Is there a doctor in the house?

This week I received two Christmas cards addressed to 'Miss Violist' and there's a furor in the news again about women with PhDs using the title Dr, leading to much reflection on the issue of titles for women here on the barbaricum.

To be clear from the outset, the barbarians hold the position that it is both proper and polite to call someone what they want to be called, without arguing with them about it. This goes equally for names, pronouns, and titles. 

"Hello My Name Is Inigo Montoya" by oxygeon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

If I am writing to someone and am not sure what their preference is, I will typically address the message to 'Dear First Name Last Name' to avoid irritating them by using the wrong title. If I can see an email signature or a staff profile, I will use the title indicated there. In a first email to someone I have not met who I know has a PhD, I will always address them as 'Dr Last Name', or 'Dear First Name (if I may)'--my intention is to express respect on 'meeting' them for the first time, and invite them to tell me what they would like to be called. If their reply is signed First Name Last Name, with an email signature that contains a title, I use that title and their surname until I either receive a message signed only by their first name, or I am explicitly invited to call them by their first name.

In sum, Dr Jill Biden introduces herself as Dr Biden? We call her Dr Biden. The barbarians have spoken.

Personally, I deeply dislike the title 'Miss', and will never use it for a woman unless I know that she prefers it. Why should a woman be introduced, before you even know her name, by the fact that she is not married? Oddly enough, I don't have the same aversion to 'Mrs'; in part because of the delightful essay Anne Fadiman wrote about her first awkward encounters with the title Ms, which she eventually came to prefer. One of the small bonuses of having a PhD that no one told me about beforehand was the ability to sidestep the Miss/Ms/Mrs question entirely--'Are you a Miss or a Mrs?' can be answered 'It's Dr, please.'

Why do titles matter? As has been pointed out many times, women are typically addressed by their professional titles much less often than men are, and a lot of the pushback women who insist on 'Dr' get is linked to the dismissal of expertise this implies. One of the best pieces on the question I found pointed out that only a tiny number of the general population (of the US, anyway) actually have PhDs; most people don't fully understand what a PhD means or involves. As Dr Nichole Margarita Garcia point out, using one's title provides an opportunity to share knowledge about what a PhD is with others. Like Dr Garcia, I want to share my PhD with others, and so I prefer to use the title 'Dr' where I can.