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???

Yanbu. However did woman over a certain age used to be called Mrs. wether married to not? I’m thinking of Hrs. Huges and Mrs Pattmore from Downton Abbey 😂

Agree with you on the garnering respect front. That's exactly why I'm using my academic title, especially with folks who tilt up their noses at "Ms." At least that way I get respect for what I've achieved, not for who I sleep with.

If I'm given a choice of only Miss and Mrs, and Dr isn't an option, my go-to solution is to go for a sex change and pick Mr. If they insist on being blatantly ridiculous, blatantly ridiculous is what they'll get.

This is a slight tangent but what do you think about staff other than doctors bejng referred to by their first names? This always strikes me as a bit unequal or even disrespectful when I go to the GP and you see the staff names listed: all the doctors have Dr before their names (quite rightly), and then everyone else is juat name and surname, even nurses and other HCPs. In fact often the receptionists don't even get the luxury of a surname.

I'm reading this thread with interest and what really stands out is that different people in the UK seem to come from 2 different worlds. I can only assume public school people versus normal people?
Some very bizarre attitudes about being very offended by no title etc. I'd be very interested to know more about the background of people who prefer Mrs and feel that respect that comes with that or get very offended at people using their name.

Personally, I feel titles denoting age and marital status for women are very demeaning. And I wish it could be standardised to Ms or no title at all. I assume most normal women feel the same.

Age and status. The idea that Mrs implies married really seems to have hardened in the last hundred or so years. It comes from ‘mistress’ after all.

The French have the right idea with the use of Madame (and Monsieur) which is regardless of marital status.

I just don’t understand the idea that formality is demeaning.
Mrs has always been the senior title so why wouldn’t people prefer it? The idea that it has to mean you’re married is relatively recent. It could easily change.
I went to a state school. I don’t think it’s a class thing. I am over fifty though

They still feel the need to specify age for women only by using madamouiselle (or however it’s spelled)

Mrs is not the senior title and there's no reason for anyone in 2022 to consider it as such.

Age and status. The idea that Mrs implies married really seems to have hardened in the last hundred or so years. It comes from ‘mistress’ after all.

"Miss" also comes from "mistress." It's only in fairly recent history that the abbreviations acquired separate meanings. "Ms" also derives from mistress as an intentional effort to avoid the married-or-not connotation.

Absolutely irrelevant. I'm married and hate when people assume my title. I'm either miss, Mrs or Ms and people just make it up as they go along. There is so much bs around women's marital status, there is absolutely no bs for men.
If I can, I don't state my title. If I am forced to, it is Ms, because my marital status is still no one's business!

Yeah the amount of making up as people go along and pure invention when it comes to what women call ourselves is amazing.

I'm with you OP, I'm baffled as to why this blatantly sexist way of naming ourselves is continuing in this millennium.

How is it that some people/companies still seem to have a hard time understanding that many women don't want to announce their martial status?

I don't get the respect thing either in regards to using titles per se. Why is it more respectful to address me as Mrs Best rather than Struggling? Where does the respect aspect come from?

I select Mx where it's offered, otherwise i've been a Ms since i was about 15. Before Mx was an option and where i was feeling feisty and that my sex is nobody's business i often picked Dr because that's never clear. (then if i ever got a call there was that pause because they expected a man)

I use Ms and wish all women did but it’s still not ideal-I think it unfortunately can have a bit of a stigma attached and can be viewed by sexist people as the title bitter unmarried super feminists use rather than just being the default option.

Well, I am super feminist and most people work that out within about half an hour of meeting me and I'm not ashamed of that. I did once work with an older chap who insisted on Mrs or Miss and then got rally annoyed when everytime he introduced me to Mr Bloggs i said hello and then asked if they were married "so we're on the same footing, in knowledge of each other's backgrounds". That super pissed him off but most other people got the point and had a bit of a laugh about it.

I'm in Germany. It can be super super formal. Where i work there are lots of Dr this and Professor that (and of course the famous Professor Dr Dr - we have at least 2 of those) but in general we are all on familiar terms (Du not Sie) and firstnames.

I think there are two different issues here.

One is the idea of using a title at all in some situations (Mr. Lastname as opposed to just Firstname). I think addressing someone this way does convey respect and I'm all in favor of that continuing in some situations. I think that it's right that schoolkids address their teachers this way, for example. However, there is absolutely no reason why your bank account shouldn't be in the name of Firstname Lastname.

The second issue is what a woman's title should be. It's easy for men - Mr. Lastname. Why shouldn't the default just be Ms. Lastname for women?

Same here.

It seems that most of us find it ridiculous, which makes it all the more crazy that its still not been changed.

I am a Miss at work. Its the way all women in my profession are known unless they reach the very top, in which case the title changes. I'm so used to being called Miss at work that I'm always ridiculously astonished whenever someone calls me "MrsMySurname" or "MrsDH'sSurname", and am a bit prone to blurting out "Sorry, but she passed away several years ago" or "Who?" . For some reason, sometimes when I am in London and strangers speak to me (eg asking for directions or at hotels or whatever) they also call me "Miss" although I am not that young, so my preference would be for a general Miss and dropping the others.

I don't feel like a Mrs, purely on the basis that it sounds too plural to me. I'm a Ms when it suits, ironically in Germany and in other parts of Europe I would be a (non-medical) doctor because I have a masters degree but I don't use it here.

I'm sometimes tempted though just to swap it about - "LadyAcht" one day, "DrAchat" the next, and so on.

@AchatAVendre I've filled in forms that have only had Mr or Ms. Though the ones I can remember were from abroad so translated into English.

Totally agree. Every time it’s a mandatory field in a form I feel like it’s a completely irrelevant waste of time.

Sometimes I hit the wrong one by accident and just keep going because it’s meaningless to me.

Lloyds was my first bank as a teen/adult and my bank card had ‘mr’ on it the entire time (with an obvious female first name). I never corrected them.

Mind you, I’m not particularly attached to my name either. 😂 I never correct people if they get it wrong/pronounce it wrong/spell it wrong (unless it’s on an important form, in the case of the latter). So perhaps I’m not the best benchmark.