From an article in yesterday’s San Gabriel Valley Tribune, via Melissa Masatani on Twitter:
“When I first found out about ‘Mx.’ I was so happy… It’s a way to be myself without being forced to pick a side by using “Mr.” or “Ms.”
[…] ‘Mx’ – a new gender-neutral title […]
[…] I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. The first is about a term you might not be familiar with but whose profile seems certain to grow: Mx – a new gender-neutral title. […]
The emphasis on Mx. as a title for non-binary people I think misses the point. After all, Ms. is not a title for people who are ambivalent about their marital status, it’s for people who don’t see why they should disclose it when they list their preferred title. Likewise, Mx. is a title for people who don’t see why they should disclose their gender.
I made more or less the same point in paragraph 2, John: “Just as Ms enables women not to indicate their marital status, an emerging title allows people not to indicate their gender: Mx.” But the reasons people use Mx are sometimes less clear-cut than you may suppose, so the parallels with Ms are valid only in certain respects and to certain extents. There’s a good discussion here about the use of Mx by people who identify as male or female.
…but how is Mx. pronounced out loud? As an ESL teacher, I think it would be good for me to know, just in case a student asks me!
I describe the pronunciation in paragraph 4, Sabrina; you must have missed this part of the post. It’s also occasionally said as an initialism (’em ex’), but the one-syllable forms I describe are apparently more usual.
[…] If you ever wondered what “Mx” meant – as in the courtesy title, “Mx Pat Smith” – you can now look it up. Stan Carey at Sentence First writes that the dictionary for which he works, Macmillan, has created an entry for it for the first time. […]
I’m one of the earliest users of the transgender title Mx or Mix, and I have written by far the longest and most comprehensive article about it (November 15, 2015). Most of the points mentioned in the comments here are discussed in the article, usually at length and in considerable detail.
Hi Margaret. Thanks for the link to your article, which I look forward to reading later. Note that Mx as a gender-neutral title does not yet appear in the OED. It was added to Oxford Dictionaries Online, aka OxfordDictionaries.com, which is not an online version of the OED. As I understand it, the OED is considering Mx for inclusion in a future update.
Thanks, Stan.
I’d say the best way to talk about this title is something like “Mx or Mix is a non-binary transgender title.” This way of describing it is well backed-up in the main article and its five appendices.
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From an article in yesterday’s San Gabriel Valley Tribune, via Melissa Masatani on Twitter:
“When I first found out about ‘Mx.’ I was so happy… It’s a way to be myself without being forced to pick a side by using “Mr.” or “Ms.”
[…] ‘Mx’ – a new gender-neutral title […]
[…] I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. The first is about a term you might not be familiar with but whose profile seems certain to grow: Mx – a new gender-neutral title. […]
The emphasis on Mx. as a title for non-binary people I think misses the point. After all, Ms. is not a title for people who are ambivalent about their marital status, it’s for people who don’t see why they should disclose it when they list their preferred title. Likewise, Mx. is a title for people who don’t see why they should disclose their gender.
I made more or less the same point in paragraph 2, John: “Just as Ms enables women not to indicate their marital status, an emerging title allows people not to indicate their gender: Mx.” But the reasons people use Mx are sometimes less clear-cut than you may suppose, so the parallels with Ms are valid only in certain respects and to certain extents. There’s a good discussion here about the use of Mx by people who identify as male or female.
…but how is Mx. pronounced out loud? As an ESL teacher, I think it would be good for me to know, just in case a student asks me!
I describe the pronunciation in paragraph 4, Sabrina; you must have missed this part of the post. It’s also occasionally said as an initialism (’em ex’), but the one-syllable forms I describe are apparently more usual.
[…] If you ever wondered what “Mx” meant – as in the courtesy title, “Mx Pat Smith” – you can now look it up. Stan Carey at Sentence First writes that the dictionary for which he works, Macmillan, has created an entry for it for the first time. […]
I’m one of the earliest users of the transgender title Mx or Mix, and I have written by far the longest and most comprehensive article about it (November 15, 2015). Most of the points mentioned in the comments here are discussed in the article, usually at length and in considerable detail.
Thanks Margaret. The article can be found here.
Hi Margaret. Thanks for the link to your article, which I look forward to reading later. Note that Mx as a gender-neutral title does not yet appear in the OED. It was added to Oxford Dictionaries Online, aka OxfordDictionaries.com, which is not an online version of the OED. As I understand it, the OED is considering Mx for inclusion in a future update.
Thanks, Stan.
I’d say the best way to talk about this title is something like “Mx or Mix is a non-binary transgender title.” This way of describing it is well backed-up in the main article and its five appendices.