Mrs, Ms or Miss: why do forms require women reveal their marital status and not men?

[Ludlow2]

That's it really.

Why do women have to reveal this and not men?
Isn't it time we changed this.

@GeekyThings - why do I have to lose my title, to make other people happy?

I changed my name and took the title Mrs because that was pretty much the norm when I got married. 30+ years on, it is far more who I am now than Miss and my maiden name, and I don’t want to have to change again.

As I’ve said before, I think that change is inevitable - we are already moving towards the single title for women that people want, and it is far more acceptable now to keep your maiden name and use Ms - and it is better for change to be gradual than imposed.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius You can call yourself whatever you want - I'm just saying officially there is little to no need for titles at all, so why have them? And this isn't about surnames, so not sure why you're equating no longer having official titles to having to change your name again.

And if we wait for gradual change it will gradually never happen, like this. Sometimes people need a little push to get going!

Sorry for the misunderstanding, @GeekyThings - I didn’t think you meant I’d have to change my surname, but Mrs is part of my name, for the purposes of documents etc, and I wouldn’t want to have to change that again.

That said, I would be happy if official forms had no titles at all on them - I just don’t want to be made a Ms.

The story described in the post directly above me.

I use Dr
Not for any arrogant reason as many people seem to think, but because I hate to identify myself based off my marrital status. (I am a doctor though! 😂)

Making this choice reveals your decision to not reveal your marital status, conferring information about you to strangers that no man has to reveal in this way.

In my mundane correspondence and basic transactions in life I don't announce via my title, email signature or otherwise:

My marital status
My sex
'My' pronouns
Any other form of protected characteristic.

If anyone else gives a bison's bum about this then this says more about them than me. Like hell am I going to get into any form of discussion or negotiation about it.

I also see no need to give a title simply for the privilege of ordering a parcel. It seems in most cases it's computer sites and their irritating drop-down menus that don't allow any form of opt-out. I genuinely don't see or hear of them outside the computer screen.

Insurance and mortgage transactions do ask for marital status, but I rarely see this in other contexts. Medical appointments now interact fairly generically on the basis of Given-Name plus Family-Name. Unless acting in a very formal professional capacity - a keynote or something along those lines - I don't remember the last time I was addressed as Dr Goose. To students, I'm 'Serafina', and in my profession it's increasingly common practice on early acquaintance to address someone as Dear Serafina (if I may). They would then sign off with their given name to return the courtesy.

I suspect titles will become as rare as writing longhand letters and sending them by snail mail. Times and cultures change.

On a separate note, those drop-down menus are a royal PITA. UK/GB are often listed differently and can be real nuisance to find, and as for the ones with birth dates where you have to go alllllllll the way back to find yours - and are depressed about how long ago that was - FGS get rid!

Making this choice reveals your decision to not reveal your marital status, conferring information about you to strangers that no man has to reveal in this way.

Thank you for putting my point about asymmetry so succinctly.

Was chatting to a friend about this thread, and she reminded me of an incident she told me of back in the 80s; when she was a student in France for a year (youngsters will need to ask their parents how that worked). She went to give blood and had a quite unpleasant exchange with a (creepy, male) doctor who insisted he needed to know if she was "Mademoiselle" or "Madam". Despite her French being excellent, she chose at the moment to not be able to understand him.

This is so ridiculous. You have the option right there - Ms. Men don’t have the choice, we do.

As for the people saying we should all be Ms - why? I hate “Ms” - I would never force it upon people to use Mrs or Miss so why should we all be forced to be Ms?! It’s there for people who want to use it but Mrs and Miss should still be there for those who don’t. What’s even wrong with Mrs/Miss for those who want to use it? Some people have way too much time on their hands, getting offended by every little thing.

Why does it even bloody matter anyway? Use Mrs, use Ms - who cares? Who reading a form is going to care about someone’s marital status?

And I hate it on threads like this when people come along and say “are you hard of thinking?” just because someone doesn’t agree with them. So rude!

I think calling middle aged woman Miss sounds ridiculous.
Try telling that to Miss Marple.

The point of the matter is not so much which title to use as the fact that men’s title of Mr is not related to their marital status but to their being an adult, I have been irritated by this since my teens. Nowadays more women are getting pissed off with it, not just here in the U.K. but changes have happened in France and Germany, although their languages are more able to accommodate this.

Mrs Bridges would agree with me 😁

If it has Ms as an option you have kept your marital status private, though a divorced woman could call herself Miss Ms or Mrs.
Mx is even better as this keeps your gender private too.
Many forms and even more online ones with drop down menus have these options. I don't recall seeing a paper form without Ms for years.

It matters to a lot of people. There's no logic to it and it's biased.

I've took it one further. I'm Mx

Use Ms. Job done.

Yes, many of us who use Ms know from experience that it's something lots of people not only care about but often feel the urge to communicate their opinions. It's something that people who don't use Ms themselves often aren't aware of, if these threads are anything to go by.

Basically, some people don't like it when women avoid the default Miss when unmarried and Mrs when married. You only really see that when you're one of the avoiders.

Do they? Most people who don't know me but need to contact me on a formal basis address me as Ms Limited. Isn't that the thing most people do? It's the easiest thing when you don't know and want to avoid giving offence. I am Miss Limited but I let it go because I don't want to give people a hard time unnecessarily.

Sometimes they email with "Hi Limited, Let me tell you about our fantastic offer that I know you're going to love" and that is a strong indication that I won't love it and won't reply.

Very occasionally people call me Mrs Limited which has never been my name. My mum and my sister-in-law, both of whom changed their names on marriage and are also both dead, were Mrs Limited.

Again, because I don't want to give people an unnecessarily hard time I don't usually make a thing of it. Thinking about it, bringing up my dead mum and dead sister in law to make a point about the etiquette of titles would be overkill. But as I keep saying, if people feel the need to do that I will not stand in their way.

I wonder whether men think about this as much.

I often use Dr or Rev if they are options.
I'm neither, and it's interesting how those titles will pop up in random emails, targeted ads etc. as a result of information being sold on.
This may be why I get so many people trying to sell me penis enlargement, erectile dysfunction treatments and Russian women.

Yes, some people don't like it. Most MN threads on the topic will provide evidence of that. Sometimes it's posters who use Ms giving examples of times their usage has been met with some indignant, unasked for 'well I like being Mrs' or similar, sometimes it's other posters taking that role, sometimes it's both.

I always wonder, too, if the fact that women's titles and surnames attract so much pseudo legal bullshitting in so many contexts is at least partially because of difficulty women not doing the 'right' thing. Although bollocks sometimes becomes self-perpetuating, so maybe not.

I default to Ms as well, if I have to address someone with a title. Though it's becoming less common for that to be necessary now. More and more it's just first name. That's a good thing.

And no, of course men don't think about this as much. Because they have an option that allows them not to. Which is rather the point!

I've always been Ms because I don't think my marital status is my electric supplier's business to know. Lately, I choose Mx if it's available, because it occurred to me that my gender is also not my electric supplier's business.