"Miss goes missing on French official forms" - let's do the same here!

[Alittlefeminist]

Hurray for French feminists who have pushed through a revision of women's titles: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/mademoiselle-removed-from-french-official-forms :)

Let's do the same!

bemybebe Either J (A) Bloggs or Jane Bloggs

Ms already exists and is maybe due a revival; sadly it has been identified as a by-product of bra-burning and other aspects of the 70s including avocado and tan and orange and brown clothing and home decor, food that wasn't organic (to put it mildly), white and pink Christmas trees, tinsel, names like Sharon and Linda, and other aspects of life back then that seemed perfectly normal at the time but are tragically unhip now.

But math this is exactly my point. Our rights as individuals are much more important than anything else declared or not.

You are arguing for the right NOT TO BE CALLED Mrs/Miss, this is not a freedom, this is looking the wrong way. Toptramp's feeling of being discriminated is nothing to do with her putting Miss/Ms and not Mrs on the forms, but her inability to enjoy the same freedom of professional/educational/social betterment than someone else with help at home, I suspect.

Anyway, I am off this thread...

Perhaps we should blame western society for making the Spanish word 'negro' (from the Latin niger) taboo too, Rhinos?

"You are arguing for the right NOT TO BE CALLED Mrs/Miss" sorry, wrongly phrased. I meant "you are removing from the others the right to be called ..."

Yes well done to the French nad Germans.
I also think we should go with Mrs for all adult females regardless of marital status.

Bemybabe -- those who do not learn from their past are doomed to repeat it. If we retain the titles that marked us out as second class citizens and claim we are making an informed choice when we use them (though I suspect that choice has not been well thought out) we are demonstrating ambivalence about the freedom from the oppression those titles signify.

Yep get rid of stupid Miss/Mrs/Ms distinction and just have one. Saves me having to wonder every time, 'why do you need to know if I'm married for me to order a fridge'.

Yes, this has to be the way to go. The Miss/Mrs distinction has no place in modern society. Maybe some sort of gradual planned phase out is the way to go, to save upsetting people who for whatever reason are attached to their title - though that's probably unworkable in practice!
I still don't understand this business about being 'proud' to be married and actively wanting/choosing to declare that you're married to people you don't even know. I can understand being 'happy' to be married, if that's what rocks your boat, but 'proud'?

There was a fair bit of public debate around this issue around the time that 'Fraulein' was officially dropped (?20 ?30 years ago ). An added issue in German (and in other languages ie Italian I think) the job/professional title will also 'give away' gender which was felt to be a huge issue by a lot of professional women: are you a 'doctor' or a 'doctoressa' IYKWIM.
I always liked about the English language that you were a 'doctor' 'baker' 'candlestick maker' and not a 'bakeress' . I am much happier to be known by what I do rather than what bits I have between my legs, frankly.
The counterargument in Germany was that it ment women took on the male version rather than men taking on the female which frankly IMO is true, but I am utterly unfussed by.

I sometimes think that indepth dissection of these issue does not necessarily help public opinion - it is important for clarity of mind and to be able to make our choices, but that is it.
I happen to dislike Ms. although I sometimes used it, but it just seemed a bit... contrived? forced? trying to hard? Dunno.

And YY Alice re the fridge ordering - what on earth does it matter whether you are married/unmarried, male/female, animal/mineral or vegetable as long as your credit card does not bottom out??
I suppose it'll all be to do with market research or summat...

Baker, candlestick maker -- meant in reality males most of the time because there were legal restrictions on women working in certain trades and professions and it was even 'woman driver', and 'woman doctor' (or 'lady driver', 'lady doctor') for quite a long time Pacific.

I have always used Ms. All my teachers except the really old ones and the nuns did. And of course the men. Though funny enough some of the nuns changed from their professed names which were sometimes male (Mother Charles for instance) to their own baptismal names.

But I always wanted to be a miss. Let's get rid of a term some people like and use because some other people don't like it. Erm, okay.

