Mr & Mrs: How The Patriarchy Lives In Our Language

For the patriarchy to exist at all, it must exist not only in how we think of and structure the societies we live in, but first in how we think of and structure ourselves. We have absorbed patriarchal teachings in our conceptualization, speech, and communication way before we could apply it to interconnected threads within a system that determines access, value, opportunities, or pay for a given gender within it. The patriarchy lives here— in the mind and in the mouth— before it materializes itself outside of the body.

And we need not look any further than the titles of courtesy, known as honorifics, used to address someone in our everyday language to find its undertones. In line with the patriarchal teaching of defining and opposing the sexes, we commonly use two sets of stratified honorifics: “Mr.” to address men as well as both “Mrs.” and “Ms.” to address women; each used as antecedents before a person’s last name. But that information only becomes amusing when we uncover the meaning behind them. The honorific “Mr.” traces back to the mid-14th century Middle English word master meaning “one who has power to control, use, or dispose of something or someone at will” or again “one who employs another or others in his service.” The word master was originally used to qualify young unmarried men and the word mister used to qualified married ones, but the latter fell out of use and the former eventually came to qualify both. In essence, to precede a man’s surname by “Mr.” is etymologically synonymous to handing him the social importance associated with a chief, head, director, or anyone of great rank. And that, we must remember, is an equation we automatically make for men on the basis of their sex and regardless of their marital status.

In contrast and in equally great irony, the honorific “Mrs.” is the abbreviation of the word mistress, a word that once referred to the female head of the household. The honorific was first used to qualify both married and unmarried women before “Ms.” was introduced in the 17th century to qualify unmarried women. But whether we speak of the title “Mrs.” or its deviation, “Ms.”, we must see that it confines women to the domestic sphere with such an ease that suggests that we acquired that association somewhere else. And where else might that be other than from the very system that demands of women piety, submission, and domesticity— all within the confines of a home they must tend to?

The simple association of a woman to a mistress and a man to a master speaks to the omnipresent nature of the patriarchy’s heritage. But it isn’t just present in titles of courtesy, we also see it in the ways masculine words are considered the neutral form in our speech and the ways we default to them when referring to a diverse group of people. The patriarchy informed the words we use and has left us to finish the work by constructing a reality around them. Service for women, control for men. Confinement for women, power for men. Disposability for women, ownership for men. These are the dynamics of our time — the ones we continuously speak into reality.

That we now know: the patriarchy lives here— in the mind and in the mouth— before it materializes itself outside of the body. Lucky are we to also know that what lives in the mind only does so on our accord, and, should that accord change, what transpires in the mouth would too.