“All these identities are me: Ms. when I’m out slaying dragons, Mrs. when I’m in the company of those I love most, Miss when I want to stay home under the covers and daydream. Feminists a generation ago fought for the title and dreamed of Freedom and Choice and Opportunity; maybe the surest sign that they’ve won is not which title we pick, but that we can have them all at once.”
Nancy Gibbs, via ladyengineer:gauntlet and jgh who comments:
Total bullshit. If that’s true, why are we expected to change our titles and men don’t? Men are “Mr.” all the time, in all those roles. I’ll be convinced we’re “equal” when we can be “Ms.” in the above situations and no one bats an eyelash…
Males are not always Mister. Formally, our honorific is Master (Mstr.) until puberty. Thereafter, depending on which tradition you follow, we may or may not drift through life title-less, preceded only by our adolescent erections, until conferred Mister not later than school-finishing age.
Given the average age of marriages, historically, this corresponded nicely with a female’s move from Miss (then, as now, supposed to be for under-18) to Mrs. or, more recently, to whatever style, military rank, educational honorific she’s entitled.
To JGH’s question: you may be ‘Ms.’ all the time. Depending on your choice of surname, you may forfeit other choices on the altar of etiquette.
Geraldine Ferraro forced William Saffire’s reluctant hand on the matter in the summer of ‘84 by combining the nerve to be married using a maiden with the discretion to not be styled as a single woman despite her family (On Language; Goodbye Sex, Hello Gender):
It breaks my heart to suggest this, but the time has come for Ms. We are no longer faced with a theory, but a condition. It is unacceptable for journalists to dictate to a candidate that she call herself Miss or else use her married name; it is equally unacceptable for a candidate to demand that newspapers print a blatant inaccuracy by applying a married honorific to a maiden name.via • link
That leaves Ms. By using the title, as fuzzy as Mr. is to bachelors or married men, the person is saying, ”This is the name I go by, and it may be mine or my husband’s, and I may or may not be married.” By accepting it, editors are saying, ”This is what she styles herself, and you will have to find out elsewhere if she is married or if she started out in life with this name.”
Ms. is deliberately msterious , but at least it is not deliberately msleading.
