Word: neutering
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Booted and largely bespectacled throngs of long-haired teenagers dressed in the neuter hues of khaki and denim, waltz in the aisles passing fruit and sunflower seeds. Joni's arrival turns the camp town meeting into a sing-along chautauqua. After the concert, the fans mass around the main stage exit to wait for Joni, and when she appears they voice timid hellos, give her bouquets or simply smile...
...first TV assignment. She was unforgettable as Happy Hotppint, a sexless elf in appliance commercials. "Nothing can surpass the thrill when I saw myself on television," she remembers. "In fact, I was so excited I almost forgot about the pain. I was supposed to be a flat-chested neuter elf. Well, I wasn't flat-chested, and it was painful...
...chairperson of Senator McGovern's task force on the environment," begins Robert N. Rickles' letter to constituents. Chairperson? The title is no partisan issue: the G.O.P. also had a chairperson in Miami Beach. Thus another label comes unglued. The man and his woman are Out; the neuter "person" is In-and only the chair is allowed to linger undisturbed. Chairperson is just the latest exchange in that great linguistic bazaar where new terms are traded for old. The elderly "Mrs." and the shy "Miss" now curtsy to the crisp, swinging "Ms." "Congressone" has been suggested in federal corridors...
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...
Stout is out, and so are other masculine drinks like ale and porter. Even beer "has a much thinner taste," according to Winick. The tastelessness of convenience foods like instant coffee "helps reinforce our acceptance of the neuter" in the rest of our culture. In ballet, adults adore the unisexuality of Nureyev; in books, children prefer easy-to-read real-life adventures to fairy tales with their "idealized, romantic rolemodels of the masculine and feminine...