
The End of Mrs. and Miss - jmadsen
http://codebyjeff.com/blog/2014/02/the-end-of-mrs-and-miss
======
ef4
Here's the thing: you're talking about someone's name. If a woman always
choose to go by "Mrs", that's her choice, even if you don't like it and even
if you believe she was unfairly brainwashed into it.

Making it impossible for people to enter their own names the way they actually
use them is anti-user. It's like refusing certain characters or artificially
restricting the length.

Names most definitely don't make sense, and trying to force them to make sense
in your software is the path to madness.

~~~
nknighthb
There should simply be a free-form field for "How do you want to be
addressed?" (e.g. "Mrs. Smith", "Dr. James", "Jack", "Woof Woof", whatever)
alongside any field for an "official" name.

~~~
jmadsen
That would be perfectly acceptable IMHO. The point is to not force her into
giving out this type of information, rather than restricting what she WANTS to
say.

Most forms I see these days either leave it off, or make it free form. This
article discusses those that don't.

In any case, this is not "part of your name" \- simply move to a country with
a different language and look for the "Mrs." option.

~~~
undecisive
You're missing the point. The people of a vastly different culture may not
wish to be differentiated based on their gender or marital status, but people
of a certain generation take it as a point of pride, being "Mrs" or "Dr." or
"Rev." or "Hon." etc. It may mean nothing to you, but it is a matter of
decorum for them.

And frankly I find it disgusting that people should consider it brainwashing
at all. It is not. At one time, being married was a badge of honour that a
woman wore with pride, and whether or not that happens to be your standard of
maturity or not, it is not for you to decide what should be important in
somebody else's life.

If you're worried, present the user with a short text input. Give it a
placeholder "e.g. Mr, Ms". Allow it to stay blank for those who want it. But
don't make a judgement call on another person's behalf. It is not your place
to do so.

------
chrissnell
_" If your customer wants Mrs. & Miss, push back. Up to you to decide how far
and how hard, but make an effort."_

That's ridiculous. There are many women out there who are proud of their
marital status. It's a big deal in some parts of the country.

There are better places to fight your war on American traditions than your
cart checkout. In fact, I would argue that the carts need more choices. For a
good example, check out [http://www.bodenusa.com](http://www.bodenusa.com).
They offer a big list of salutation options, including awesomeness like
"Baroness", "Colonel Sir", "Lady", and "The Honorable". If I ever get a piece
of junk mail addressed to "Field Marshal Lord Snell", I'll know who sold my
information.

~~~
raganwald
You may disagree, but it's not ridiculous. It's perfectly reasonable. In fact,
by calling it ridiculous, you're sending a very strong signal that people who
ask questions about whether we should keep doing this the way they've always
been done will be shamed.

Is that your intention?

~~~
haberman
What? By pushing back against a customer who wishes to be addressed as Mrs,
you are invalidating their own sense of identity under the guise of doing them
a favor. It's paternalistic and infantilizing.

EDIT: Oh wait, "customer" here may mean "client", as wilg pointed out, ie. the
person asking for the form to be built, _not_ the person filling it out. That
is likely the source of this misunderstanding. I still don't see the harm in
providing both Ms. and Mrs./Miss -- some surely prefer Mrs. and there is no
shame in deciding you prefer "Ms."

~~~
raganwald
I took this entirely as a conversation between developer and "stakeholder," be
that client, employer, whomever, but not the end-user.

I've built many such forms, and all of them have included traditional forms of
address. I may build another with traditional forms of address, but I
certainly have no problem discussing the subject without laughing the idea
off.

------
__pThrow
_So to tie this back to my original question - why are we asking women to put
information on a form that has no use other than to let us know if she might
be a potential mate?_

 _If you make a new form, limit salutations to Dr., Mr., Ms._

Why do you ask people what their titles are at all? Dr., Mr., Ms. Why do you
need them?

 _If your customer wants Mrs. & Miss, push back. Up to you to decide how far
and how hard, but make an effort._

Given that you do ask such silly questions, who are you to push back against
the title someone wants? If a woman, say my mother, older than the both of us,
wants to be known as Mrs., who are you to push back on that? Is your push back
a step for gender equality, or you just being even more self-absorbed and
clueless in your questions than before?

Would you push back against a person that wants to identify with a different
pronoun? Or a different gender? Then why are you pushing back against that
person's choice of a title?

