MR. R. writes:

You know, I just realized for the first time in my adult life that I have grown quite accustomed to addressing women as “Ms” in letters and emails, even when I am reasonably sure they are married. I think that has become a convention resulting from feminism, where it MUST NOT be assumed that a woman is a “dependent” and that she should not be addressed in a way that would insult her independence. How ludicrous!?! Is it not?

At any rate, your blog is fascinating to me, and I hope that you do not mind some of my streaming thoughts. Perhaps a nugget I share will spark some enlightened thought from you, myself, someone in your readership. I just noted that I write apologetically in tone, as if asking for permission to correspond with you. This isn’t a display of non-masculine weakness but rather of the good manners my momma taught me from birth. :)

Anyway, I’m certain this thought has been touched upon in your blogging in the past, but I think yourself and your readership should keep in mind that feminism is actually a symptom of societal ills and not a cause. The cause is most certainly Post-Christianity, the fall of not only American culture, but also the Christian faith. Obviously you address a global phenomenon ….but we all know as America goes, so goes the West and so goes the world.

For America IS Christianity, or at least was. We can all buy into the lie that America was born from the secular, but this does not pan out. Perhaps many of the Founding Fathers were secular men, no question, but America was not founded, built, created, defended, and/or made concrete by individual men and their egos. We assign heroics to the Founding Fathers because we require a name and a face. We need individuals in our history books who represent to us what Americans did collectively. 

And to get back to the point, the men (and of course women too!) who founded this great nation, fought the battles, mended the uniforms, nursed the wounded, rallied the minutemen, and fired the shots, were CHRISTIANS who made it great. And the generations that followed in the same spirit are included, of course.

Feminism is a tragic symptom of this horrible fall from grace. But having said that, the symptoms must be treated in order to cure the disease, or at least treat it. So your efforts make sense and are not in vain. You are attacking one of the most serious symptoms and that is the first step.

                       — Comments —

James M. writes:

I have believed for some time that feminism and homosexualism (by which I mean the construction of an identity out of a desire) are both Christian heresies.

Elizabeth Wright writes:

Actually, I think that one of the sensible things to come out of the feminist teapot is the use of “Ms.”  If you had worked in offices  prior to the use of this designation, where you were constantly 
writing to clients or customers, you would remember how annoying and  time-wasting it was to try to figure out how to address women.   Sometimes, we would actually stop and make phone calls or we would dig  through papers and stuff, in attempts to discover whether this was a  married or single woman.  With males, that did not matter.  We wrote  “Mr.” and went on with our work.

If a woman customer or inquirer contacted us, and simply used a first and last name, how did we know that this was her husband’s name or her birth name, or if she was married at all? In those formal times, it was unacceptable to leave off “Miss” or “Mrs.,” especially when  building a mailing list.  To have one designation for male and one for  female makes sense.

If a designation for addressing women had come from some source other  than the feminist realm, there would not be this negative taint  associated with the term.

Laura writes:

I use “Ms.” in addressing a woman when I don’t know if she is married or not. I think it is useful in that situation. As a form of address, its taint comes from the feminist effort to completely replace “Miss”and “Mrs” with “Ms.”

I also dislike the sound of Mzzzzz.

John E. writes:

Regarding Ms. Wright’s point, if you go back even a few years before the popularization of the title “Ms.” wouldn’t the instances be quite rare in which there was a need to address a woman formally without knowing her marital status? Therefore, it seems the need for the term is directly caused by the feminist movement, and not just a useful byproduct of it. 

Laura write:

As Ms. Wright mentioned, there were occasions in business correspondence when one wouldn’t know and it took time to find out. It seems that it was much more common, however, to use formal addresses instead of first names, so that people were more likely to know a woman’s status. Also, if it was unknown, it was common to revert to “Miss.”         

A previous discussion about this issue can be found here.      

John replies:

I do think the term is necessary in our day, and that it has been necessary for quite some time now. It seems, though, that the creation of the title is a feminist solution for a problem created, at least in part, by feminism in the first place. It could be that there was awkwardness about how to address a woman 100 years ago, but it seems more likely that one would not be required to formally address a woman back then without first knowing enough about her to know whether she was married or not. Feminism (among other forces, to be sure) has made it more likely that we will have dealings with many women about whom we know next to nothing.

Michael S. writes:

I once worked for a couple of years with a corporate attorney from Munich. I asked her at what age German female stops being addressed as “Fräulein” and begins being addressed as “Frau.”

She said: sixteen.

My wife says: “Why can’t we have a similar custom? It would make things so much simpler.”

I concur. However, “Frau” doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as “Mrs.,” though there is some overlap.

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