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.

... unknown and/because no one's business

@littleburn for people who don't wish to disclose their sex / gender, the title is "Mx". I don't use it. But it's an option

I thought the point of Mx was to signal that you are too special to be a man or a woman like the rest of us mere mortals.

So what's the answer then?

As per posters above, some people WANT to be referred to as Ms, Mrs, Ms, Mx, etc., others don't want any kind of salutation.

We can't please everyone.

Personally, I fail to see why anyone is that bothered one way or another. A letter addressed to me as Dear Jane or Dear Jane Smith doesn't bother me in the slightest. Yet, it's clear some other people would be mortally offended/insulted if they received a letter to Ms J Smith when they prefer Mrs or Ms or receiving a letter to Jane Smith when they feel it's patronising!

Surely it's all pretty irrelevant and given the ongoing reduction in correspondence etc., will all become obsolete before too long anyway.

A choice that over 90% of women make and which most people will assume you have made even if you haven't? A choice that almost no men make?

I wouldn't expect to see those kinds of stats if it were genuinely matter of choice, rather than social conditioning as a result of having grown up in a patriarchal society where a women's value depends on her relationship to the men in her life.

*woman's

The answer is to not have it as a mandatory field in official forms. Many international websites don't. Then women who just love making known a man wanted to marry them can insert it if they want, and those who don't want to be defined by whether they technially belong to their father or thier husband or, shock horror, have been discarded by both, can choose not to say anything about a thing that is actually entirely irrelvant to opening a bank account/ booking flights/ buying a teapot at John Lewis. Everyone can be happy.

Or set up a similar system for men. I bet society would quickly get rid of the whole thing then!

I use Ms whenever a title is requested.

I have been Ms since I was 13 or 14, and declined to use any other title since, whatever my marital status.

@SerendipityJane HSBC listed me, then husband. I rather liked that

Actually, I love to hear from all these women who find it really important to identify by their marital status. Why do you not think it's important for your husbands to do the same? Are you up in arms that they don't have the choice to declare the fact that they manage to find someone to spend their lives with?

I wholeheartedly agree.

I always use Ms. Anything else is sexist and totally unnecessary.

I wouldn't say that I'm up in arms about my husband not having the option to use different titles, because it doesn't affect me, but yes, I agree that there should be alternatives for men who want to use them. I do dislike it on the rare occasions that I get letters addressed to Mrs (husband's first name)(surname), but that form of address seems to be very unusual nowadays.

I have never seen a form that asks for a title for a woman but not for a man, so I don't agree with your hypothesis.

In fact, it's rare to see a form that asks for a title anyway. I think the only time I've had to give a title in a very long time is booking a flight, but that's for all passengers, not just the female ones.

But a title only indicates marital status for a woman. Not a man. That's the issue.

I'm married and still Miss. My reasoning is that my husband did not change his title to denote his married status and so I wasn't going to either. My mum tried to tell me "Miss isn't for married women" but there's no law so tough.

At this point the problem lies with women themselves. Ms. has existed long enough that Miss and Mrs should be relics only used by the elderly at this point.

I can't be arsed to get worked up about it. Ms is fine for everyone who doesn't want to specify their marital status and the others are options for those who do.

That's true. Choices are not made in a vacuum. Sometimes they are impositions masquerading as choice. I would view the pressure in many workplaces to announce 'our' pronouns as being part of that process of imposition/forced participation. We are constantly told it's optional. It's clearly not. It's a mode of eyeing up who on the staff body is likely to be a 'problem'. It's an expectation that we will happily disclose private information about our protected characteristics without question. IMO, this is all the more reason not to do so.

The Miss/Mrs/Ms distinction worked along those lines. Because it became so ingrained, we didn't view this so much as a signal (like pronouns) that we buy into a particular ideology. But of course, this is precisely what it is. It announces compliance with a patriarchal system of naming and categorization.

Cultures are not embedded in stone, and they do change. That's already happening as far as address is concerned. It's this constant waffle about feminism being about 'choice' which leaves me nonplussed. This isn't the case. It's about redressing inequalities based upon sex. Choice is often spoken of as though this is in all cases the liberating position. Not so. If it were, men would be clamouring to have those choices available to them too. They're not. That tells us something.

If 'choice' happens as a consequence of feminism, fine. This, though, was never the endgame. If it amounts to being tagged like cattle, in a way that serves the interests of others but does nothing much for me, I see no reason to want to opt into it.

Ah, sorry. I misunderstood the original post. I thought she was only saying that forms asked for titles from women, not men.

However, a woman's title doesn't indicate her marital status unless she wants it to. Anyone can use Ms. (and I don't know why you wouldn't), but you can also use Miss or Mrs. if you want to, regardless of your marital status.

Having said that, titles are largely unnecessary, and as I said very rarely asked for, so I can't understand getting worked up about it.

I agree. Some people think miss implies something about your willingness to show your marital status.

And I've heard people say they think it's for single women who want to hide the fact that they're single.

It won't be the equivalent of Mr unless Miss and Mrs are both removed as possible options.

You don't have to choose you have anything to gain or not by doing or not doing something to actually gain or lose something.

Many people might be biased against you due to their conscious or unconscious bias as a result of it.

You’re very easily annoyed. This has been covered so many times.

80s soaps are ancient?? Weeps in geriatric.