If you are a feminist (what a ridiculous thing to have to say--if you think women should have equal social, economic and political rights) and you watch C-Span, then you've probably noticed something overtly sexist in the Senate roll call. Only the women who are married or who do not use their husbands' names are referred to as "Ms." The others are referred to as "Mrs." By using honorifics in this way, the Senate has reverted completely to the era when we thought it was our business to know a woman's marital status.

Granted, the use of "Ms." in the roll call doesn't tell us which women are married and use their own names and which are single, but the discrimination is nevertheless present because the majority of them are married, and that information is being broadcast.

It always amazes me that there are still people who think it is fine to tell the world a woman's marital status, but not a man's (read the wedding engagement section of any newspaper). What is especially interesting is that most of those women get the honorific wrong, too. If your name is Barbara Smith and you marry Sam Jones and take his name, you are not Mrs. Barbara Jones. The honorific "Mrs." is correctly used only with a man's name; i.e., you are Mrs. Sam Jones (which is really demeaning--you lose even your gender in that one). Hence, the honorific "Ms." is the only correct one for married women who are using their first names.

I read an article the other day in which the author said that a lot of women who keep their family (she used the offensive term, "maiden") names fudge a bit and go ahead and use their husbands' names for school functions and things like that so that people won't be confused and so that everyone will have the same name. Are teachers so stupid that they are confused by different last names within a family? And what is the obsession with everyone having the same name? Are we that tribal in the 21st Century? Judith Martin once said that if the same last name is going to be used in the family, it should be the mother's, not the father's, because the divorce rate is so high, and the children almost always end up with their mothers.

Some people reading this may be thinking, "Why is this such a big deal?" or "Political correctness is out of control." It is a big deal because a woman's marital status is none of your business unless she chooses for it to be, or unless we are also going to reveal a man's marital status. It is not "political correctness" to treat people decently and to end the second-class status of oppressed people. We make these changes in a lot of ways, and language is one of the most important.

Which brings me back to the U.S. Senate. Want a "more important" problem? Here's one for you: More than half of the people in the United States are women, but there are only 13 women in the Senate.