[Ginger]

I really love thinking about all the cultural and social layers attached to honorifics and titles.

I’ve always bridled at honorifics. I had problems accepting that authority could be anything other than a form of bullying, till I had been away from my family for a while, and then I began to understand that authority and corresponding levels of honorifics were often culturally based, and usually had nothing to do with people trying to create power inequities or exploit difference.

Here’s an example. When I worked in literacy, and taught in neighborhood libraries with older African American students from the South, I dressed up as if I were going to church—because that’s what they did.

They also insisted in addressing me using “Miss (last name)” and I never insisted they call me by my first name (which was more my style), or worse, gave them a lecture on the usage of “Ms.”

I figured it was their house and I was their guest, and I wanted to be respectful of their culture. Besides, there are enough power dynamics to be sensitive to, when one adult is teaching another adult something as potentially infantilizing as how to read, not to mention, the need to be sensitive to racial difference.

When I taught writing at a university in New York, my freshman students addressed me as “Professor (last name)” and I addressed them as “Mr. or Ms. (last name),” because that was the policy of the English department at that time.

Ten years later I was teaching again, this time in Washington, D.C., but the culture of private colleges in general had loosened up by then, and we all used first names in class.

When I taught at a high school in an upper-middle-class suburb of Dallas, I instructed students to address me as “Ms. (last name),” and I used their first names.

Yes, in that case I consciously sent the message that we had different levels of authority. To do otherwise, within that teen culture, would have been interpreted by them as license to treat me as a peer and ignore my directives or rules in class. Trust me, you did not want to go there.

Now I work in a large public college (not in a teaching role), and am on first-name basis with everyone except the president. Honestly, I call him “President (last name),” because it’s sort of fun.

As for the professors at my workplace, I have the same degree as many of them, but even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t use their title; except of course, in front of their students, because I want to honor the protocol of their classroom.

I guess the professors and staff at my current job remind me of my friends and people I went to school with, so that’s why I use first names with them. More likely, it’s because we’re all just co-workers—though our areas of responsibility differ greatly—and we’re all adults.

Honorifics are helpful, sometimes. They carry so many social connotations but don’t necessarily mean that one person is not another person’s peer or that one person has power over the other. They do mean that prescribed roles are in place, and those roles enable people to do their jobs or provide services more easily, and interact more comfortably in all kinds of situations.

For different reasons, I use “Dr.” when addressing my internist and gynecologist; in those cases, I want to let each woman know I validate her expertise and trust her ability to help me manage my health.

In fact, I am always happy to use honorifics in addressing women at any professional or vocational level, because I want to be supportive of them, especially in a culture where they still don’t earn as much as men. It’s disheartening, how few women are majoring in the science, technology, engineering and math fields in college. And the number of women in majoring and working in the computer sciences has actually gone down in the last ten years, partially because of the aggressively sexist gaming culture that has dominated that development environment.

If I am contracting services from a service provider or technician, such as the person who installed our air conditioner a couple weeks ago, I will use “Mr. (last name),” unless he requests otherwise.

To me, this is a way of saying, I value the service you provide and respect your expertise as much as I respect the service provided by my doctor, lawyer, accountant or other professional—all of whom expect and are traditionally addressed with honorifics.

When I was a child, I was taught to use “ma’am” and “sir” for all adults, even my parents.

As we moved around, I realized this was not common practice in all regions of the country, and so I code-switched to match the culture I was in. I might not have always used “ma’am” and “sir” with my friends’ parents, but I always used “Mr.” and “Mrs.” with them, and you better believe when I went to visit my grandparents in the summer, I would revert again to using “ma’am” and “sir.”

I think overall, I’m saying honorifics or titles are often more about culture than power, and my usage of them is contextual.

Bottom line, I don’t want to offend anyone; I want to respect a person’s expertise in any area, and I will follow whatever cultural usage of honorifics is in place, wherever I find myself.