Ms.

No, I'm not revisiting the titles-on-invitations issue. And I'm still no fan of titles. But in the past two weeks, I've heard the term "Ms." maligned repeatedly by (for the most part) people who should know better. My future husband included.

As I understand it, the term Ms. originated as a way to refer to women without referencing whether they are married or not. It is, essentially, the exact female version of Mr. Because for some reason, men never get referred to differently if they're married or single.

My mother went by Ms. until she became Dr. I grew up assuming it was the appropriate, modern way to refer to women. Anything else is unnecessarily antiquated.

And yet, it seems that some people, my otherwise-enlightened future husband among them, see Ms. as an affront, a form of feminism run amok.

Take this Times reader, who complained that the paper referred to Sarah Palin as Ms. and Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Quoth the public editor,

"He decided that The Times called Palin Ms. instead of Mrs. because it is liberal and “is trying to belittle her. She is a Republican, so she can’t possibly be a woman who is married and entitled to the title” of Mrs., he said."

Ms. is belittling? Mrs. is something one must aspire to? Seriously? How on earth is that implied? Unless you assume that being married is the highest honor you can bestow upon a woman via title.

(For the record, the Times' policy is to use the title people prefer. Hillary likes Mrs, apparently, while Palin prefers Ms.)

Rick's feeling is that Ms. is somehow anti-marriage, that if I use "Ms." once I am married, I will somehow be saying I'm ashamed of being married. Bear in mind, this is a guy who didn't care whether I took his name or not. But to him, using "Ms." is akin to insisting that the word "women" be spelled "womyn."

This seems terribly backward to me. A woman changing her name is indeed rooted in a sexist tradition that assumes a woman takes her identity from her husband and sheds her family history to become part of his. But these days, we women have choices about it, and there are practical reasons for changing your name that have nothing to do with historical slights of one sex or the other (reasons like not having three last names between us). Men could also change their names. It's an equal-opportunity concept at this point, that could be applied any number of ways a couple chooses for whatever reasons they want.

Not so with the Miss/Mrs. thing. There is no male equivalent. It is purely about distinguishing a woman by whether she is married or not, and no such equivalent exists for men. To me, that is a purely unfair tradition.

I have no problem with other women deciding they prefer to be a Miss or a Mrs. It's still everyone's choice. But to say that a woman is somehow a militant, annoying, foe-of-marriage because she chooses to, like her husband, not have her marital status implied every time she gets a magazine in the mail or referred to by proper title is just absurd.

[Note to Ms. Charlin: please chime in as you see fit!]