Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 ··· 8 9 10 ··· 29 30

Original poster

To be angry HR made this (relatively minor) assumption?

731 replies

SpaceCadet4000 · 16/04/2016 15:33

My DH and I got married last August. I made the decision to keep my surname and continue to use the title Ms. I don't mind if other people choose to change their name, but I personally am uncomfortable with the historical and gendered connotations of name changing. This have never been an issue- I just select the Ms box when filling in forms, and I don't shout about it to other people.

However, I have recently started a new job. On my second day I went for my induction with HR where they collected details about my next of kin (mentioned it was my husband as they needed the relationship stated), whether I wanted a pension, my NI number etc. All fairly innocuous, and actually very little form filling on my part, and certainly no disclosure of my title.

As I joined close to payday I received my pay check late through the post- it's addressed to Mrs Space Cadet. This suggests that the HR advisor has clearly assumed I'm a Mrs based on our conversation.

It's minor, and I assume fairly quick to rectify, but I feel really angry that someone else has made this decision about me. I'm no special snowflake, but I'm dismayed that my identity has been so casually undermined. The office culture is fairly conservative, so I also feel like I'll be judged as an SJW for asking for it to be changed.

AIBU to just email them and ask for it to be changed?

OP posts:

wickerbasket9999 · 17/04/2016 06:48

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Mistigri · 17/04/2016 07:01

It carries a lot of ideological baggage that it would be extremely difficult to reclaim Mrs as a status neutral term for an adult woman.

I don't know anyone who uses Mrs + maiden name. I'm not Mrs C, the wife of Mr C - because there is no Mr C. (There's a Mr G to whom I am married but whose name I don't share).

NotReallySureNow · 17/04/2016 07:03

I don't mind if other people choose to change their name*

How generous and patronising of you!

What a load of fuss over nothing. The HR department won't care about your title but I'm sure they'll pretend to care because is their job to pacify people like you in case you kick up too much off a fuss.

Fraggledup · 17/04/2016 07:08

YABU with your level of anger!

Badgerncub · 17/04/2016 07:26

Yanbu. Madness that we're still having this conversation but I'm a teacher and the kids in school all knew I was getting married. Most worryingly some of them are downright furious that I haven't changed my name- I naively didn't expect this as I thought most educated women had stopped changing their names left right and centre! I explained why I was keeping my name but am not even going down the ms/ miss route and will still be 'miss' to them despite explaining it and it's meaning and connotations.... There's a long way to go when teenage boys/girls won't accept the inherent inequalities implied!! I think we have to get more angry about it as this has been going on since the 1800s and ms is still not the default address.

Isetan · 17/04/2016 07:29

I live in The Netherlands all women over a certain age are addressed as Mrs, regardless of their married status. Even worse, when energie suppliers knock on my door touting for business, they ask to speak to the bill payer which of course they assume must be my husband!

WhoKnowsWhereTheT1meGoes · 17/04/2016 07:30

I agree it's irritating, having used Ms for 30 years before and after marriage plus my own surname throughout. If I'd wanted to change my name or title at any point I would have told everyone that's what I was doing, it depresses me that in this day and age people still assume women will change both on marriage and that men won't.

BertrandRussell · 17/04/2016 07:32

It will not change until women stop seeing getting married as an achievement.

#cynicaloldcrone

Muskateersmummy · 17/04/2016 07:56

I think I have led a sheltered life, I never realised this was something people could get upset/offended by. I will certainly review how I address people when at work now to be more sensitive to this.

But I don't think I agree with losing Mr/Mrs/Ms totally I would find it very odd someone I don't know calling me by my first name.

tibbawyrots · 17/04/2016 07:58

Haven't read the rest of the thread but it occurred to me that if the pay cheque was in the wrong name there would be problems paying it in to the bank?

HarlotBronte · 17/04/2016 08:03

Fascinating how agitated people get when it is suggested that women's marital status should not be immediately determinable.

It is, isn't it bertrand? All this co-opting of millions of deaths in the third world and moralising about first world problems.As if being sufficiently aeriated to tell someone that their concerns are a first world problem isn't, in itself, the dictionary definition of a first world problem.

Boolovessulley · 17/04/2016 08:10

I agree with the op.

Very shoddy of hr to not take note of how you write your name.

I also believe that all adult females should be Mrs just as all adult males are Mr.

I dislike having to ask women for their title.

BertrandRussell · 17/04/2016 08:17

"I also believe that all adult females should be Mrs just as all adult males are Mr"

Now this I really don't get. There is a title, Mrs, that has indicated a married woman for generations. There is a title, Ms, that has simply indicated woman for 60/70 years. It is slowly becoming acceptable. In America it is nearly universal.

