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#i may very well become a nonbinary spinster
minfiliaryne · 7 years
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Mrs, Miss and Ms V Mr
This is a debate that has been going on for a while now. Is it fair that men are not required to state their marital status when filling in forms for the doctor or bank or any other place that requires you to sign up but women are. The titles used for women also suggest something about the age of the woman signing up if she is unmarried as Ms is generally used by older women and Miss is used by younger women. I personally agree with Myf Warhurst’s article ‘Mrs, Ms or Miss: why do forms require women reveal their marital status?’ as it highlights why it is completely unnecessary for women to reveal their marital status on a form as it has no connection with what they are signing up for especially if it is for your local GP as marital status is highly unlikely to affect your medical circumstances unless in certain situations but then they only need to ask about it in the appointment rather than requiring you state it when filling out the form as this is what they do for men so why not women as well? One group that cannot use any of these titles as they do not feel comfortable are the people who identify as nonbinary or agender as they do not identify as male or female and so would have to use a title that they do not feel at all comfortable with. This is because it forces them to officially identify as their birth-assigned gender. Some organisations have started using a new title specifically for these people which is ‘Mx’ which allows the person to feel comfortable with what they are identifying as. One example of this is the Labour party who have this as one of the options for titles when signing up to become a member of the party. The fact that women still have to choose between three titles that they will be judged on by everyone who sees the title, shows how misogynistic our society still is. Many people will tell you that misogyny and sexism are a thing of the past, something that happened in the 20th Century and is now over. However, with the recent election of Donald Trump and the fact that women are still required to choose between titles that will essentially represent who they are just goes to show that it is still a very prevalent issue. The problem with using the title ‘Mrs’ is that people will assume that you are a housewife and are financially dependent upon your husband. This is not always the case, most married women go out to work for their own income so that they are not financially dependent on men. Miss suggests that the woman is inexperienced and young. It also suggests that she should not be listened to because of this and is still probably dependent on her parents for money, despite the fact that most young women go out to wok because they need to support themselves. ‘Ms’ suggests an older woman who is either divorced, unmarried or widowed. Most people would associate the title ‘Ms’ with ‘spinster’ which has negative connotations of its own compared to the male counterpart ‘bachelor’. This is the only title that suggests the woman is independent on her own income. These titles also come with compulsory heterosexuality as they imply that a woman has a husband, is waiting for a husband or has had a husband which is completely absurd. In order to solve this issue, we should either all use the gender neutral title ‘Mx’ to avoid prejudice towards the person altogether or we should only have one title per gender (including the nonbinary title ‘Mx’) in order to prevent prejudice of the woman based on whether she is young or old and married or unmarried. The title that I believe we should use for all women is ‘Ms’ as it is one that has the positive connotation of being financially independent. It is also one of the least used one as most older women tend to be married and so not many people have come across this title. It is also the only one to consist of two letters like ‘Mr’ and ‘Mx’ and so does not have unnecessary extra letters which may make people associate women with being unnecessarily complicated.
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