DBS form insists I use MISS AIBU to insist on MS?

[flamingnoravera]

I have always used Ms as my title. I am trying to complete a DBS form. I selected the title Ms and a box then appears asking me to disclose a previous name. I have never been known by a previous name. Even when I was married I used my current surname. If I check "Miss" the date dissapears but I am 58 years old and I do not use the title Miss. I am not a Miss.

AIBU to not complete the form? The number to call on the top of the online form "is not recognised" and my mobile provider has blocked the number anyway because it is £1.45 a minute.

On a matter of principle I will not be known as Miss. I have umpteen DBS forms which have never thrown up this glitch. AIBU to say "sod it" and insist on a paper form?

Mx strikes me as being similar to Sam Smith and their insistence on gender neutral pronouns. Each to their own though.

This is such a non-issue and I could not get worked up about it.

Just put the same surname twice - it’s hardly rocket science.

Oh this has reminded me of the time i has this same outrage and was determined to complain to them! YANBU

The very strange compulsion for UK documents to insist on a 'title' (Ms, Miss, Mrs, Dr and so on) is outdated and weird. Why we don't follow the Scandinavian way where no-one has any sort of prefix, just their names, I don't know......

@heartsonacake brilliant. Because you are being funny, right

@Mxflamingnoravera that’s the sort of shit you’re up against

Do they insist unmarried men use 'Master'?

What is fucking annoying about this is no doubt some cunts in some IT company got paid a fat sum of taxpayer cash for developing this online form using terminology from the 1920s.

I seriously doubt this complies with the strictest interpretation of GDPR - you're only supposed to collect data which you require and it's supposed to be accurate.

@heartsonacake

YABU. You haven’t been married, so you’re a Miss. Whether or not you like that is irrelevant.

A title is not a part of your legal name in this country, so you can actually use any title you like, as long as it's not with intent to defraud.

The only exceptions are the aristocratic titles, I believe.

@Hingeandbracket has a very good point about GDPR

I lost it with an online lottery application. First question Title. Third question Gender. I was annoyed at being asked as wtf it’s got to with buying lottery tickets I have no idea. Being really irked I answered Male. System replied “You are wrong”. I abandoned it at that point because I was absolutely livid about being a completely irrelevant question & one that the system had already answered for itself anyway.

I'm of the always used Ms, didn't change on marriage and still the same now I'm divorced and have a new partner variety. I insist on it all the time- particularly when many, many people assume I am Mrs DC1&2 name or Mrs DC3 name. I'm polite when correcting them but lots of people seem embarrassed/ irritated. It baffles me completely. All the DC have my surname as their middle name, so it's not rocket science for officials to work it out.

The woman registering our gift list at a large store (you did that in those days) asked for the name and address for eventually delivery- when we provided both names she smiled and said ' But we'll send them to your married surname '. When informed her I would be keeping my own name she actually said ' Don't be ridiculous. Surely that's not legal'. Looks like times haven't changed much.

Our new system at work is great- new options for Mx or no title at all, just initial and surname, which I've gone for.

I would prefer using no title, but until then it's Ms all the way. My DD has also been using Ms since she was 18.

Our marital status is not relevant to anyone else.

And the point about the DBS form not now matching GDPR requirements is a good one.

(Ignore heartsonacake, I recall this poster comes up with the same "arguments" on any thread that remotely relates to changing names, title, etc.)

Of course Ms isn't just for divorced women. It's also for lesbians, or so I was told by a very old fashioned acquaintance many years ago!

I'm very surprised they haven't sorted the form out yet if they had complaints before. Ms has been commonplace for years and many woman don't change their surname on marriage.

They need to change the form

Well done OP. Don't give in.

Osirus the problem is that the way the online form is developed forces me to lie. The minute I click Ms a new set of boxes appear and the "have you ever had another name?" question autofills to "yes"and I cannot correct it to "no" and it demands the date which I changed my name, which I did not do. So I had to lie and put in the date of my marriage and say yes I changed my name and then give my (already written 3 times) birth name as my previous name, otherwise I cannot complete the form. I then have to sign a declaration to say that everything I have written is true. But it is not true.

As I said earlier, for the sake of getting the form done I had to do the lie route. But I shall write to the DBS and point out to them that this is an incorrect use of the term Ms and that I have had to lie on their form in order to fill it in. I feel strongly that these everyday sexisms do need to be called out and with the GDPR issue, I now have another string to my bow of complaint.

It's also for lesbians

I used to have a job where I had to fill in an online form to register people. I would always just put Ms for women and Mr for men (unless they specified otherwise). I got quite a few angry calls from women insisting that ‘they were a Mrs and had never been divorced’ as though I had brought shame upon them by daring to refer to them as Ms.

Ideally there should just be one title for women in the same way that there is for men. Or at the very least we should be like other European countries where the title changes from young person to adult rather than on marriage. The whole thing is bloody archaic.

How do I indicate whether I’m a Miss Lesbian or a Miss Spinster though?

Well obviously Miss is for spinsters. Ms is for lesbians or divorcees. Not sure how you are supposed to distinguish between the two, but perhaps it doesn't matter. Either way they are clearly suspect and best avoided!

How do I indicate whether I’m a Miss Lesbian or a Miss Spinster though?

Tricky on an online form, obviously with a paper form it's broad nib versus thin spidery nib.

Yawn.

@heartsonacake you do understand that miss, ms and Mrs aren't legal titles right? Women can use any or all of them as they choose. There is no objective title that women just 'are' depending on their marital status.

This is ludicrous. I hate forms that are designed to show how clever they are but actually end up doing the opposite. Like when they ask you to enter your, say, 8-digit customer reference number and come up in angry red letters saying "ERROR - INCORRECT NUMBER FORMAT - TOO SHORT!" for the first seven numbers and only deign to mark it as correct when you enter the last one. Keyboards would be colossal if they had to have one single key for every permutation of 6, 7, 8, whatever numbers together, as these idiotic things seem to believe.

These kind of archaic forms are going to come a massive cropper one day when a trans person enters their name as Ms and is even asked for their previous name (let alone forced to enter it). 'Deadnaming', even accidentally, is considered a hate crime and could lead to heads rolling and huge fines; but it would appear that millions of grown women simply wanting to be able to choose their own preferred title is just 'attention-seeking'

Also, on the 'master' point, you'll notice that hardly anybody ever uses it nowadays, except maybe jocularly for a very young boy. Referring to even a 12yo boy as 'Master' would seem weird and very few people would do it. They would probably end up putting no title rather than master.

If you pushed such people to ask them exactly what the problem was, as a male under 18 is clearly not yet a Mr, they would pretty soon admit that it sounded a bit infantile and inappropriate using it for a boy over about 10. Oddly enough, nobody seems to have the same reluctance in calling a woman of however senior an age 'Miss' by default, though, if they know she isn't married, without even asking her which title she uses. Heaven forfend that she might even be a Dr or a Cpl!!