my biggest pet peeve these days? titles.

over here in the u.k., titles are *mandatory* for practically everything. every form you fill out, every account you open, every online purchase you make, you are required to choose a title.

stop! until you choose a title, you may not pass go! you may not buy that set of plastic mixing bowls for £9.99 until you answer the very important title question!

and while most of the time, it’s the standard mr./mrs./ms./miss choice, being that we live in the u.k., often the choices will include the more exotic honourifics lord/lady/sir/dame etc. etc. etc.

i’ve always been against titles on principle – there are very few instances where my gender and/or marital status are required knowledge for a retail exchange or provision of services to be carried out smoothly and successfully. it’s really wholly unnecessary in 99% of all instances. but in such places where it was required, i have always, always used ‘ms.’ as a title – partly as a nod to second wave feminism, but mostly because it’s none of their damn business whether or not i’m married and i like being cryptic.

over here though? even though i’ve always selected ‘ms.’ every bloody time they force me to use a title? they still put ‘miss’. without fail, on every item where jonno’s and my own differing surnames are included, i am ‘miss’. but even on my own bank account, my paycheque, my junk mail… all ‘miss’, every last one of them. for some reason, ‘ms.’ in the u.k. is not widely used… or, it would seem, acknowledged.

frankly, it pisses me off to no end. the insistence on a title where none is needed (does it *really* make any difference to my veg box order if i am baroness jen, or professor jen, or mrs. jen?) is idiotic enough, but in a country where arbitrary class designations are still so rife (as if by being born into a “noble” family, lord poshbottom of earlchestertonshire is somehow better than anyone else), and where the outmoded queen still sits on her throne pretending to be important in the world, i can kind of understand it.

but to force me to use a title and then not even honour my elected honourific? well that’s just galling. i may not think that titles are important, but to blatantly disregard what i choose to call myself is downright rude.

so lately i’ve been rebelling in my own childish, but amusing way – selecting titles at random. my grocery account is under ‘captain’ jen, my cable bill arrives for ‘mr.’ jen, and so on, and so forth. if they’re going to force me to play their little stupid, bullshit, classist game, then play it i will. it’s petty and small, i know, and entertains no one but myself.

but i can’t wait to use ‘marchioness’. or hell, maybe i’ll just start making some up.

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