I am Ms Slattery and am very happily married to my husband Mr Slattery - I just don't see what that has to do with anyone else.

The only time I insist on my real title is when I'm asked "Is it Miss or Mrs?". My answer is "It's Doctor, actually" (otherwise I generally go by Ms). The customer service always improves markedly... which is also pretty problematic, when you think about it.

Regarding the proper titles for a divorced woman, I was taught this:

Miss Susan Williams marries Mr John Smith.
She then becomes Mrs John Smith.
If they get divorced, she is then Mrs Susan Smith.

I think that's pretty archaic though.

But frankly I think there should be just one title for all adult women.
Yes, yes yes. If we all just stayed 'Miss', whether we married or not, there wouldn't be this nonsense.

This is what men do.

Most other countries I know that used to have the married and single women titles, simply started to use the married one for all grown women, and left the single one for young girls only. I find that much more reasonable than inventing a third "I'm not telling you" title.

I bank with Santander and my bank card has Ms on it.

What 'proof' of Ms-dom where you supposed to provide as there isnt any. Your title is what you decide. Lots of institutions still think you become a Mrs Married name when you marry, and think titles are leagally binding or something.

I reverted to my maiden name before I had DS2 as I didnt want to give him my married name thta had nothing to do with him (I was widowed). Most organisations were ok with this.... some couldn't comprehend the change of name

I remember being told in some detail that one has to be a little careful with Signora and Signorina in Italian (Mrsand Miss respectively) because using Signora too early implies she looks old, and using Signorina too long implies nobody would ever marry her...

A bit like when mothers of toddlers stop saying "mind that girl" and start saying "mind that lady".

Titles are so rarely useful - especially in databases. It makes not a chuffing bit of difference to (say) iTunes whether I'm Miss, Mrs, Lady, Dr, Cmdr or Brig.

I do confess to not correcting BT when they insist on calling me 'Lady'...I think someone missheard once as my initials sound like Lady..

I have a chuckle everytime I get a letter off them

I used it work in a high street bank, and can't think of any reason why you can't change your title - it's not your name, its a form of address, and is your choice. Anyone wanting to change with their bank, ask. And if the person you ask says no, escalate the matter. And keep escalating until you get it sorted.

Given the amount of trouble the bank I use (Nationwide) building society actually had with changing my name and title when I got married I can imagine how frustrating it must be to want to be known as 'Ms' and not be able to get the bank to amend their records!! The issue they had for me was they changed my last name (went in in person with marriage certificate), but left my title as 'Miss'!

E.g. I was Miss Bosom B Rabbits to Mrs Bosom B Bunnies but they had me down as Miss Bosom B Bunnies.

They re-issued cards & cheque books (have several accounts), all incorrectly, getting them to change it to show 'Mrs' should have been easy but wasn't, they wanted me to go in AGAIN with marriage certificate to prove the title, I refused and spoke to someone higher up who did agree that that was daft when I had been in once already!

What a waste of paper & plastic (& time!) having to shred all those cheque books and cards.

I'm a Ms. I refuse to use any company which doesn't have this option.

I have credit cards from 4 banks in 3 countries, none of them have any titles on them, just my name. Amazingly, banks manage to check that another HazleNutt doesn't actually go and cash my cheques, even without titles.

I am Mrs but will answer to anything. I can't get steamed up about trivialities.

I got round this by i) emigrating to one of those countries which has adopted the 'married' title for all adult women and ii) doing a PhD (rather drastic, I admit ).

I refer to female children (up to prob about 14) as Miss and all other girls/women as Ms, unless I know specifically that someone prefers Miss or Mrs.

Where I live, people corresponding with me in English for whatever reason assume Mrs is the 'status-neutral' title for all women and so I get called it now and again, which I find very strange indeed. I also have issues with people leaving off the clearly English part of my double barrel (not because it's difficult to pronouce - in fact the German part is harder, as unusual). I did once say, politely, 'no, I am Frau Picardy-Third, Frau Picardy is my MIL', and received one of the most poisonous looks in reply I have ever received in my life.

I was having this problem with Barclays and went to the bank in person to change it. The chap who saw me asked if I had a deed poll to show the change and I simply pointed out that a title such as Ms, Mrs or Miss is a courtesy title and I can use whichever I chose. He just changed it for me. If they don't have Ms I insist on Mr awkward

Surely women shouldn't be expected to reveal their marital status through their title any more than men are.

I don't think it's a trivial issue because to me the expectation that a woman should parade whether she's married or not by the title she uses is symptomatic of deep-seated sexism in our society.

Is Ms not just the equivalent of Mr? I used Ms when I wasn't married and Ms after I got married.

I don't care who knows my marital status. Is one supposed to be superior to the other? It is not a secret.

I prefer Mrs and present surname but I will answer to Ms, or even Mrs and my son's surname, without correcting-I can't get bothered about it.