Excuse Me “Ms.”

Feminism has always been around. Women fight for different things for women. One of the subjects that they think about is curtsey names. Today, we had guest speak named Dr. Donna Lillian come to speak with us about the name “Ms.” This turned out to be a rather interesting lecture. I really did learn so much this afternoon. Over all, I really did enjoy her lecture. I never really did think about the common title of “Ms” and how it should be used for a woman.

Dr. Lillian started off with a little humor. That drew the crowd right in. She had been working on a survey since the eighties. I found it quite impressive. This survey gave out a little background information about fifteen different in different scenarios. She pretty much had different groups of people circle what title they would give the woman. The results varied from age, gender, race, and year. In the age group, the fifty to fifty-nine-year-olds used “Ms” the most. The younger generation uses “Mrs.” more for older women. “Ms” is a tricky label. The age cut-off seems to be changing all the time. “White” people are more likely to use “Ms” more often than a black person. However, what does “Ms” mean exactly? Some people use it for feminists, lesbians, and divorced/separated women. Why? They view “Ms” as a title of a woman being strong and having power. Because of this, a few people want to get rid of it. I was amazed to learn that some people want to get rid of the curtsey titles altogether. I do not know where I stand on that argument, it would be interesting to see where it goes.

Overall, I did like Dr. Lillian’s lecture. I would like to see more of her around in the near future.