Do you verify the titles? If not, what's the skin off your nose?

~~~
wilg
His point is clearly not about pushing back against how someone identifies.

There is simply _no male equivalent_ to "Miss" and "Mrs.", so asking someone
to choose between titles is implicitly asking for their relationship status.

I would prefer there were no titles at all, but if you have to use them the
only equitable way of doing it is to eliminate "Mrs." and "Miss".

Edit: Actually even better would be to have a text field.

~~~
einhverfr
> I would prefer there were no titles at all, but if you have to use them the
> only equitable way of doing it is to eliminate "Mrs." and "Miss".

Or you could just be inclusive and allow Ms, Mrs, and Miss.

------
x0054
"If you make a new form, limit salutations to Dr., Mr., Ms."

Why on earth is "Dr." in there? From those options it strikes me as if the
form would really care about wether or not I am male or female, but if I am a
doctor, then who cares if I am female or male, I have apparently made it to a
higher state of being, one that transcends gender. Get rid of salutations all
together. If it is important for you to know the persons gender, ask them
specifically that question. If, for some unknown reason, you also need to know
if the person completing the form is a medical doctor, or a doctor of another
type, ask that question directly as well.

~~~
jaredsohn
I think it is more about formality rather than gender. Mr. vs. Ms. is because
the English words we use for that level of formality are different based on
gender.

I think it similar to how students are told to address their teachers as Mr. X
or Ms. Y, rather than by their first names.

~~~
cema
Then there is Rev., Hon. and so on.

~~~
jaredsohn
My guess is that Dr. is just the most popular/most insisted upon among
salutations that are based on profession/education and so the others get
neglected sometimes. (I doubt most people know what the full list of
salutations should be.)

~~~
nknighthb
Nobody does. The "full list" is effectively unknowable. A truly full list
would include myriad words from every language for every culture, military,
religion, and organization in the known universe (and would be ever-changing).
This is just another part of the whole "What is a real name?" thing.

------
dmschulman
Common sense, etiquette, and those being subjected to the terms seem to have
sorted this out a long time ago. Further down in the Wikipedia entry
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms)):

 _The American Heritage Book of English Usage states that: "Using Ms. obviates
the need for the guesswork involved in figuring out whether to address someone
as Mrs. or Miss: you can’t go wrong with Ms. Whether the woman you are
addressing is married or unmarried, has changed her name or not, Ms. is always
correct." The Times (UK) states in its style guide that: "Ms is nowadays fully
acceptable when a woman wants to be called thus, or when it is not known for
certain if she is Mrs or Miss". The Guardian, which restricts its use of
honorific titles to leading articles, states in its style guide: "use Ms for
women... unless they have expressed a preference for Miss or Mrs".

In business, "Ms." is considered to be the standard default title for women
until or unless an individual makes another preference known. The default use
of Ms. is championed by a number of etiquette writers, including Judith Martin
(a.k.a. "Miss Manners")._

Eliminating it completely solves a non-problem and takes preference away from
those who would prefer either term.

------
jlees
I kept my surname, and am frequently called Mrs by random shop assistants
reading my name off my credit card and noticing my ring. No; that's my mother.

However, having experienced this weird identity/title disconnect a few times
now, I know she would _also_ feel like it wasn't her, but somebody else, being
addressed if she were forced to be "Ms".

Sure, there are times where you don't want to be informal and there isn't much
of an alternative than Title Surname, but I'd rather see the titles removed
altogether. Should we try to make "Miss" and "Mrs" obsolete? Probably, but not
by removing the ability for us to choose it on forms.

------
PeterWhittaker
Simpler solution: No salutations.

I called a friend "Ms ..." once - she was quite offended, though she chided me
in a humourous way. She is quite proud of being "Mrs ...".

So if you eliminate Ms, you eliminate her from your user base. And it is NOT
your job to drag people kicking and screaming to your view of The Right.

I happen to prefer using Ms, for the very reasons you state. But it would be
patronizing in the extreme for me to use Ms instead of Mrs when Ms offends. Or
instead of Miss.

If you are not going to have a comprehensive list of all possible salutations
(including Rev, Father, Your Holiness, Minister, Prime Minister, Honourable,
Right Honourable, etc., as suggested by another comment, then have none).

I find it creepy when machines address me by name anyway. I shudder every time
my ATM displays "Thanks, Peter". I would much prefer "TD thanks you for your
custom" \- or something less archaically phrased.... :->

------
beefsack
You could just as easily argue against using salutations at all; the stance
taken in the article could arbitrarily be taken from a number of different
stances each with arguably similar weights.