Why on earth would you start again by trying to change the meaning of Mrs, which will take generations when there is already a perfectly good title working its way into society?

MrsBoDuke · 17/04/2016 08:44

It will not change until women stop seeing getting married as an achievement

Again, the irony!

Such a sweeping assumption on a thread about sweeping assumptions.

MrsBoDuke · 17/04/2016 08:49

Wouldn't it have been great if the women's movement in the 20th century had just used Mrs for all adult females, instead of insisting on a third option.

The very fact that there is a choice of 3 for adult women is what is making this an issue in the first place.
Men don't agonise over the connotations, they just become Mr as an adult.

Women making things convoluted for women. Great.

BeaufortBelle · 17/04/2016 08:54

It would have been more shoddy of hr to miss someone off the payrun because they were making calls to double check people's titles and didn't have time to get a couple of people on before payroll closed for the month.

Many, many years ago I had my initials and surname on my cheque book/bank card (years before switch) because at that time I had much stronger views about things like this. When my handbag was stolen a man went into the bank (Lloyds on Victoria Street) presented a cheque with my bank card and the teller handed over £50. Straight afterwards I had my account changed to Miss Initials, Last name.

I have never liked Ms. No woman is less equal than a man due to sex or gender or as a human being just as no man is less equal than woman due to sex or gender or as a human being.

I work in an environment where titles are prolific and most people use first names. Occasionally I have dealt with a member of staff who has phoned me "this is professor xxx, I want" in an I am more important than you tone. I can think of two, sadly both women. I do think it wrong that society still has people who insist on using titles to subordinate others. It is most rife in the NHS.

BertrandRussell · 17/04/2016 08:54

"Wouldn't it have been great if the women's movement in the 20th century had just used Mrs for all adult females, instead of insisting on a third option"

if all adult women are going to have one title, why not Ms?

AKissACuddleAndACheekyFinger · 17/04/2016 09:00

Bert I DO see mine and my husband's marriage as one of our greatest achievements. I don't think there is anything wrong with that....

MrsBoDuke · 17/04/2016 09:07

Why invent a third one though Bertrand?
Why not just use the perfectly good title that was already in use?

prettybird · 17/04/2016 09:07

My preference is for no titles at all but I have a funny story about that.

When I was a young attractive graduate in my first job, a colleague (who was a middle aged, medallion wearing Neanderthal who was forever trying to proposition me) was organising business cards for the team.

My surname is German and the contraction I use for my first name happens to be a male name in German (but not in English).

He complained to our boss that I didn't want a title in my business card because "how would they know what sex she is?" My boss turned to him and said, "Since you hand business cards out, if they haven't worked out that out already, they've got bigger problems"

As it was, working in industries which were male dominated, I enjoyed getting calls from people to whom I'd sent letters (in the days before email ) or email......they'd be expecting a German male and got me

HarlotBronte · 17/04/2016 09:08

You say this although it's an either/or. OP has said nothing whatsoever to suggest this would be the case, but regardless, this is a problem that was solvable by ascertaining correct titles well in advance, if they insist on using any.

Meanwhile, surely you should be focusing on world hunger rather than complaining about being talked down to in the NHS?

BertrandRussell · 17/04/2016 09:11

Because Mrs has a meaning that will take generations to shift. Also using Mrs for unmarried woman has been seen as an honorific. Why choose the title for married women as the one to cover all women, as if it is somehow the "best".?

America has managed to successfully adopt Ms as default- why can't we?

MrsBoDuke · 17/04/2016 09:12

With the exception of professional titles, it's only wrt women that the 'what title do they use' angst applies.
Men? They're Mr, simple and no fuss.
Women? " oh shit, what one of 3 titles does she 'prefer' to use, I'd better make sure I know otherwise she may be offended".

MrsBoDuke · 17/04/2016 09:13

Mrs used to mean all adult women.

Why can't it mean that again?

Mistigri · 17/04/2016 09:14

I think the big issue re the existence of three titles for women in English is a cultural one - the habit of changing names.

Where I got married, no one changes their name. You retain your birth name throughout life, although you may choose to adopt your husband's name in some situations. So I can be Madame C or Madame G, depending on the situation (for eg I tend to use my married name when communicating with schools because my children have my husband's surname). Even the authorities are quite comfortable with this, as they will invariably have both names on their records - I can pay cheques into the bank in either name for example.

In English though, I am Ms C, because Mrs G doesn't legally exist.

Flip

1 2 ··· 8 9 10 ··· 29 30