Call me madame
Love this BBC piece about how a French feminist group, Les Chiennes de Garde, are fighting for the right for all French women to be addressed as Madame, rather than Madame or Mademoiselle. And they’ve got a point: how is it still acceptable that what women are called is dependent on their relationship or not with a man? Good luck to them!
Once they’ve won that battle, I think we need some of their vigour over here, where calling yourself Ms is still seen as some out-there statement. (And writing letters to a household of Ms Bance and Ms Salmon is completely unthinkable - hold you hands up, our letting agency, who yesterday wrote to Ms Bance and Mr Salmon despite having met both of us on several occasions and taken rather a lot of money from us!)
I’ve always said that your relationship with Jo is very traditional in many respects. Perhaps the lettings agency just forgot that it is a traditional relationship in a modern setting, as Mr Prescott would doubtless say.
I do prfer Mademoiselle to Madame, but only because I like the word better, not what it means! :/
I’m still sulking about it. Bit freaky though - first time in over a decade that post has come through my letterbox addressed to “Mr Salmon”…
Now, the big question is this - since they obviously believe that a Mr Salmon rents our flat, should Ms Salmon cancel her direct debit?!
Well there could be some advantages Jo, but for legal reasons I had better not mention them, nor may I hasten to add, do I endorse them
If someone introduces themself as “Ms Smith”, call them that. If they introduce themselves as “Mrs. Smith” or “Miss Smith”, they’d probably rather be called that.
Calling someone by their preferred title is common courtesy - it would be rude to address you as “Miss Bance”, and equally rude to address my elderly spinster aunt as “Ms Smith”. The same, incidently, goes for shortening people’s names. When my brother introduces himself as “Michael”, it’s a clue that he doesn’t want to be addressed as “Mike”.
The only case that presents a problem is when you want to reply to a letter from a “Firstname Lastname” who is unknown to you. “Dear Firstname” is inappropriately familiar, “Dear Lastname” is also inappropriate, quite apart from being rather outdated, and “Dear Firstname Lastname” is clumsy. Unfortunately, it’s your only choice - whilst Antonia is obviously a woman’s name, Jo could easily be either a man or a woman, and I would guess that most Westerners wouldn’t begin to be able to guess at the sex of someone with, say, a Chinese name.
But Jo, as in a man’s name is usually spelt Joe. Although there are exceptions, such as the 1950s and 60s Liberal leader, Jo Grimmond.
Quite a few Jolyons and Josephs use “Jo” not “Joe”.
As for the letter, the best bet is to reply in the format that the letter is sent in unless you wish to dispense with formalities. A lot of academics will receive “Dear Professor/Dr…” but will write back on first name terms to indicate that’s okay.
The problem with letters is that if you receive a letter from a stranger called “Jo Salmon”, you have no way of knowing whether Jo is a man or a woman, and if he turns out to be a woman, you don’t know whether she prefers “Ms”, “Miss” or “Mrs”. So you have to write “Dear Jo Salmon”, which is clumsy, or “Dear Jo” which is presumptuous.
Now, if Jo had been helpful enough to sign her letter “Jo Salmon (Ms)”, you’d know what to do…
15-20 years ago, I would have assumed that Joe was a man and Jo a woman. These days I see a lot more male Jos - the ‘e’ seems to have gone the same way as the ‘h’ in Jo(h)n.
My Deputy boss is the best on the phone. I mean, I’m all for wishing we had just one thing to call people that wasn’t clumsy, because I never know how to start e-mails, but it’s great when people are on the phone getting her address and ask if it’s Mrs or Miss. “Well, actually it’s Dr…”
I thought Jon is usually short for Jonathan?
Tim:
Usually, yes. Amongst my acquaintances I can count one Jonathan who calls himself “John”, three who call themselves “Jon” and one Jon, who funnily enough calls himself “Jon”. I used to know a couple of Johns, but haven’t met any for ages.
I think my point is that if I met someone in the pub today, and he called himself “Jon”, I’d assume his name was Jon, possibly short for Jonathan. 15-20 years ago, I would have assumed that his name was John.
jdc:
I tend to cop out and start emails “Hi” or some similar generic name-free salutation, which seems to me to be OK in an informal email, but obviously no good for a letter.
I only usually make people call me “Dr Sam” if they’re particularly obnoxious.
