Don't MS. the Point...

Before I get into this post, let me say this: Somewhere in your travels, you've probably heard that Wonder Woman graced the cover of the first (standalone) issue of Ms.

Well, she didn't. She was on the cover of the second issue (pictured above).

The illustration below shows the cover of the actual first issue.

Anyway, other than the above bit of trivia and an unrelated photo at the bottom of this post, today's post isn't really about Wonder Woman at all. (Yeah, me, writing a non-comic-book-related post. Who'da thunk it?) And today's post isn't really about Ms. (the magazine), either. Not exactly.

A month ago, more or less, I read an obituary for a woman named Sheila Michaels. (Today's post isn't quite a "tribute" post because I didn't know of the woman until then.) Ms. Michaels was the woman who took an old, relatively-forgotten honorific -- "Ms." -- and brought it into wider use. Click on her name if you want to read the whole interesting story.

Now I want to share a related story, an anecdote about an argument I had with my then-fiancée, back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. (I won't use her name for reasons of privacy, not that she herself would ever encounter my blog.)

When I met and began dating my ex -- we'll call her "Faith Salami" due to a private joke I won't get into here -- she was a divorcée who'd been married once before. She'd kept her husband's surname when she'd divorced him, mainly to eliminate confusion where her two children were concerned.

Every so often, she'd receive a mailing from the church she and her two kids belonged to, and the letter was always addressed to "Mrs. Faith Salami." She often commented that it wasn't supposed to be "Mrs." since she was divorced. It should be "Ms.," because "Ms." was the proper term for a divorced woman.

I explained to her that technically, it was proper for the church to write "Mrs." because she'd kept her husband's last name, but naturally, "Ms." was also correct from Faith's standpoint because the whole idea of the term "Ms." was that a woman could use it regardless of her marital status. In fact, that's the whole raison d'être of the word.

I also explained that the use of "Ms." did not automatically signify that she was divorced. Again, "Ms." purposely did not inform anyone of the woman's marital status.

Faith replied with those words I often heard from her during a disagreement: "Well, that's your opinion."

I swear, to this day, some twenty-five to thirty years later, the woman still doesn't comprehend the difference between "fact" and "opinion." (Her granddaughter recently confirmed that to me, in an out-of-the-blue comment, with no prompting from me!) I used to tell Faith, "If I say that two and two is four, that's a fact, not an opinion."

She never understood that.

And, since the internet was a long way away in what was then the future, I couldn't look up the word "Ms." online to prove my point. So, I had to go to the public library instead, find the definition of the word "Ms." in a dictionary, and make a photocopy of the page that contained the entry in question. I brought the photocopied page to Faith and showed it to her.

Guess what she said.

"That's just the opinion of the guy who wrote the dictionary." (Emphasis mine.)

This was the kind of situation that was common enough to insure that our engagement didn't last long enough to become marriage!

Anyway, since I used a pseudonym for "Faith's" real name, I suppose that telling that story doesn't exactly ridicule her.

So, today's post wasn't really about Wonder Woman, wasn't really about Ms. magazine, wasn't really a tribute to Sheila Michaels, and wasn't really designed to embarrass my former fiancée.

I guess it "wasn't really" a post, then, right? And for this I "bumped" my tribute post to June Foray?

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Oh, lest I forget: Last but not least, speaking of Wonder Woman, this is just... wrong.

What the hell were they trying to say?!?

Thanks for your time.