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"  In the long tradition of pseudo-feminist trend stories to befall the Sunday edition of the New York Times, perhaps the most banal and accidentally-on-purpose sexist of them all is Natalie Angier&amp;#039;s latest entry unto the canon, &amp;quot;The Politics of Polite&amp;quot; (that&amp;#039;s the one under the original headline &amp;quot;Just Don&amp;#039;t Call Me... [Ma&amp;#039;am]&amp;quot; for those of you still reading newspapers, six pages up from the one on &amp;quot;Ms. Palin&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;you go, girl!&amp;#039; ethos&amp;quot;).  Angier&amp;#039;s employment of &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am&amp;quot; as a verb and &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am-ogram&amp;quot; as a word notwithstanding, it was this passage \u2014 notable for moving her argument for the honorific&amp;#039;s modern inappropriateness slightly beyond a poll of her friends and lines written for Helen Mirren five years ago \u2014 that actually made me miss Bill Safire as the Gray Lady&amp;#039;s linguist of record: Behind the link between &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;old&amp;quot; is the familiar feminist observation that, whereas a man remains &amp;quot;mister&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;sir&amp;quot; from nursery to nursing home, a woman&amp;#039;s honorifics change depending on her marital status and, barring that, her age. A young miss walks a few miles, and, wedding ring or no, wham, she&amp;#039;s a ma&amp;#039;am. For many women, then, the insertion of the word &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am&amp;quot; into an otherwise pleasant social exchange can feel like a tiny jab, an unnecessary station-break to comment on one&amp;#039;s appearance: Hello, middle-aged- to elderly-looking woman, how may I help you this evening? Thanks, prematurely balding man with the weak chin, I&amp;#039;ll take that table over there, in the corner. And yet my emphasis above is glossed over no sooner by the Times than is the defense of the word &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am&amp;quot; by one Judith Miller, aka Miss Manners. Well let me tell you something about men and our own overrated honorific: Miss Manners came over for dinner when I was fifteen (my stepmom worked with her in some capacity), and she called me &amp;quot;little sir,&amp;quot; and I did not like it. Sure, my father and I happened to be watching Robin Ventura&amp;#039;s grand-slam single keep the Mets&amp;#039;s season alive instead of eating dinner and so Miss Manners&amp;#039;s use of &amp;quot;sir&amp;quot; was probably something akin to the condescension Angier describes and more deservingly so, but still: My father and I happened to be coming home from watching the Mets&amp;#039;s season not quite survive the other week when he was sixty-eight, and some prematurely balding man with a weak chin call him &amp;quot;sir,&amp;quot; and he did not like that either. Sure, the man happened to be offering my father and his bad foot a seat on the 7 train for an hour, but truth is, men don&amp;#039;t like being addressed as if in the beginning of a written letter any more than women do \u2014 if not because we are beyond the age of formal, written greetings and into that of informal, bullshit reporting than because a man doesn&amp;#039;t need an honorific to honor someone, or be honored himself. When was the last time you tried to call your boss &amp;quot;sir&amp;quot; and didn&amp;#039;t come across as trite? And when wasn&amp;#039;t the last time you tried to counter that &amp;quot;sir&amp;quot; from a waiter with his own name and came across as condescending? Today, as in any era of human interaction, &amp;quot;Thank you&amp;quot; will suffice. So isn&amp;#039;t it time enough to let actions stand for words, and complete sentences for potentially disdainful modifiers? If it&amp;#039;s time we did away with &amp;quot;ma&amp;#039;am&amp;quot; (and, really, if a trend isn&amp;#039;t a trend when it hits the Times&amp;#039;s most e-mailed list, then, wham, when isn&amp;#039;t it?!), why not also leave &amp;quot;sir&amp;quot; to the queen and her own made-up uses for it? And to the military \u2014 they&amp;#039;ll beat your ass if you let them call you what you are. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a8316/american-honorific-titles-082910/>