I’ve just completed a second, and very much larger, article all about the honorific title Mx or Mix:
About Mx, with Miss, Mrs, Mr, Ms,
and the singular they
Mx is a non-binary transgender title I’ve been using for myself since 2002.
The new article is much too long to fit in a single blog post so it’s online as an ordinary web page at
http://www.mixmargaret.com/about-mx-with-miss-mrs-mr-ms-and-the-singular-they.html
with a separate page holding five appendices (all well worth a read) at
http://www.mixmargaret.com/about-mx-five-appendices-to-mix-article.html
I can’t see any comments about this, happen it’s on a different webspace. Sorry!
Anyhow, for a very long time I have been struggling with the titles Miss and Ms. For a while, I thought Ms. was the solution to not wanting to declare my marital status; however a nurse at the bloodbank took complete issue with it as a teenager for my being a ”Maiden” not a divorcee. Quite frankly why should she care, but it does seem to give off the wrong impression using Ms. as a younger woman. I have been considering using Mx. although I have read your article and it seems it should solely be for transgender/ two spirit people.
It has been very useful in the past for me, and I wouldn’t have got work as a gardener without using, a not immediately clearly female honorific… I have clients tell me they would have avoided a woman gardener; but since I am there and have done a good job…oh well.
I only occasionally brush with officaldom, so I tend not to use any honorific. But on the occasions I do strongly feel, there is a need for a not of the above/ none of your business. Having a woman declare they are unmarried ie available is beyond ridiculous and so far, Mx seems the only option. Perhaps, I should leave a title off my business cards this year…or happen M! for contempt at the system.
Kind regards, Ms /Mx /M! feminist gardener.
Hi Megan.
I feel for you, there is a crying need for reform in this space. There needs to be a way of avoiding declaring your gender or sex, but I don’t know what to suggest.
As you may know, I think using Mx for that purpose won’t work in the long run.
I grew up as Ms was becoming much more widely used and in my neck of the woods (Western Australia) it definitely meant ‘marital status unstated.’ Around here it was not thought to mean divorced or widowed; using it that way would have been such a terribly regressive thing, quite the opposite of giving women freedom.
We often hear Ms used on the television news in Australia, often for politicians who, I’m assuming, are not always divorced or widowed.
I’d say using Ms this way, as a equivalent of Mr so the marital status is not stated, is a great use for it. But what to do about not stating one’s gender or sex? I think that one is still in progress.