Ms, Mrs,Miss

[LookAtMeGo]

Apologies in advance, as I'm sure it has been done to death. But today I realised the truth of why I refer to myself as Mrs even though I'm divorced. My mum is divorced and told me as a child in response to me asking why she is still Mrs that it is so nobody judges her and she looks respectable (not her actual words, but that's what I got from the convo at the age of about ten)

Even as a highly educated professional, I still wanted to hold on to the title post-divorce and I feel pretty... I don't know... angry? Upset? Ashamed? I really don't know. All I know is I don't feel good, and I shall be Ms from now on.

Any thoughts? Is there something else I should be doing?

Fair enough Buffy. I suppose I did assume someone who has a phd in women's studies will have been a feminist for some time but she could have got married first!

Then I realised she had taken her husband's name as a double-barrel (Dr Hername-Hisname) – but he hadn't taken hers at all.

There might be lots of reasons for this. I am not married but I did see me double-barrelling as a compromise between keeping my name & changing it if I ever did marry. I suppose you could question why I would feel he need o compromise when dp didn't. Do you know for sure her husband wasn't also double-barrelled? I have friend who took each others names & are Mr & Mrs a-b. She uses Mrs a-b all the time but he generally uses Mr a day-to-day, although he is officially Mr a-b.

I imagine people make a decision at the time which they might not have done if it were later iyswim.

Apologies for the dreadful spelling & grammar!

bosky I actually don't see my individual choice to change my name as unequal. Mostly because of the discussion we had surrounding it. We considered four options: me changing, him changing, both changing or neither. We talked then through together and in the end I made my own choice.

I recognise that not all women are in my position, and that my choice may well be impacting their ability to keep their own names if they want. But I'm not self-sacrificing enough to give up something I really want for the sake of other people.

It doesn't mean my relationship is unequal though. There is pressure from other people for us both to perform traditional gender roles, but we ignore them.

What shovetheholly articulated so well is at the heart of why I didn't change my name (I'm not a professional historian, but I majored in history at university and then studied legal history in law school). But I have made many non- and un-feminist compromises in my life (I suppose even getting married might be one) so I understand why many women choose to take their husband's name. My own daughter did.

Actually I don't think a woman changing her name on marriage, in and of itself, is bad or unequal – it's the context it's in. As a PP said in the context where people did it randomly and fairly and it was roughly 50-50 men and women doing it, it would be just a choice.

In the context of most women doing it and pressure being put on women to do it (both overt and subliminal), it sends a message (IMO) that you go along with that inequality.

I'm not one to say "you can't be a feminist if you XYZ" - I think anyone can be a feminist if they object to gender inequality and want to work towards getting rid of it. I make unfeminist compromises too.

But I do think there are things that are not feminist things to do, IYSWIM and that's one of them. As is using Miss or Mrs.

Honestly - wouldn't it be great if girls were Miss (as boys traditionally are Master) and ALL adult women, irrespective of marital status, were Mrs as all grown up men are Mr? Would make things SO much easier.

I am married and use Ms my maiden name (another ghastly term), but the moniker means so many different things to different people it's quite a bore.

I don't think there's any need for separate children's titles to be honest, no reason why they couldn't be Mr/Ms too (I'd never want the default to be Mrs, too much historical baggage and my dislike of it is too strong).

I actually dont know any married women in my age group (late 20's) who kept their own name, and I know quite a lot of married people.

On a slightly related note, I was surprised by how many people thought dd would have dp's surname, not mine. I asked one person why she assumed this and she said it was tradition. So I googled it. Apparently tradition -in the UK at least- is for children of unmarried parents to have the mother's surname. ('Tradition' may be the wrong word, 'It is the norm' may be more accurate). Dd has both of ours double-barrelled.

Of the married women I know, a big part of the excitement seems to be becoming 'Mrs HisSurname'. I think the thrill of changing it on Facebook adds to that a bit. (Again, this based on people I know, not necessarily true for the majority).

You're performing at least one traditional gender role if you take your husband's name.

Was married for almost 25yrs, was never Mrs hisname. Kept my name and was always Ms myname until I became Dr myname. Kids have my lastname not his. It will be interesting to see what my dds choose to do. one is already talking about double barrelling so long as the (currently fictional) partner was also willing to do that. Keeping my own name certainly made the whole divorce process easier, no documents to change, no big decisions to make. His new DW (the OW) is now Mrs Hisname. She's more than welcome to it

Very true muff! And given that I'm not prepared to let DP do literally all the housework, I'm sure there are more examples. That's kinda my point tho. Unless we both wanted to take exactly the reverse gender roles (we don't) there'll always be something I'm doing which is unfeminist. And I'm not prepared to stop doing things I want to do (like cooking, laundry, changing my name) in order to make the lives of other women (who don't want to do those things) easier. I'm not that selfless.

You want to do laundry??

Laundry-loving feminist here too. However it's not the same! I do all the laundry because I like it, I'm good at it and it makes sense to split up the household jobs according to who likes what – as long as they are fairly split. DP has his jobs like the dishes, floors etc. that he is good at. I have laundry, cooking etc that I prefer.

That's not the same as the woman becoming Mrs Hisname while he just stays as he was – because that's unequal. They may both be traditional things for a woman to do, but who does the laundry is irrelevant if housework is equally split. The equivalent with names would be to make it equal by him changing his name too, and her not changing her title.

And another one! I wouldn't dream of letting DH do the laundry - am far too fussy about temperatures/colours etc. I do that, he does other far more tedious stuff. They all net off so not anti feminist.

It's not like you have to boil up the copper and put everything through the mangle these days. Laundry isn't such a chore as it once was - chucking stuff in the machine and turning a switch to a particular programme isn't terribly onerous in the grand scheme of things. (OK, I split colours and check pockets as well, but still...)

Though I agree that the point is more about whether it's evenly split than the details. Although if someone is judging laundry by the chore it was for their grandmother than how it is today, that might well contribute to the imbalance.

Yes I want to do laundry. I like that it gets done my way and it needs doing - why shouldn't i do it?! Household chores get split evenly on average. Some days I do more, some days DP does. I do the majority of laundry and cooking, he does the majority of washing up, cleaning and tidying.

The name change thing is a bit more complicated because it's a one off. But it's pretty simple, really. He doesn't want to change his name, but isn't really fussed if I and any potential DC have the same name as him. I'm not fussed about keeping my name but really want us (including potential DC) to have the same name. He's happy with the status quo and I'm not. So I'm changing.

In an ideal world men would change their names as often as women and nobody would change their title (imo). I'm happy with the compromise I've come up with, and I'm sorry that it might make life harder for others. But I'm not a martyr.

I'm happy to change my name because it's an option open to men and women. I'm not happy to declare my marital status in my title because it's not even an option for men, let alone a social pressure for men to.

Well I'm glad you at least come out and admit it amelia, rather than hiding behind a load of let's all be empowered twaddle about free choice and strength. Thank you for your honesty at least!

As for laundry, I do the washing and DH the ironing. We both play to our strengths, as with all housework.

Sorry, but what does our biological gender have to do with anything? If someone is addressing me why do they need to constantly refer to the fact that I have a vagina, by saying "Ms" ?

Using titles likes Miss, Mrs or Ms is one of those things lots of people still do and think nothing of, but it's perpetuating gender inequality in all workplaces.