Ms.
![October 15, 1971<br />
Dear Ms. Steinem:<br />
I hear you are putting out MS., a magazine, and thought you might be interest in the chronology of the term--then again, maybe not. I am avoiding several overextended deadlines, and so have all the time in the world to tell you. The pronunciation, "Miz", by the way, is not inflexible. I simply though of both at the same time because I am from Missouri, and it was always necessary to ask whether Miz Lovercam or Miz Schnackenberg were married.<br />
<br />
At the end of 1961 my roommate became CORE's first female field secretary (CORE was founded in 1943 or 4). She was in Detroit lecturing on the Freedom Rides and ran into a little group called "News and Letters", headed by a woman who, I believe, knew Trotsky. They were about 50 people, mostly auto workers, and having withstood the vicissitudes of time and politics in this country are still, I think , about the same number. Anyway, they had a singularly sensible line for that time and Mari, having a great deal of the ex-nun about her, believed in encouraging them and strongarming me at the same time, and took out subscriptions for both of us.<br />
<br />
The copies that came to me where all addressed, "Ms. Sheila Michaels." I never knew if it was a means of saving space, a typo, or a radical posture. But it struck a responsive chord. Her subscription was to "Miss Mari Hamilton," but that gave no clarification, as she has always been so insistent upon the use of courtesy titles that she dragged the entire State of Alabama before the Supreme Court for their refusal to use them.<br />
<br />
I toyed with the idea for several years. When I finally left SNCC in 1965, I had a heightened respect for myself and a beginning self consciousness. (I had been a SNCC field secretary for 1962-4, and as there were few women in the position, and I was one of even fewere with any degree of autonomy, I had become thoroughly sick of the limitations, not to say aware of how little freedom I had been given and how tenuous that was. I though it was interesting that SNCC, which was founded by Diane Nash, and had a white Georgian, Jane Stembridge, as its first field secretary, should in time, as its importance grew, [typo] narrow its opportunities to women to near the point of exclusion.)<br />
<br />
I tried out the "Ms." then, in 1965. But it was more trouble than it then seemed worth. I would explain very carefully and continually that I refused to be defined by whether I "belonged" to a man. Well, I was laughed out of it.](https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/18935/archive/fullsize/53a36bc12fbaaaabedf0cd5d10a054d9.jpg?Expires=1716422400&Signature=pI8ou63dhM1czZho34ZNLK5DqUKuCUy0374W-5d98dyES02YDDPVxe5M59yEYkdsWZAa0FC30yIQXLw5h6UubsbEtlsZqhhuEKOpwhxW-XwjeE9eqj%7ECI5A6SG1iHDBcrWb4hONJXMzk7PSRA3wGMqgcYh4jAVi5WeCEN1tTfq38i9Tr2KzGRZTEOAi1GOAibNIVKhEht%7ELjLKenKOclYVF7vKrCYMDmK-bCnhsOm8w70nmieErTYt45jxcZWf6JLaw2k2bL5INu3PHBj-8hTMRN6hgyCVG7FsNUeSzbnuFAxFPvA21VOZ0h1qPlSjmwwn-lQsLr0LapWc8Wp7yECQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM "October 15, 1971<br />
Dear Ms. Steinem:<br />
I hear you are putting out MS., a magazine, and thought you might be interest in the chronology of the term--then again, maybe not. I am avoiding several overextended deadlines, and so have all the time in the world to tell you. The pronunciation, \"Miz\", by the way, is not inflexible. I simply though of both at the same time because I am from Missouri, and it was always necessary to ask whether Miz Lovercam or Miz Schnackenberg were married.<br />
<br />
At the end of 1961 my roommate became CORE's first female field secretary (CORE was founded in 1943 or 4). She was in Detroit lecturing on the Freedom Rides and ran into a little group called \"News and Letters\", headed by a woman who, I believe, knew Trotsky. They were about 50 people, mostly auto workers, and having withstood the vicissitudes of time and politics in this country are still, I think , about the same number. Anyway, they had a singularly sensible line for that time and Mari, having a great deal of the ex-nun about her, believed in encouraging them and strongarming me at the same time, and took out subscriptions for both of us.<br />
<br />
The copies that came to me where all addressed, \"Ms. Sheila Michaels.\" I never knew if it was a means of saving space, a typo, or a radical posture. But it struck a responsive chord. Her subscription was to \"Miss Mari Hamilton,\" but that gave no clarification, as she has always been so insistent upon the use of courtesy titles that she dragged the entire State of Alabama before the Supreme Court for their refusal to use them.<br />
<br />
I toyed with the idea for several years. When I finally left SNCC in 1965, I had a heightened respect for myself and a beginning self consciousness. (I had been a SNCC field secretary for 1962-4, and as there were few women in the position, and I was one of even fewere with any degree of autonomy, I had become thoroughly sick of the limitations, not to say aware of how little freedom I had been given and how tenuous that was. I though it was interesting that SNCC, which was founded by Diane Nash, and had a white Georgian, Jane Stembridge, as its first field secretary, should in time, as its importance grew, [typo] narrow its opportunities to women to near the point of exclusion.)<br />
<br />
I tried out the \"Ms.\" then, in 1965. But it was more trouble than it then seemed worth. I would explain very carefully and continually that I refused to be defined by whether I \"belonged\" to a man. Well, I was laughed out of it.")
Sheila Michaels was pivotal in bringing the term "Ms." into prominence as a default form or address for women regardless of their marital status. In the early 1960s, "Ms." was an obscure title that women did not use to describe themselves. An activist newspaper addressed to her and her roommate, Mary Hamilton, another civil rights activist, inspired Sheila to use the term as a feminist platform to push for a title that is not contingent upon a woman's relationship status. Eventually, it inspired the name of the feminist magazine Ms. Magazine. In a letter to Gloria Steinem, she outlined the chronology of her work in the women's movement, fighting for the term "Ms." to be used since 1965 to denote women as separate from their fathers and husbands. After a 1969 interview opportunity with WBAI radio to explain the women's movement, Sheila took the chance to promote the word "Ms.", firing up feminists with the potential for individual assertion and independence.
In Sheila's words, "I am now rather of the opinion that is a genteelism that embarrasses me slightly; I hope it will become archaic. I hope that eventually, it will be unnecessary to identify people by sex, as it is another trap.".
In addition to not wanting to be defined by a woman's relationship to a man, Sheila was incensed by the term "bastard". As a child born to parents who were not married to each other and being ostracized by her biological father, she found it "grossly insulting" and "the most anti-feminist word of condemnation in current use."