I don't think it's right to force your own opinion on people when you can just
as easily give a blank field and let them put whatever they want, including
nothing at all.

------
tsotha
>If you make a new form, limit salutations to Dr., Mr., Ms.

No. You let people decide how they'd like to be addressed and leave your
amateur social engineering at home.

------
ekianjo
> If you make a new form, limit salutations to Dr., Mr., Ms. If your customer
> wants Mrs. & Miss, push back. Up to you to decide how far and how hard, but
> make an effort.

Well done man, you went all the way to explain that we should not make
differences between women and men, and there you still keep a difference for
DOCTORS, like OMG do you not see the gaping abyss in your argument ?

Why don't you go all the way and push back on the use of ANY honorific title,
because seriously there is no rationale to put people above others just
because they studied more or obtained a position of power somehow.

You destroyed the whole point of your article, just because you want to fight
for women but you should be fighting for equality for ALL if you were a little
bit logical.

~~~
wilg
I think you're right about "Dr." but you're kind of throwing the baby out with
the bathwater here.

You can make that same point while recognizing that probably the author wasn't
really trying to place doctors on a pedestal.

------
greenyoda
_" If you make a new form, limit salutations to Dr., Mr., Ms."_

I've never understood why people with MDs or PhDs feel the need to be
addressed as "Dr." wherever they go. Distinguishing between "Dr." and "Mr." or
"Dr." and "Ms." seems at least as weird as distinguishing between "Mrs." and
"Ms.".

And once you concede that people with those degrees deserve to be called by
their preferred salutation, why not add all the other possible honorifics,
like, "Senator", "Rabbi", "The Right Honourable", etc.?

Maybe the right approach is to just provide a text box that the user can fill
in with their preferred salutation, or leave blank.

It's interesting how much cultural baggage goes into creating something as
simple as a data entry form.

~~~
derefr
Salutations are abbreviations, though... and you're likely asking for a
salutation so that your CSRs and/or salespeople can call people by it, for
"enhanced politeness."

But what happens when someone fills in a salutation your CSRs/salespeople
don't recognize? Do they hazard a guess at pronouncing it? Screwing up a title
seems worse than screwing up a name, in terms of how much respect you've lost
with what might be a potential client. (Really, though, I'd guess that they'd
just ignore it, look at your gender, and call you "Mr." or "Mrs.", depending.)

On the other hand, the true 100% solution... I'm not even sure. An
autocompletion-search based chooser that knows about every salutation that
exists around the world, with the abbreviated, expanded, and IPA-
pronounciation forms included for each salutation?

------
asveikau
I read the following Wikipedia article and wound up fascinated:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms).

It claims that the use of /mɪz/ (Ms. in spelling, but the S clearly pronounced
as /z/) was proposed as "close parallel to the practice long universal in many
bucolic regions" of slurring the pronunciation of "missus" and "miss" as a
single entity. Never thought of it that way, but my first reaction to reading
this article is that we already have such a title, "Ms.", with the S
pronounced as Z.

------
sbierwagen

      Your computer IP address 199.27.128.109 is listed at 
      StopForumSpam database so your visit is blocked. You can 
      unblock yourself by entering the following code:
    

What the hell? CAPTCHAs just to _read_ pages?

~~~
rjbwork
Presumably someone earlier was being malicious from that IP address.
Unfortunate, but slightly reasonable from someone who was being targeted I
suppose.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Except that it's using referrer IP's. (I get 173.245.53.171, both our
cloudflare IP's.)

Which is ridiculous. Agent IP's, fine (although this is a really stupid way to
go about it).

Referrers, okay, but only if you suffer massive abuse via a certain link,
otherwise it's really, really dumb and you may ban tens of thousands of
innocent bystanders.

But referrer IP's? That's just beyond idiotic.

~~~
jmadsen
Have no idea. That's something my host is doing, for reasons they know. I've
never had more than 120 hits in a day before this post, so not aware of any
policies they may have with regards to this.

I doubt I'm banning "tens of thousands of innocent bystanders", however :-)

------
abalone
This is a nice idea but the claim that it is "not very hard to do" is
incorrect. For starters there's the confusion factor which may trigger some
support requests. That's more work. Moreover it may result in some
consternation among customers who actually do desire the traditional
salutation. That's a different kind of difficult, going against your customer.

