Another man ban
Calwatchdog reports:
The radical feminists are on a roll. They continue to make gains in their attempt to make “man” and “men” officially unacceptable terms in government.
The latest weird politically correct idea to make it into legislation seeks to remove alleged “gender bias” from the language — at taxpayer expense. Using the word “man” is no longer allowed.
Washington state is now actively replacing “gender bias” words with new gender-neutral references, and requires the use of such words as “handwriting” instead of “penmanship,” “signal operator” for “signalman,” ”fisherman” with “fisher” and ”freshman” with “first-year-student.” There are no more “journeyman plumbers”; now they are “journey-level plumbers.”
I’m not sure what a “journey-level” is. This ridiculousness proves that gender-neutral language is ungrammatical, and not allowed in AP Style. How will I write?
And further:
When I was in college, I worked at a grocery store as a “box boy,” also known as a “bag boy.” During my two-year stint, the offensive term was changed to “courtesy clerk.”
“Nearly 3,500 Washington state code sections, out of a total of about 40,000 have been tediously scrubbed of gender bias, although most involve adding pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ to augment the existing ‘he’ and ‘his,’” the Huffington Post reported recently.
Washington’s Legislature, controlled by Democrats, recently passed the bill outlawing these manly words and ordered the state’s law books to be painstakingly edited to reflect the new man-free law.
According to the Huffington Post, Washington is the fourth state to eliminate gender “bias” from its official lexicon. Florida, North Carolina and Illinois preceded Washington.
Some think this is a proper use of lawmakers’ time, and taxpayer money because of their belief that we must eliminate gender “bias” from the language. ”Nearly 3,500 Washington state code sections, out of a total of about 40,000 have been tediously scrubbed of gender bias, although most involve adding pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ to augment the existing ‘he’ and ‘his,’” the Daily Mail UK reported.
I recall when I was on the Otago University Council the OUSA SRC passed a resolution demanding the university rename Chairmen of Departments, Chairpersons. I told the SRC they could pass what they wanted, but I wasn’t going to undermine my credibility on Council by wasting their time with such trivia. It wasn’t that I was against a name change, but that it ranked around 99/100 on my list of priorities after lecturer assessment, fees, facilities etc etc.