This is an aspect that immediately came to me. It's important to consider not only your own personal comfort levels, but the institutional culture that you're participating in. If there is a gendered aspect to what titles people default to, then personal choice can contribute (either positively or negatively) to how institutional culture affects *other* people, even when they make a different choice.
For example, I've noticed something among social groups of women that I interact with that I don't notice among mixed social groups or ones that are primarily men: people who take a strong position that people with a PhD (as opposed to MD) who use the address "Dr" are viewed as being pretentious and stuck-up and think they're better than anyone else. This is the sort of gendered aspect I'm talking about. In a context like that, a female PhD can find herself in the no-win position of either declining to claim her hard-won status or of being sneered at for doing so, in an atmosphere where a male PhD using the title of Dr is treated as a neutral act.
When I attended UC Berkeley, the title culture that I encountered was both entirely unofficial and fairly rigidly adhered to: undergrads always addressed PhDs as Dr or Professor (as appropriate -- not all the PhDs on staff were professors); grad students addressed PhDs/professors by first name; but when grad students were talking to undergrads *about* a PhD/professor they used the title.
Since I'm not in academia, the question doesn't come up as often for me, but if I am required to provide a form of address (e.g., on a form) or if someone uses a form of address to me in anything but the most passing interaction, I will insist on Dr. The issue *does* come up occasionally at work, because many people with science PhDs explicitly include Dr (or a post-posed "PhD") in their e-mail ID blocks, and these sometimes get wielded as status weapons. So I've occasionally made a point of doing the same. But the practices are fall less standardized than they were at UCB.
I'm a bit curious why you feel that using a professional title is "holding students at arms length". Or why the existence of a formal distance between professor and student would be a detriment to teaching. (It reminds me a little of the people who want their children and their children's friends to address them by first name because they want to be "the cool parent".) University is an inherently structured and hierarchical institution. You aren't you're students' friend, you're their teacher.
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For example, I've noticed something among social groups of women that I interact with that I don't notice among mixed social groups or ones that are primarily men: people who take a strong position that people with a PhD (as opposed to MD) who use the address "Dr" are viewed as being pretentious and stuck-up and think they're better than anyone else. This is the sort of gendered aspect I'm talking about. In a context like that, a female PhD can find herself in the no-win position of either declining to claim her hard-won status or of being sneered at for doing so, in an atmosphere where a male PhD using the title of Dr is treated as a neutral act.
When I attended UC Berkeley, the title culture that I encountered was both entirely unofficial and fairly rigidly adhered to: undergrads always addressed PhDs as Dr or Professor (as appropriate -- not all the PhDs on staff were professors); grad students addressed PhDs/professors by first name; but when grad students were talking to undergrads *about* a PhD/professor they used the title.
Since I'm not in academia, the question doesn't come up as often for me, but if I am required to provide a form of address (e.g., on a form) or if someone uses a form of address to me in anything but the most passing interaction, I will insist on Dr. The issue *does* come up occasionally at work, because many people with science PhDs explicitly include Dr (or a post-posed "PhD") in their e-mail ID blocks, and these sometimes get wielded as status weapons. So I've occasionally made a point of doing the same. But the practices are fall less standardized than they were at UCB.
I'm a bit curious why you feel that using a professional title is "holding students at arms length". Or why the existence of a formal distance between professor and student would be a detriment to teaching. (It reminds me a little of the people who want their children and their children's friends to address them by first name because they want to be "the cool parent".) University is an inherently structured and hierarchical institution. You aren't you're students' friend, you're their teacher.