This is all very interesting but in the case of our letting agents, they’ve met me. Several times. They take money from me each and every month. And maybe they did look at Antonia’s name and go “ah, must be a Ms” but for some inexplicable reason (yeah, right!) whoever wrote the letter asking if we want to continue giving them money every month decided that because it’s a one bed flat, Ms Bance must, of course, share it with a Mr. That’s not just bad service from our letting agents, there’s an element of homophobia about it. I’d much rather they called us both “Miss” but accepted the fact that we’re both women.
Hi Sam,
I agree with you that using people’s preferred names and forms of address is important and respectful; don’t think I’d advocated abolishing all use of Miss and Mrs, just expressed a hope that more women would choose Ms. But I think it’s fair enough to assume that all women are Ms unless and until told otherwise.
Jo - think less actively homophobic, more heterosexist - “that must be a typo, they can’t mean Ms and Ms”. Or maybe it’s just your terrible handwriting on the forms.
Jo:
I’d be inclined to blame stupidity (as in Antonia’s comment) rather than malice - you would seem to have to be a particularly stupid letting agency not to have a correct record of your tenants’ names and using it.
Incidently, I apologise for taking your name in vain in my earlier comments - I was looking for a conveniently androgynous name, and yours rather leaped to mind.
Antonia:
I agree that Ms is the least bad default assumption for a woman’s title, but think that the times when you can actually reasonably use a default are rare. The only time that actually springs to mind (when I could reasonably know your name and sex, but not preferred title) is if I was a cashier in a shop, and you are standing in front of me and have just handed me a credit card with “A Bance” embossed
on it. I’d still probably avoid the subject and address you as “Madam”, though.
If someone has filled out a form with their details, you will only have a default issue if your form is sufficiently moronic to ask for name and sex but not title. If you are writing a letter to a “Firstname Lastname” who you don’t know, you may or may not be able to guess their sex from their name.
Is this why socialist organisations often use “Comrade…” to greet people?
Sam:
“I agree that Ms is the least bad default assumption for a woman’s title, but think that the times when you can actually reasonably use a default are rare.”
Canvassing for a political party: Firstname Surname is all you get, hence they’re all Ms to me!
Personally when canvassing I always use “Madame” and no-one’s ever taken me to task on it.
“Ms” on the other hand has led to me being read more than one Riot Act.
Ms is a perfect title. I wish it were used more widely.
On the subject of titles, I recall that when I turned 18, I received a “now you can vote for me” letter from our local Lib Dem parliamentary candidate. Unfortunately, she chose to address it “Dear Sam”, and her presumtuous familiarity ensured that I never even considered voting for her.
Oh thats awful!
I got a letter from my local Conservative MP when I was eighteen, I just thought “I’m not a Tory!”
I got one better - a card! But I still thought little of the local MP. He stood down at the next election.
Who was the MP, just out of curiosity!
Sir Archibald Hamilton
Ah yes, I heard he could be a difficult person
I too think Ms is the ideal default, it’s a neutral term that puts women on a par with men in terms of how they are addressed. It’s a particularly sad reflection of how women see themselves that many object to the term Ms and would seemingly much rather be pigeonholed as a spinster or a housewife. I don’t think the Ms vs Miss/Mrs debate is equivalent to debates on other forms of address. Whilst I understand the importance of addressing people as they choose(more than many others, as I have a name with not obvious pronunciation), I do believe that Miss/Mrs is one of the many subtle structural aspects of society which serves to lower the standing of women whether they inidividually realise it or not. In other words it’s really about the dignity of a group rather than that of any one individual within that group. And it’s always a bit shocking these days when people can’t deal with simple things like Ms&Ms, or even Mr&Ms.
Who cares? Call people what those people want to be called out of good manners and respect.
As far as I have experienced in France (and Spain) you become Madame/Senora on the basis of age and not necessarily whether you are married or not.
In this country, people seem to have started using “Ms” to mean “divorced”. It’s really annoying and the opposite of what the word was supposed to give women - freedom from basing their title on their relationship to a man.
“I don’t think the Ms vs Miss/Mrs debate is equivalent to debates on other forms of address. Whilst I understand the importance of addressing people as they choose(more than many others, as I have a name with not obvious pronunciation), I do believe that Miss/Mrs is one of the many subtle structural aspects of society which serves to lower the standing of women whether they inidividually realise it or not. ”
It is exactly equivalent. You are entitled to your belief that a woman chosing to be addressed as “Miss” or “Mrs” “serves to lower the standing of women”. You may even be right, although I think it’s unlikely. The point is that you get to choose for you, but you don’t get to choose for anyone else.