Honor Thy Nobody

Outside of e-mails to strangers, I cannot recall the last time I referred to someone as Mr, Mrs, Ms, or Miss, at least to their face. Perhaps I have done it sarcastically, or for some other comedic purpose. In e-mails to strangers, most of which have to do with advancing something I have created to the next step of its development, I do it because I don’t know the person, and because most of these people are women, that means I use Ms, since I don’t know if they are married. This always seems overly formal, especially when I’m writing about a plot that includes a mermaid who steals jewelry, but I do it because it is expected. If nothing else, the letter must start, “Dear Honorific Name.” The only thing less personal is “To Whom It May Concern,” which I have occasionally used when more than one person was the intended reader of the letter. Recently, a friend posted about her (and my and, I think, most Americans’) understanding of “Ms” being lost in translation in another country, and that was the catalyst that got me thinking: we should just stop using it and its kin to address people.
For one thing, as a society we are moving away from so many other markers of gender. “Ms” was adopted to free women from having to reveal their marital status in what they are called, though apparently there are places in the world where it indicates that one has been married but is no longer. I think most females use it these days, regardless of age and marital status, which means we’ve whittled it down to two (Mr and Ms) from three that became four. Well, five: I know the little-used gender-neutral title is Mx, and perhaps I will start using it in letters to everybody that I don’t know personally, but I still don’t think we necessarily need that sort of honorific for anyone. Let’s ditch all of them. Why do we feel that we need to honor everyone?
There are some situations in which they would have to be replaced, but in most of those cases there are words that are ready to go. Why shouldn’t all teachers, college or grade school, be called professor? Perhaps they are elsewhere in the world, but I, an American, remember being a little confused that Harry Potter, a Brit, called his teachers “Professor” when he was in the equivalent of fifth grade at Hogwarts. I had one teacher with a PhD in grade school and called him Dr, but the rest were Mr, Mrs, or Ms, and after I graduated it was awkward transitioning to calling them by their first names, and still doesn’t feel totally right. That would, perhaps, remain an issue even if their in-school titles shift to professor. And what about honorifics for kids to use for adults who are not family or teachers? We can come up with something, perhaps, but, again, why bother?
My first thought for what to replace these identifiers with was initials. J. K. Rowling hid the fact that she was a woman by using that for the byline on Harry Potter, but she and her fellow authors who did so may have been on to something. It would make the transition to not using Mr and company easier, since there would be something there, physically, visibly, audibly, to replace them, and not just an empty space to make us feel like we’re missing something. Ideally, we all get around to expecting to be called by our first names, whether by strangers or family members, but having “honorifics” that represent nothing but the rest of our legal names seems like a positive direction to move in.
If this seems like one more unnecessary droplet in the tidal wave of change going on around how we identify each other, well, as long as the wave is there, why shouldn’t it level everything? Let’s be comprehensive in our change, and, more importantly, inclusive in our language. Not everyone is a Mr or a Ms, as traditionally understood, and referring to everyone with the same honorific or same style of honorific (initials) would accomplish something along the lines of what Farhad Manjoo wrote about in the New York Times when he said we should substitute they for he and she when referring to everybody: there’s too much expectation wrapped up in those few little letters, we should lift it off of the shoulders of the people in our lives. Huh. I guess I’m just ripping off Farhad Manjoo here, with a slightly different subject. Oh, well. If you must steal, steal from the best.
