Feeling vindicated is sometimes hollow and meaningless, but I write this for the few people reading my blog as validation for my perspective about considering females and males, too, as of non-specific gender as I penned in Beyond The Labels and more recently, my International Women’s Day blog. I sent that piece to a quality Sunday newspaper for publication for IWD tomorrow; it was rejected because the (male) deputy-editor, a man in his mid-40s, who I once worked with as a journalistic colleague, albeit more than 20 years ago, didn’t get the point I was driving at. Sadly, for him. In today’s daily paper of the same company, there was a story about female jockeys calling for an end to the use of the honorific Ms on form guides in races they were competing in alongside male jockeys. The Mr honorific is NOT published in form guides for the male jockeys. In discussing this issue, Racing Victoria’s Chief Executive Bernard Saundry said the organisation ‘would continue to push for names to be “gender-non-specific” on form guides.’ State Liberal MP Wendy Lovell has called on Racing Minister Martin Pakula to intervene to end the practice before IWD tomorrow. She said: ‘The use of the honorific is….demeaning to these enormously talented professional jockeys…’ The point I have written about many times is that identifying us as females as opposed to males ‘demeans’ our talents, skills, intelligence et al in so many ways that we need to be perceived as human individuals first and foremost, irrespective of biology, as Norrie was in the 2014 High Court ruling. Honorifics are just one example, indeed, a blatant and thereby obvious one, to be addressed; our perceptions based on appearance are more complex and difficult to address; at least the BHP Billiton CEO understood this as ‘unconscious bias’. The Age journalists don’t seem to be thoughtful and/or intelligent enough to ‘get it’. I rest my case. It’s depressing.