To think its time to get rid of personal titles ie. Miss, Mrs, Ms?

[jumpingbean1810]

I was ordering something in a shop the other day and the assistant, in her 20s, was putting my details into their system. She said, I hate asking this, I find it so embarrassing but are you Miss, Ms or Mrs? I replied I'm Miss. I was there with my daughter so in that one exchange I'd divulged I was a single, unmarried parent. It's not information the shop needs for me to order a lamp. And if I was a man, they'd be Mr and none the wiser as to marital status. I know I could say Ms but does any married woman really use Ms? So Ms just ends up sounding like a Miss with issues. It got me thinking why do we need personal titles, how often are they really used anyway? Can they not just be scrapped from form filling? With the increasing desire by the younger generation to not even be defined by gender, identifying women by their marital status feels so outdated. It's international women's day tomorrow and in the spirit of embracing equity, isn't it time we abolished women being defined by marital status?

I guess I've always used Miss as never married and never consciously decided it was time to switch to Ms. I'm heartened that so many women do use it and agree that if Ms became the norm then any subtext would be removed by its common usage. So maybe now is the time I start adopting it!

Agree 100%.
I never refer to myself as Mrs Jane Doe, only Jane Doe.
When I address correspondence I never use titles either. For years I have objected to all adult males being regarded as Mr regardless of their marital status whilst women as still judged. And no, I’m not using Ms.

@spelunky I was replying to OP who said they should be removed completely.

Absolutely this.

I've been a Ms since I started teaching at the age of 23. I'm now 51- have been married, divorced and now living with my partner for 12 years and have been Ms always (using my own surname too, never changed it). It's a political point for me. Many, many kids have asked over the years why I use it- without fail they agree woth my position that it's the equivalent of Mr and women should not be defined by marital status.

Why does it imply I have issues?

I'm married but didn't take DH's surname so I'm neither a 'Miss' or a 'Mrs'. I go by 'Ms' but only when a title is mandatory on a form etc. If it isn't, I don't use a title at all. I find them irrelevant.

Go for it! I agree with about titles as a concept, but while they still exist, the more of using ones that denote nothing about marital status the better.

All adult females use the same title in France and Germany.

I use Ms and I'm married. Mrs is my mil 🤣

I use all three and once.or twice i was even a mr😂

You weren't divulging anything. I am married, I use miss, ms, mrs depending on which id I am using and mood.

Just use Ms. Or Mx. Or say you're an admiral.

Well, it’s up to you. You can call yourself what you want. It has no bearing on anything. I know a few divorced women who still use Mrs. Personally, I think Ms is the only way to go, whether you are single, married, divorced, whatever.

Am I the only person here old enough to remember "esquire" (esq) for younger, or unmarried men? 😂

Haha. I never realised Ms meant with issues. I've been married for ages and go by Ms if I have to stick a title somewhere. I like being married but it's no one else's business. Also I'm not from the UK and I didn't grow up with titles, so when I got married and people started referring to me as a Mrs I immediately thought of Mrs Doubtfire and it felt weird. 😂

@BreadwinneBaker I fancy being an Admiral 😂

Like discobrain "I never use a title. Most of the time it is not a problem but occasionally people just cannot cope with the concept.

Once or twice I have had to be in a school for my work and teachers have been uncomfortable with pupils calling me by my first name.

A couple of times I have been unable to order something online because the system hasn't allowed for the title box to be left blank. I just email the company to tell them why they have lost my business. In one case it was for something costing several hundreds of pounds. They replied to say they had fixed it but by then I had ordered from another company.

A friend of mine quite correctly uses Professor but then has people assuming she's male...

One of the problems in the UK is that no one knows how to pronounce Ms.

It should be Mizz (like Miss with the end consonants changed) but Brits insist on pronouning it Muzz, which just sounds silly.

So for me it always goes something like this:
Store clerk: Is that Miss or Mrs?
Me: Ms
Store clerk: Ok: Miss Place.
Me: No! Muzz
Store clerk: Oh.. Ms.

I use Ms when married or single. There are no isssues.

It is the norm, though, surely. How old are you? I’m in my mid-50s and have been going by Ms since I was 16, as have the majority of people I know -since young adulthood, at least.

Miss doesn’t equal single, there are lots of women in long term relationships with their children’s fathers that don’t want to get married.

I think all adult women should have the same title, as men do, and as it now is on much of the continent.

Why should women have a title that signifies whether they are married or not?

When I was married and using my own birth surname I used Ms, but actually now I’m divorced and still using the same surname (of course) I feel more like a Mrs for some reason!

I always use Ms precisely because its noones business and it's an outdated system.

What "issues" are you thinking about?

I started using Ms from my mid-teens, as soon as I realised that it could be used to mean "It is none of your business whether or not I am married"

I think Miss and Mrs should fall our of use definitely. I never ask the Miss Mrs or Ms question, I use Ms by default if I am writing formally to a woman, unless I have been told they use a different title.

In what way?

I use Ms.

Who cares if stupid people decide it means I'm divorced? It shows them up as stupid which is handy.

We have version of Miss and Mrs which originally were about marital status, but over last few generations it developed into more of a young vs older with mrs showing bit more respect.
You say Missis (mrs) doctor, missis teacher, missis cashier and so on.
Miss is usually just for kids and very young.
Even ID has a choice now about marital status.

I just take a piss and use whatever I feel like on a day because ms, miss, mrs simply don't matter to me outside of age and respect thing.