Men's understanding of the title

[Posey]

Following another thread, just interested to know what other men think the title Ms is for when used instead of Mrs or Miss.
The man in question thought it was to denote a divorced woman.

So can you ask any men around what Ms means or why it is used. Oh and how old is said man?

Dh is 39. He says its just a preference so you aren't letting people know if you're married or not when it is totally irrelevant.

Get a life its only a title FFS. Who cares if you are a Miss,Ms or even Mrs.

Well, you do, apparently, given your generalisations about women who use Ms.

I care, actually. It doesn't obsess my life or anything - not like something really important like apostrophes or the use of collective nouns as a plural, you know, the big stuff - but yes I care. I simply don't choose to be known in terms of my marital - or in my case non-marital - status.

I was a Ms before I got married, but that was mainly as a reaction to working in a very old school part of the civil service (y'know, the kind of place where all the women were 'girls' even if they were 20 years older than the speaker ) I became a Mrs when I got married as I was happy to take Dhs name rather than keep my (arse of a ) dads name

Dh works for a local council and says he doesn't think anything Ms denotes anything really, he comes across it all the time and he doesn't make any particular assumptions.

I've never heard of the divorced woman thing - thought you were supposed to keep the Mrs but revert to maiden name ie Mrs Maidenname.

Doesn't anyone else remember 'Master' for boys? My brother and I used to send off for free gifts from cereal packets (in the days when you had to ) and his would come addressed to 'Master' and mine to 'Miss'. I was very miffed when they suddenly promoted him to 'Mr'!

I don't know if it still exists, but there used to be a freebee magazine called 'Ms London'. It was aimed at young women, and had loads of recruitment advertising for secretaries. My Dad used to bring it home for me in the 80's and 'Ms' was definitely used to denote modern, trendy woman not wanting to be defined by her marital status.

This is the first time I have every heard of there being a special title for divorced women - is there one for divorced men too?

I use my married name (bastard difficult to spell correctly) when I feel it would make life easier - at school, at the doctor and dentist we use as a family etc., but otherwise use my maiden name. I generally call myself Ms Issymum Maiden Name as it's not my married name, I am married and anyway my marital status has nothing to do with anybody else. But I've been known to give up the good fight with plumbers and builders and call myself Mrs IssymumMaidenName. I'll ask DH this evening what he understands by 'Ms' but I'd be really surprised if he thought it denoted a divorced woman. Particularly given his experience of me!

My only issue with 'Ms' is that it's not very comfortable to say. I can't imagine a class of 5yo managing very well with 'Ms Jones' as opposed to the easier 'Miss Jones'.