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Wednesday's Most Active Threads
The topics with the most engagement yesterday included using "Mrs.", the cost of Taylor Swift concerts, the "Issue1" vote in Ohio, and slightly old-fashioned expressions.
The most active thread yesterday was titled, "why is mrs still a thing" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster noted that several of her children's teachers — of varying ages — prefer to use the title "Mrs.". The original poster thinks this is strange and wonders why they don't prefer "Ms.". On one hand, this is a fairly simple post that should be easily answered. On the other hand, this is DCUM. In a perfect world, posters — particularly those who themselves prefer to use "Mrs." — would respond with explanations for their choice and the original poster would leave the thread more knowledgeable and with a better understanding then she entered. But, sadly, DCUM is far from the perfect world. DCUM in an environment in which posting "I like dogs" will result in responses such as "Why do you hate cats?". Posters rarely answer the question asked, but rather the question that they think you meant to ask, or the question that they would have preferred you to ask. As a result, the post is addressed as part of a culture war. Posters imply that the original poster is being hypocritical because, as a feminist, she should support women's choice. This trend reached the pinnacle of absurdity when the poster who had brought up freedom of choice being a goal of feminism was herself responded to by a poster saying that the point of feminism was to give women a choice. Hello, you both are saying the same thing. Perhaps actually reading posts will result in more appropriate responses? Of course the original poster is not necessarily saying that those who choose "Mrs." should not do so, but just wants to know their reasons for that choice. Unfortunately for the original poster, almost none of the responders offered a reply that would provide such enlightenment. Plenty of posters described their own choice of titles, but not really offering much in the way of explanation for their choices. Other posters simply posted opinions about titles. One poster rejected her family name entirely, including her mother's maiden name, due to concern that the names had been used by male abusers in the past. An off-topic discussion regarding the entomology various words broke out. So, for instance, we were entertained with the history of the word, "hysterical". This discussion also highlighted the increasingly conservative nature of DCUM. I have to say that this is a disappointing trend in my view given the website's original userbase of progressive urban women. Now we have posters who equate choosing to be called "Ms." with being a man-hating, failure who will end up living alone in a cardboard box.