To not find Miss/Mrs/Ms relevant today

[helenabonhamfarter]

In the modern world why do I have to specify if I'm married or not.
Why is it relevant?
Every website wants my title
Even the dry cleaner when I drop my washing off asks "is that Miss or Mrs?"

Why is first name and last name insufficient?
I do have a professional title which I can wheel out which is gender neutral and do so if I want to get arsey but seriously why are we doing this???

Because we are either our father's or husband's property.

Well for one it isn't neutral. It denotes women who for whatever reason, don't want to use the other two. Therefore it is marked. It means something because you have chosen it. What it means will be different for those choosing and those acknowledging the choice but it isn't neutral.

It is absolutely fine to want Ms. I personally don't because I don't like the sound. I prefer Miss or Mrs.

However, my point still stands, while there is a choice the problem will persist.

Me too, I feel your pain. I've also been told (by my MIL and a random financial advisor) that I'm not "allowed" to use my own surname as I'm married, and I have to at least have it recorded somewhere officially (this last thing was MIL who never did tell me where that official place might be, with its list of married women's surnames!)

I haven't used a title for over 40 years. There's no need to be labelled. My bank accounts, driving licence, utility bills etc say Four Chimneys, not Mrs/Ms Chimneys.

There is occasionally a problem with online forms. Last year I was ordering an expensive piece of furniture online and the system insisted I entered a title from the drop down menu. I phoned them up, said if they wanted my four figure sum they would need to sort it out. They promptly got someone from IT to override it.

If all adult women were Mrs, though, it would devalue the “respect” of it being a title for married women. Which is great. It would be the proper Frau/Madame/Senora equivalent.

I don't understand your second paragraph. Are you insinuating people who aren't married deserve less respect? And that rather than earning someone's respect, you feel your marital status automatically entitles you to respect?

I just can't believe that, in 2022, some people think you have to change your name when you get married and that being a 'Mrs' somehow commands more respect.

It really doesn't.

But why? Why not Mrs for all. Mrs was the senior title. A lot of women don’t want to give up being Mrs.

I wish instead of adding Ms to the mix, we had all chosen to be Mrs from the age of 18. Just like men, using Mr. No one would know if you were married or not but it confers a bit of respect. I don't like that the world gets to know a woman's marital status or feminist leanings from her title when men can keep their lives and beliefs private behind the title Mr.

I find it bizarre, marriage does not define me, I am not “proud” that I got someone to marry me and my marital status is of no business to anyone else.

I have to ask or the system won't accept it but you can be anything from Ms to Lord to Princess. And I don't care what you pick!

But why does it even have to change at 18? To show she is coming of age? Men don't have a pronoun which denotes their age. They remain Mr all of their lives.

Because of the history and connotations of the title. They're unacceptable and they don't go away because some people would find it convenient.

The only time I use Mrs X is when the other person insists that they're Mrs Y.

If someone calls me Mrs X, I look behind me for my mother in law.

I changed my name on marriage, but I wish I'd kept my maiden name for work.
On the other hand, my maiden name was very identifiably from a particular country and my married name is much more anonymous common which has its advantages.

Yep. This is literally the only reason I use my professional title in everyday life. I try to avoid titles in general as I think they're pointless and simply prefer my name to be used. But where a drop down box forces me I generally pick Dr as I don't see how my marital status is relevant and quite like having a gender neutral option. I do love the ones that give you millions of options, mind you. If it's something unimportant I'll quite often choose to be "Admiral" where I have the option 😄

I'd be fine with all men and all women having one generic title each. Or a generic title for everybody, for those who think first names are overfamiliar.

I'm Ms too my marital status has nothing to do with anyone else!

I live in the US, where it's accepted (unless told otherwise) that all men are Mr. Last Name and all women are Ms. Last Name. I do get called Mrs. Last Name occasionally, by people who know I'm married, but it doesn't bother me.

(As an aside, I live in the south where it's expected that children and younger people will call adults that they aren't related to (and aren't their teachers), Ms. First Name and Mr. First Name.)

As far as Miss vs. Ms. goes, they sound identical when spoken, so any difference really feels irrelevant.

Drop down menus on websites here rarely have a title field, and when they do it's optional. I find it very odd when in Britain to be expected to specify a title. I agree with you, OP. I think the country should move towards Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss.

You really don’t want a workable solution.

I put my daughter down as Ms too. It was back in the days of paper passport application forms rather than online and you could pay a little more to get the post office to check the form before sending it off. The woman in the post office told me I had filled the form in wrong, as I hadn’t said she was miss. It took 10 mins of me going, Ms is perfectly correctly and her getting her boss before they would agree to say the form was correct as I had filled it in!

Literally every web form I fill in for every little thing has a box where you have to choose a title so I don't see how you can avoid it. I would much prefer first name surname for everything and everyone.

I’m happily married, but didn’t take my husband’s name. I’ve used “Ms” proudly since leaving home. In a world where women still have so little power, I enjoy using Ms as my own small protest.

It's not something that bothers me on a personal level, and I tend to use Miss rather than Ms (although I don't mind if I'm addressed as Ms) but I totally appreciate that it's a pain for people who would rather not disclose their marital status or gender, or are non-binary.

I suppose, though, that because of the way we use names in English-speaking countries, we have to have some kind of title because we don't use first names in formal settings and just using a surname would be even more rude than just using a first name. So in situations where Betty Bloggs would traditionally be Miss/Ms/Mrs Bloggs, it would seem weird for her to suddenly be 'Betty' or 'Bloggs' alone when being greeted. We just need a more egalitarian way of doing it. Some people suggest 'Mx' but who the hell knows how to pronounce that?

In Iceland, the naming conventions mean that everyone is just addressed by their first name all the time, even in formal settings, and are listed by first names in phone directories etc, so they don't have this problem!

I don't get worked up about it. I will quite happily go by any title. What irritates me more is people identifying as she/her he/him when they have no need to. I understand now why some people will choose to if they identify as something different than what the majority would assume. But apparently many places are requesting people add their pronouns to their signatures when some people may not want to

Let me clarify - I meant using the pronouns when they clearly don't need to (ie: Kamala Harris introducing herself as she/her - we know!!) Not people identifying as something different

I kept my maiden name, but use Mrs