Henrietta Hay's Column

A judge in Pittsburgh very nearly started a revolution last month. I find it hard to believe, but in 1988 an American male threatened a woman with jail for insisting on using her own name preceded by the title, Ms.

In case you missed the story, Ms. Wolvovitz is an attorney and was appearing before Judge Hubert Teitelbaum. As reported, he said to her, "Do what I tell you or you're going to sleep in the county jail tonight. From here on in this courtroom you will use Mrs. Lobel. That is your name."

After the furor erupted, he apologized, saying, "I always referred to married women by their married name (sic). This is the way my generation was taught." Come on, Judge. It is my generation too. You've ruined our image!

Judge Teitelbaum is 73 years old and apparently has not learned much in the past 53 of them. Despite what he thinks, my generation has learned a thing or two in the intervening years. One of them is that, like it or not and I like it, the women's movement is here to stay. It says that women have the same political, economic and social rights that men have. OK, scratch equal economic rights. But many of the social rights have been established and accepted.

One of those rights is privacy in a number of areas, including being able to sign our names, if we choose, without announcing our marital status. English tradition for hundreds of years has used the titles, Mr., Mrs., and Miss. Now we have added Ms. It started as a rallying point of the early militant feminists. But like a lot of their ideas, this one is so right that it has become a part of the language.

Whatever pure linguists may think, my theory is very simple. Mr. refers to a man. No further identification is needed. On the other hand, a woman must be identified by her relation to a man. Either she has none, or she has one. So she must be Miss or Mrs. for all to know. According to this somewhat antiquated school of thought, if she is Mrs., she is a success in the world. If, at the age of 30 or so she is still Miss, she has failed in her basic function. You may remember the phrase popular during the 40's and 50's, "she went to college to get her Mrs. degree. We thought it was pretty funny then. I don't think it is funny now.

The wide acceptance of the term Ms. indicates that today a woman may, if she chooses, be identified as an individual in her own right, and that her private life is exactly that. Of course, many women still prefer to use Mrs. or Miss and that choice is really what it is all about.

Even William Safire, the guru of modern English, has finally seen the light in this matter. In 1986 when he published his book Take My word for it, he was still ambivalent about Ms. He said, "Where you stand on use of Ms. usually reflects where you stand on feminism." But, he added, "Since men can preserve their privacy with Mr., why can't women with Ms.? I feel myself coming around."

And in 1988, he came around. In his new book, you could look it up, he says, "It breaks my heart to suggest this, but the time has come for Ms. we are no longer faced with a theory, but with a condition. Ms. is deliberately mysterious, but it is not deliberately misleading."

Judge Teitelbaum may know his law, but he does not know language or women. I hope Ms. Wolvovitz sues him.