I’ve been a Ms since the age of 16. That was the year I discovered feminism, read Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, and berated my mother for having taken, very briefly, my father’s name when she married him in the 1970s. I also, I must say, congratulated her for re-taking her maiden, or birth, name when she divorced him, also in the 1970s, when reclaiming the name you were born with was mostly unheard of.
I took to feminism with a fanaticism rarely found beyond teenage years or fundamentalist religion. I raced through a number of feminist texts, including another Marilyn French work Beyond Power: On Women, Men And Morals which introduced to me the concept of more ancient matrilineal cultures in which women had power that was sorely lacking in conservative 1980s SA.
I devoured Gloria Steinem’s book of essays Outrageous Acts And Everyday Rebellions and discovered “Ms”. I learnt to pronounce it “Miz” and that it was the equivalent of the male Mr – that is, you could use it whether you were married or not, and even if you had changed your name to your husband’s – although most women who do so choose the “Mrs” appellation as a matter of course.
But never mind that, I wasn’t the type to change my name, it came with a history and linked me back to family, so why on earth would I give it up? Besides, everyone agreed on how musical it was and how perfectly it synched with my first name.
So, I became Ms, and quite fiercely too. It was the title I took on all forms I had to fill out, for applications of every sort. Sometimes there wasn’t an option, simply Miss and Mrs, married or unmarried, but I carried on with the activism then, too, and simply scratched out those options and scrawled in “Ms”.
I have not given up my Ms and have fought battles over telephone lines when giving my title to bank officials and others. More than 20 years on, and the title Ms still seems so unknown among so many – I’ve resorted to spelling it out, being quite emphatic about it. And equally emphatic when I find an official has automatically put me down as Mrs, simply assuming I’m married and have, to boot, changed my name.
It’s an assumption that makes me see red – not only because I am not married, but because there’s something in me that rails against the prevailing norm of a woman changing her name to a man’s simply because they have decided to share a life together.
In some ways, I haven’t changed at all since being a teen. Although now, I understand and accept that some women – many in fact – do change their names after marriage, and do so willingly and proudly, wearing their new monikers with joy, despite the endless hassles of changing all documents, bank cards etc to the new name.
I’ve never understood why women would choose to give up their names – which for me has always represented my own history and familial ties, unless of course you were born with such an awful surname you can’t wait to let it go.
I had this argument with a man I was going out with. He had a very ordinary, very common, although fairly innocuous surname, nothing wrong with it, yet I couldn’t imagine taking it on.
“If a woman loves a man, she’ll do it,” he opined. I opined back, and we both quietly backed away from the argument. It wasn’t a matter of love, I said, and hey, how about the man taking on the woman’s name, a la Olive Schreiner’s husband? And let’s be clear, I’m not against marriage at all.
Still, the battle has not been won. But I’ve gone on, trying to educate people about Ms, telling them what it means when I have insisted that they change the Miss or Mrs they have assigned me, and mostly being fairly patient about it. I’ve received invites to events in which, although I am unknown to those inviting me, I have been addressed as Mrs, as a form of “respect”. It makes me quite livid - shouldn’t you either bother to get the honorific right by asking first, or use a generic, such as Ms?
Although my credit card proudly bears the Ms title, my debit card had me listed as Miss. I sighed tiredly looking at it, got a little annoyed from time to time, but as a friend so often advises me: “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” So I didn’t, until my debit card expired and I went to collect my new one, and there it was again, Miss. Now, to me, Miss represents a woman who calls herself unmarried and can’t wait to hitch herself to a man, and take his name. That’s never been my ambition. The idea of tossing your name on marriage is uncomfortable – whether you’re a man, as with Schreiner’s husband or, more commonly, a woman. It signals a submissiveness I feel should not be part of a pairing. Recently gay acquaintances revealed that after marriage, one of the partners had taken on the others’ name – it was the first I had heard of that arrangement too.
Many will disagree with me. Many women have taken their husbands’ names and remain as independent as ever, earning their own living and so on. And I defend their right – much as I could never emulate such behaviour.
So, I received my new debit card, and signed for it and was updating my contact details when I piped up that really, I wasn’t Miss, could we not change this on the system so that the next time my card expired I’d be Ms?
The bank took it further – it said it would amend the details and immediately apply for a new card which I’d receive soon. I was astonished. Granted, the twenty-something behind the counter did not have a clue about the difference between Ms and Miss and asked me quite politely, and I gave the usual explanation.
Sigh.
And then the other twenty-something, who was making the changes, said with a big smile: “No problem, we’ll change it. So you’re happily divorced?”
Double sigh.
I await my new card. Sometimes I wonder why I bother – and that worries me too. The 16-year-old feminist was a firebrand who would have leapt up and down in maniacal anger at such a comment and such ignorance. With age comes a little wisdom and resignation – by the time I reach 70 I may have given up correcting people, or I may just be calling myself Mr in some attempt at simplifying my life. We all understand Mr don’t we? Or maybe I’ll drop my surname and hope for the best. - Sunday Independent