I never pictured myself dying alone in my flat, my body chewed by cats – until I moved to Hong Kong.
Filling out my visa application, everything seemed in order, until I reached the “marital status” section. On the hunt for “single”, I ran my pen over the check-box options: married – no; divorced – no; widow – no; spinster … hang on, what?
I wasn’t hallucinating. There it was, in official ink. In the eyes of the law, I am a spinster. Talk about a slap in the face.
As a single, independent woman who moved to Hong Kong from Australia in search of adventure, I am far from being a crazy cat lady or crusty old woman destined to die alone. And “spinster” is not the only derogatory term thrown around for single women in Asia. At the ripe old age of 27, I’ve just made the cut to be called a “leftover woman” in China; while in Japan, because of my age, I am categorised as an undesirable “Christmas cake”.
Miss, Mrs, Ms, or Mx, which honorific to go by?
The term “spinster” was phased out of official use in England and Wales in 2005 but is still used in legal documents in Hong Kong – perhaps a hangover from the city’s colonial past.
The word originated in England during the 14th century, when it referred to a woman who span yarn or thread for a living. One’s occupation would often be used as a pseudo-surname on legal documents, and these women were referred to as Spinster.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the “jump from spinner to single lady is likely an economic one”. Unmarried women were on the lower rungs of the social ladder, with lower-paying jobs such as spinning yarn.
It was so common for single women to work as spinners that, by the 1600s, the term “spinster” was appearing in legal documents to refer to unmarried women. Skip forward 400 years and the Hong Kong government is still tarring women with the same derogatory brush.
The number of unmarried people in Hong Kong is growing. According to a government report titled “Women and Men in Hong Kong 2018”, over the past 20 years the number of unmarried women in the city has risen almost 60 per cent, compared with a 12 per cent rise in unmarried men. Perhaps Hong Kong should change its tourism slogan: “Hong Kong, city of spinsters.”
To add salt to the wound, when single men fill out the visa form, the male equivalent in the marital-status section does not drip with negative connotations: they are classified by the macho term “bachelor”.
While I’m no Bridget Jones, I can’t help but feel it’s time the government divorced itself from this outdated lexicon. Whatever happened to being just plain old “single”?
