Wednesday, September 20, 2006

He's my wife??

Being recently married I have notice the deluge of mailings that get sent to the 'woman' of the house. You may have seen these. Items sent to Ms. Husbands Name or mailings with Ms. tacked onto your own name.

I find myself in a situation that I find hilarious but pisses off my husband. You see, we are a same sex married couple and I am caucasian and he's south asian. My name stands out as a male, his is rare and from asia and people don't know what to make of it so the assume that because we are married he has to be the wife. A false assumption in Canada since 2004.

In the mail my husband receives 'Elle" magazine, free issues of 'Homemaker', feminine hygene product samples, womens perfume and even a letter addressing him as Ms. from the government. I think it is trivial and there are good recipes in Homemaker and I can use ladies shaving cream samples. Of course it does not help when I walk in the door with the latest 'Elle' and tell him that this outfit on the cover would look nice on you, but the shoes are too small. For him, this is the icing on the cake. When he immigrated here as a child with his family immigration officials bastardised his name by adding an 'h' 'behind every 's' in his name. His name no longer sounds at all like it looks and results in mispronounciations everytime.

I doubt I can stem this tide of mailings. I know people no longer use Miss or Mrs., so maybe we should work on getting Mr. and Ms. reduced to just M.

Any suggestions? Recommend this Post