Has Dh out-feministed me, what do you think?

[TooMuchPenis]

Just reading this article and this woman thinks the flight attendant was wrong to call her 'Miss". I think the flight attendant was trying to get 200 people on an airline and probably did quite well to get 'Yes, Miss O'dwyer' out before pointing her in the general direction of her seat.

unless I am mistaken and someone literally changed her boarding card to read Miss instead of Dr I don't think this is the crime of the century. in a conversation, I could totally understand her annoyance with someone getting it wrong but this is just someone misspeaking while under pressure? I also think her original tweet calling the woman a "trolly dolley" way more offensive to women and working class people and this whole thing reads less like feminism and more like "don't you know who I am!".

Dh says if you go to school for 8 years it's the least you can expect and this is the same as me getting offended when people instist on calling me miss after I have corrected them to Ms.* So who's right?

www.indy100.com/article/doctor-medicine-calls-out-airline-qantas-everyday-sexism-controversy-reaction-twitter-8525826

*For the record, I'd have no issue whatsoever if someone called me Miss in the rush instead of Ms in this situation which is again why it feels less about feminism than about academic credentials.

Can I just point one thing out? The woman in question, Dr O’Dwyer, did NOT refer to anyone as a ‘trolly dolly’. That was a fellow academic

I thought that deserved to be in bold as so many people are saying Dr O'Dwyer wrote it. She didn't

But it appeared on O"Dwyer's twitter feed. I don't know how twitter works but presumably she can delete it?

I agree with some previous comments about ditching titles.

There seems to be quite a bit of power play going on, or it is easy to interpret as such in the interaction/interpretations of it.

I know several women who use the title Dr outside of the professional context purely to avoid the Miss/Mrs/Miss issue. As a result they can evidence sexism through frequently being assumed to be male. Conversely, they also experience discomfort through unnecessary deference from both males and females, demonstrated through speech being punctuated with 'doctor' at the end of most sentences.

It would be great if we could have a gender neutral generic term that people could use to refer to others in a way that signified respect/politeness ( e.g and equivalence of ma'am or sir). For me, being gender critical involves treating people equally in all contexts except for those where biological differences are significant.

Lass no, it was a reply to her initial tweet. It was not written by her or retweeted by her. She can’t delete another person’s tweets. That is not how twitter works.

I know the person concerned here. She had to shut down her Twitter feed/ask Twitter for help as she received exceptionally abusive (think the C word and worse, saying appalling things about her appearance) memes and abuse for what she said. She didn't even use the term 'trolly dolly' herself, but I'm sure she was more concerned with the large quantity of sick abuse than correcting this other academic.

This is why women academics don't want to use Twitter. What she received back could NEVER be justified. It was just the most appalling abuse. Women in public can't discuss anything without receiving this. That is sexism.

Presumably however she could have commented on how offensive it is? Given how quickly she took offence.

It seems to have taken others to point it out. The tweet is now hidden but only after the responses it got from other people.

I'm sure she was more concerned with the large quantity of sick abuse than correcting this other academic

I'm not buying that for one minute. This woman took the time to make a public fuss about a trivial incident but couldn't be bothered to correct a far more insulting term.

Incidentally the poster of the offensive comment was a Dr Mel Somebody or other- is she a woman?

Pretty much the only reason I'm sticking with my PhD is so I can get away from Miss/Ms/Mrs. And when/If I complete, I will be using Doctor at every opportunity ...'that's Dr Mummy, darling'

As I say, I was unfortunate to see some of the abuse before it was removed by Twitter and it was of the violent, misogynistic, abusive variety that women in public life experience a lot, including stuff superimposed on her image. You honestly think when having memes circulating with your face and abusive violent words (I don't want to repeat them) on it, 100s of them, she should have been jumping on the 'trolly dolly' remark.

Women who speak out in public have to be a) completely right and b) completely blameless. They cannot mispeak, or suggest views or ask questions or do anything without vitriolic and frankly scary levels of abuse.

This is the feminist issue here, the issue of not being called Dr has now paled in comparison!

As a medical doctor, I don't use Dr in a non-work context.

Negotiating Miss/Mrs is much better than being asked about someone's rash or being told about how their cousin has cancer.

Totally agree - women have a right to speak out without being subjected to misogynistic abuse and also a responsibility not to shit on other women (trolley dolley FFS).

But personally I think Dr is for work only and I'd also view men using the title as wankers and that means you DH too

Whoever used the word ‘trolley dolly’ is a nasty piece of work.

