Ah, Sweet Ms-ery

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."

--Through the Looking-Glass

The real question, according to the Women's Liberation movement, is whether males have used language to help perpetuate their roles as masters. The answer, say the feminists, is yes. They have decided that the living language is living proof of their oppression, and they have set out to change it from the pronouns up.

The new jargon spawned by the liberationists has already moved into the vernacular. Expressions such as "male chauvinist pig (MCP)," "bra burner," "consciousness raising," "sex role," "role model," "sexist" and "sexism," "sister," "sisterhood" and "machismo" are now in common use, even among precocious preteen-agers. No cocktail party can be considered top drawer without at least one reference to the "myth of the vaginal orgasm" or to some "phallustine" (an MCP philistine). But some women want more. The language, they say, reflects centuries of male dominance, and is loaded with male chauvinist piggisms that must be thoroughly rooted out.

The use of the masculine singular pronoun when the subject is not necessarily male, for example, is considered to be blatantly sexist. Henry James' "We must grant the artist his subject, his idea ..." sounds as if the artist were always a man. Thus a search is under way for a set of sexless singular pronouns. A Women's Liberation lexicographer who styles herself Varda One has come up with ve, vis and ver. Others have suggested singularizing they, their and them to te, ter and tern. Someone has invented co, cos, co, which takes a pleasant form in the coself construction, and another added her and him together and got herm, which ve pointed out with reprehensible etymology is "as in hermaphrodite."

Moving briskly on to the nouns, the "Manglish" reformers have been attacking all the words derived from man, master, father and the like, usually proposing neuter or feminine alternatives. Thus titles such as "chairperson" and "Congressone," words like "sportsoneship," "herstory" and "spokesone" could someday--if the feminists have their way--become part of the language. Some of the suggestions seem absurd--having the milk delivered by the milkone, for example, or changing hurricane to hissicane (because women do not like to be associated with destructive storms).

But there are some phrases for which there seem to be no satisfactory alternatives; old masters does not quite work as old mistresses, nor does it seem likely that anyone will ever speak of the founding mothers or change the currency to read "In Goddess We Trust."

One of the fiercest battles in the war of the word, however, is being fought over the use of Mrs. and Miss.

Arguing that men are not stigmatized by having their marital status revealed by a form of address, the feminists have decided to be called Ms. (pronounced miz). In spite of all the jokes about Ms. standing for manuscript and mail steamer and master sergeant, it is fast becoming both a symbol and a fad. Ordinarily nonpolitical and conservative businesses, publications and organizations that correspond with women are having to make the big decision about whether to switch to Ms. Women's Wear Daily has, Vogue has not; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has, the White House has not.*

While resistance to Ms. crumbles, however, there is some dissension in the ranks of the movement over whether there should even be a differentiation between Mr. and Ms. One protester suggests that both men and women should be addressed as Mm., as in Mm. and Mm. Smith. Or when in doubt, mumble.

*TIME has not switched to Ms. because it believes that Miss and Mrs. convey valid information. But TIME recognizes some justice in the complaint that Mr. does not differentiate between single and married men, and is ready to consider the use of a more precise appellation, if one were devised.

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