Feminism is not "all about choice, "it's about equality and for women's right to be treated on an equal footing with men, politically, socially and economically.

I don't want to be defined by my marital status, esp when men aren't. Women have spent millennia being defined by the men they are sleeping with, while men were treated as individuals. Ms is my way of saying I'm an individual, i want equality and my marital status is irrelevant for my public life.

Special thanks to Maths for the Kieran Allen quote....one of my fave lecturers, nice surprise to see him quoted here!

So. Let me see if I understand:

Some people think it matters to all womankind what titles we use, because those titles define us by our marital status. This is seen as something we still need to fight because of historical inequality with men that is still ongoing.

Other people think we have moved beyond it mattering (maybe because of all the good work done by feminists gone before us?) and therefore each woman can choose for herself. Individual choice with no wider implications.

I am really torn. I think I lean to the former. I am a Mrs by the way with no real intentions of changing...

Two thoughts:

In Canada, they use Ms. almost all the time and sometimes Mrs. (although I left Canada in the mid 1990's so this might have changed). No grown woman is ever Miss. It really took some getting used to when I moved here. Miss for me still has little girl connotations.

Also, I have a job where I have to perform a lot of CRB checks on people. The system we use will not allow you to put in Ms. and then only list one surname (e.g. Have you ever used any other surname - you cannot select 'no'). So in effect they are saying that Ms. is only for divorced women. I find that outrageous!

Thank you everyone for some thought-provoking debate

with nary a bunfight in view

I am either Ms Maiden-name (don't get me started on the phrase maiden name); Professional title Maiden-name or Mrs married name.

It is true that on occasions, I feel as if more respect is afforded to me when I use my married name because it is obvious I am married - mostly so in the case of tradesmen. I recognise this is wrong - I'm not happy about it, but it seems to be a sad fact of life.

I find that some people react negatively to Ms, as it used to be the case it was only 'divorcees and feminists who used it' - I would love it if there was a marital neutral term which was used routinely.

I would love to only have Ms on a form. why should men only have Mr.

Maybe all titles should be done away with and we should just have our names on forms....

The argument that Mrs should be banned from usage because men to not have an equivalent title is flawed in the same way as the argument that women should be somehow prevented from wearing skirts because men do not wear them. Which sounds wrong to me.

Incidentally, I am not too bothered about using it, as I pointed earlier I am happy to have Ms and I did not realize so many people feel that Ms is somehow wrong... I have either missed something because I moved into this country only 20 years ago as a 20 yo student or I am always meeting nice people in my life who are not rude (or rather rude but not because as I sense it I use Ms/Mrs)...

BerylStreep wrote - "I find that some people react negatively to Ms, as it used to be the case it was only 'divorcees and feminists who used it'"

I know that feminists use Ms, but where are all the divorced women who supposedly use it to signify that they are divorced?

Can anyone list the names of any well-known divorced women who use the title Ms. to signify they are divorced?

Excellent Q vesuvia, I wondered exactly that myself when filling out the aforementioned CRB application form for the first time!!

That is the final frontier, Amothersplaceisinthewrong (and I love your name fwiw).

Thank you for the NY Times link, Rhinos. I think it underlines the fact that Miss and Mrs were used to define a woman by her marital status or lack thereof, with the initial proposal of Ms coming about as a suggested means to prevent a social faux pas, and resurgence of the idea a few decades later still focusing on the idea that it was a handy means of avoiding fuss and confusion, while the feminist movement saw it as a means of making a woman's marital status her own business entirely. The question that needs asking is why we continue to seek to define ourselves by our relationships with the men in our lives, imo.

Bemybabe, the difference between skirts and titles is that the titles denoted a relationship. Miss denoted the dependent relationship of a girl to her father and guardian while Mrs indicated the relationship of a woman to her husband and guardian. Women could not be just themselves as men could. They had to be seen as someone in a relationship to one or other of those men.