Again, not saying it's wrong, just saying it's not easy. There's maybe even a
point in there about programmer tendencies to underestimate the full impact of
small code changes...

------
ghshephard
Why do you feel the need to identify the gender of your users at all?

~~~
fennecfoxen
Even assuming the need, why do you feel the need to lecture your user when she
wants to use the term 'Miss' or 'Mrs' to identify herself? I mean, it's one
thing to provide neutral options like 'Ms' or '', sure, go ahead... but are
you operating a web site or a culture war?

------
rswail
How about having the customer actually enter the title (and name on postal and
other forms) they want to be addressed as?

Not everyone has a last name. Chinese people have a family/village/personal
name, others have just a single name.

Cultural assumptions for the convenience of database schemas is unnecessary.

Let people choose their username. Let them choose their "name" to be addressed
as, including title.

------
coldtea
>"If your customer wants Mrs. & Miss, push back. Up to you to decide how far
and how hard, but make an effort.*

You just lost a customer.

------
bowlofpetunias
Seriously, is this still a thing in the Anglo-Saxon world? Being male, I was
never aware of that, although I must have filled in hundreds of English
language forms.

In the Netherlands, this kind of thing has been unacceptable for decades. The
only reason why someone would put that in a form is as a deliberate joke.

------
argumentum
I was taught that Mz (as in Mizz) is a marriage neutral form. Of course, if
someone refers to themselves as Mrs. (like most school teachers), I'd go with
that, but otherwise I like Mz.

------
jmadsen
Just out of interest - related idea from over two years ago:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16503341](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16503341)

------
pm
I reject the notion that asking (or not asking) for marital status affects
gender equality, in our industry or in society, in any meaningful way.

~~~
rosser
It's not asking for marital status that's at issue; it's _selectively_ asking
for it — _only from women_.

~~~
pm
Then ask for marital status from men as well - Master and Mister.
Unfortunately, they are abbreviated the same way, and the honorific Master has
fallen into obsolescence.

Or just don't ask for it at all. I find it better to let the person determine
how they would like to be addressed than limiting it based on my political
agenda.

------
BorisMelnik
Always thought it was weird that there wasn't a male form of "Miss."

~~~
dmckeon
There has been, and may continue to be in some places:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_%28form_of_address%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_%28form_of_address%29)

I recall seeing a flight reservation form on a British Airways site that had a
pulldown menu for either titles or forms of address that included "Lord" and
various others. To a US American it was slightly surprising, but to a native
Brit it would probably seem quite natural. (Of course, what airline would pass
up a chance to bring back distinctions of class?)

I see the problem that the original post describes as a "value and a half"
issue - the client and programmer are trying to extrapolate values for several
ranges from the variable they have jammed multiple values into: gender,
marital status, title, and form of address.

Even if all your users are from one culture, you're going to have unexpected
corner cases - these pages should suggest some:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

[http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-
programm...](http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-gender/)

------
krick
This argument is just hilarious. Yep, there definitely are no more important
problems in the entire world than whether women should have a choice in
defining their own marital status or not.

~~~
raganwald
So does this mean you don't write any software that doesn't save lives? That
you don't come onto Hacker News and make comments?

For whatever reason you find yourself doing a task. Gardening, washing dishes,
building a web form, saving a life. Whatever it is you choose to do, why not
do it as well as you know how? Why denigrate something as not being worth
doing well because there are more important problems in the world?

~~~
krick
While you are trying to make it sound somewhat ironical that is the very
reason I am on HN (and, partly the reason I left that comment): to find
something that helps me to "write software that _does_ save lives" or to find
any problem that would be important enough to try and solve it.

So what I'm stating is not that I simply "do not think of that problem as of
being important enough to discuss". Actually, I don't see any problem at all.
And I find that both sad and funny — maybe even horrifying — that many other
people see it as a problem and even important one. Because, really, there
aren't many "non-live-saving" tasks, everything that makes world a better
place to live is pretty much worth doing.

That arguing on topic if you should or shouldn't leave a choice between `Ms.`
or `Mrs.` doesn't make world better. Actually, I wonder if it isn't
accomplishing the opposite. If you are a woman and you are presented the form
that asks you how you'd like to be called in the emails or whatever, seeing
both `Ms.` and `Mrs.` on that form doesn't hurt you unless you have some
pretty serious psychological problems. More than that it might be even
annoying to be unable to choose the honorific you personally prefer. That's
why you might want to leave text input for your customer to enter whatever he
wants anyway.

