Doctor

 I see where an editorial in the Wall Street Journal says folks should stop calling the future First Lady "Dr. Jill Biden" because the term should be reserved for physicians. This is facially nonsense, as the honorific "Doctor" began as a term of respect for "teacher." But, of course, the real reason the WSJ thinks this is worth column inches in the age of the COVID plague is because Jill Biden is a Democrat and a woman.

"It was not until the late 1500s that the term “doctor” began being with any regularity [applied] to physicians, who had until that time been called “leech.”

So historically speaking, educators like Dr. Jill Biden had first dibs on the title “doctor.” The medical doctors saved my life, and I love them, but they got the title second hand.

It isn’t, of course, that Epstein is just wrong about the history of usage. (Or rather, he is being a contrarian, since he surely knows that history and chose to disregard it).

It is that he is being sexist. I don’t remember reading an op-ed by Epstein catigating Henry Kissinger for being called Dr. Henry Kissinger."

https://www.juancole.com/2020/12/194955.html?fbclid=IwAR3ozAcEX70FjnWjDp_7gBuBawr8YAyolcRS2sZ2gJv5VkfMWQFgc-5Cvbk