C’est bien

Leave it to the French to make things right by banishing the use of the honorific “mademoiselle” (miss) in their government’s official forms and registries. It’s expected that henceforth, French citizens will be officially tagged only as “madame” and “monsieur,” forms of address that, unlike “mademoiselle,” do not necessarily identify their “matrimonial situation.” There’s political correctness for you. Vive la France!

The New York Times has reported that the advocacy campaign was waged by two French feminist groups, Osez le feminisme! (Dare to be feminist!) and Les Chiennes de Garde (The Watchdogs). The banishment of “mademoiselle,” however, applies in the government sector only. It’s uncertain when the private sector will follow suit, but the prospect is something that the two groups are hoping for, with the end in view that the word will no longer be part of popular usage. Meanwhile, those romantic souls who pledged loving commitment by a particular ditty (“A small café, Mam’selle/A rendezvous, Mam’selle/The violins were warm and sweet/And so were you, Mam’selle…”) can rest easy that they are not mouthing incendiary, although retro, lyrics.

It’s a wonder that the use of “mademoiselle” has endured this far, given the innate spirit of resistance in the land of liberté. As the two feminist groups pointedly observed in a joint website: “You’ve never wondered why we don’t call a single man ‘mondamoiseau,’ or even ‘young male virgin’? Not surprising: This sort of distinction is reserved for women.” Indeed. It’s quite blatant in our own neck of the woods where, for example, a commercial pokes fun at women and their marital status by having a single girl prissily straightening out someone who had dared address her as “Misis” (married woman): “Miss pa po ako!” And where, for a recent example, a member of the defense at Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment trial prefaced his questions with a jesting comment on the female witness’ being a “miss,” which elicited an amused murmur from the gallery and a little (or nervous) laugh from the subject herself.

And, of course, in formal Filipino, a woman is identified as unmarried (“binibini”) and married (“ginang”), but a man is neither here nor there and is simply “ginoo” (the equivalent of “monsieur”). “Ms” is not used as often as it should be, and somewhat grudgingly; it being a Western term, it’s regarded as of a piece with the feminist movement that the dodos in this society lump together with the usual suspects—communism, atheism, etc. (But what can be expected from a country—now the only one in the world—where divorce is still illegal? Don’t get us started.)

Yes, the French. Leave it to their feminists to blaze the trail in the fundamental matter of referencing women, and to convince their prime minister, Monsieur Francois Fillon, to issue the enabling order to state administrators. Now if only they would turn their attention to a vexing state of affairs that allows such sexual predators as, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn to flex muscle and occupy positions of power. A prominent member of the French Socialist Party and once the powerful chief of the International Monetary Fund and former front-runner to become the next president of France, DSK (as he likes to call himself) returned in September 2011 to Paris after the dropping of criminal charges filed against him for his sexual attack on a hotel maid in New York. No proof beyond reasonable doubt, the court said, although he said the sexual encounter was “a moral failure” on his part. Now the man is again in the limelight for purported links to prostitution and corruption! (An attempted rape case that was belatedly filed against him by a young journalist was thrown out simply because it was past the prescribed suit period.)

To be sure, there’s still much to put aright in the land of égalité, even if a woman, Segolene Royal, ran as the Socialist presidential candidate in 2007. (She lost to Nicolas Sarkozy.) Simone de Beauvoir admitted as much in an interview published in the Yale French Studies in 1986. Replying to a question on how she estimated the effects of her feminist work, she said it “aroused much indignation among male readers,” including Albert Camus.

“[T]here were some men I would have expected to agree with me, like Camus, whose reactions astonished me. [Francois] Mauriac, on the other hand, did not. But there was a lot of hostility, and that’s when I realized that there really was a macho hostility toward women, a very vehement hostility,” De Beauvoir said.