On another note, in the olden days before social media Dr O’Dwyer would have made the original remark to her friends or colleagues and not much more would have been thought of it. The problem with Twitter is that it amplifies issues to become enormous storms, even when they may not be particularly crystal clear cases of sexism. Then the ultimate issue of women’s status is perceived to be less important than it is, as people who want to undermine it can just point to dozens of examples of ‘wimmin making a fuss about nothing’. I believe in the value of narratives of lived experience, but on social media there is no selection mechanism between the serious and the insignificant. Look at industrial tribunals and court cases if you want to see genuinely disputed examples of sexist behaviour.

PS. Not a doctor myself. Thinking of undertaking a PhD so that I too can be insulted by an airline!

Dunno Lass, maybe she didn’t want to attack the few allies she had when she was getting vile abuse piled up around her... Doubt that would have been my first thought either.

The trolley dolly comment was made by a Dr Mel Thomson, who is a woman. Odd that Dr O'Dwyer was so quick to take offence at not getting her title but seemed ok with this.

On another note, in the olden days before social media Dr O’Dwyer would have made the original remark to her friends or colleagues and not much more would have been thought of it

On another note in the olden days before social media O'Dwyer could just have said to the flight attendant "it's Dr actually " and got an apology there and then.

I'm on the fence about the original issue. I don't tend to use Dr but having said that, if there's a drop down menu and you have to chose one I always chose 'Dr' as I'm not a Miss, Mrs or Mrs now.

I don't make people call me Dr but in this scenario, the air hostess would have had to look at her name to address her, so having gone to that trouble, to then leave out the Dr and replace it with Miss is a bit sexist IMO.

The other thing I have learned about this whole debacle is that for academics, being open, having lots of pictures and your CV or details on your website can then be harvested to appear in the Daily Mail or other newspapers, with appropriate amounts of abuse and mocking (about feminism, women in general, derogatory remarks about appearance, stupid remarks about her 'PhD in Philosophy' and how useless that is when of course she has a DPhil in a different subject). We are encouraged to not be in an ivory tower and to interact more with the general public, on this occasion I wouldn't have liked to have been at the centre of the storm and I would go out of my way to avoid it by limiting my public profile. You might argue that by making one tweet about the title Dr she deserved all the misogynistic shit and public haranguing. I wouldn't and I wouldn't want it so I'll say even less in future.

I'm on the fence about the original issue. I don't tend to use Dr but having said that, if there's a drop down menu and you have to chose one I always chose 'Dr' as I'm not a Miss, Mrs or Mrs now

Yep. I find Miss and Mrs offensive. I don't mind Ms. In some contexts I use my academic title and in others Ms. But I do not ever define myself in respect any relationship to a man.

The only time I have been forced to use Dr (instead of a first name) was in a telephone conversation with an academic male (I was an administrator at the time). People just shrugged because men, you know...

Just remembered my friends dad who used to park in "doctors only" parking at the hosp- on the basis of his doctorate in something like philosophy!

The article totally made it sound like she said trolley dolly, wonder why they did that.

Yes the abuse any and all women get when they say anything pretty much in public is highly misogynist.

My parents were both medical docs and neither minded at all about being called mr/ Mrs outside of work type things ( which were the only things I knew about obv) so this had probably coloured my view.

They did use it for sure if they wanted someone to take them more seriously, my dad especially -
With titles a lot of it's about hierarchy.

I have to say everyone before this morning read it the same as I did, and I have gone back to check and it seems clear that it was Dr Mel who said the trolly dolley remark, which makes me think the article has been edited to be clearer. The Indy don't mark it as changed but I've noticed editing standards have mostly gone out the window so who knows.

I did read the thread on twitter too but as the other comment was deleted it was again difficult to realise who people were speaking to. Personally, if a friend said "trollydolly" on my Twitter I would have picked them up on it, but I still won't hold her to account for what her friend said and I apologise for getting it wrong!

In the UK female consultants are always miss irrespective of marital status.

I think there may be one discipline where it's different and they stay dr but can't remember and could well be wrong on that!

Just remembered my friends dad who used to park in "doctors only" parking at the hosp- on the basis of his doctorate in something like philosophy!

In the UK female consultants are always miss irrespective of marital status.

Is that bit like Miss for teachers? Is the idea that if you were a Mrs you'd have been home having babies or something?

She was right, its sexism, but she was snobby and classist to call cabin crew trolley dollies in such a deameaning way

she was snobby and classist to call cabin crew trolley dollies in such a deameaning way she didn't say this! The media have put together her original tweet with someone else's tweet (which was not from her or in her control) and made everyone froth about it against her. Who would be a woman in public life?

TooMuchParis

The male consultants are always Mr - Mr and Miss.

I suppose that it goes back to when women were allowed to practice medicine but had to leave when they got married.

Or maybe for simplicity- it's still a title fro doctoring and not like in real life where obviosuly whether you have a man at home to fuck you is way more relevant.

the first probably.