Is Mx here to stay?

November 29, 2023·29 min·2 clips

Veteran feminist Julie Bindle argues that Mx erases the category of 'woman' and is being weaponized to silence female oppression.

A packed cabaret room starts the question. At the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in South London, during Bar Whatever, the story begins with a crowd, an MC in a pink dress, heels, and wig, and a word some listeners may not know. Mx is spelled M-X. The show defines it as a gender neutral honorific, like Mr., Mrs., and Ms., and says it is used more widely in the UK than in the US. From there, the word leaves the stage and gets practical. Requests for Mx at banks and in everyday life become part of a fight over gender, sex, and language. Then the mood turns sharper. Julie Bindle describes hostile shouting, threats, and a cabaret act that mocked her with a Julie Bindle mask and staged humiliation. Her account is serious and personal. The reporting does not treat the conflict as etiquette, because the word is tied to equal status and, in Bindle's account, to being treated as subhuman. History makes the story messier. Bindle once supported the campaign for Ms., another title that sounded strange and controversial before it became familiar. The comparison matters. The episode explains how Ms. was framed as equal to Mr., especially because Miss and Mrs. forced women to reveal marital status. For lesbians, that question carried another sting. Bindle remembers phone calls and forms where Miss or Mrs. assumed marriage to men, at a time when lesbians could not legally marry in the UK. Institutions shaped the fight too. Banks and corporations matter because official forms decide which names and titles count. The episode stays grounded. Language change is not treated as the whole fight for equality, but as one of the places where recognition gets argued over.

As heard by us

A sharp, grounded language story about Mx, Ms., and the politics tucked inside everyday forms.

Mx, the gender-neutral honorific, gives this episode a compact way into a larger question: how do everyday institutions make room for language that unsettles old habits?

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Why you'd press play

Mx tries to get onto a Nationwide bank form, and its whole political history follows it in.

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