“Britain’s woke University of Bristol has banned a raft of supposedly offensive terms, including “gendered” words like “manpower” and “mankind” and age-related nicknames like “millennial” and “baby boomer”.
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I suggest re-categorizing that post under Insanity.
Anyway, they won’t succeed in changing the English language.
Trying to change a language which has evolved over a vast stretch of time by issuing orders is like trying to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers (as in Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”).
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If we keep going along with this idiocy, we’ll all end up masked, blindfolded, and in straightjackets to avoid offending anybody.
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They have had some success at changing the English language, as in the use of the third person plural pronouns they, them, their to represent singular referents of unspecified gender, where singular masculine had earlier been the default. I try to remember to use that default unless there is a reason to use the feminine pronoun. When you’re in a culture war, you can’t afford to give an inch, or to let the adversary’s successes go unchallenged.
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The use of the third person plural pronoun for reference to a single male or female is very old.
Fowler (“Modern English Usage”) gives an example from Thackeray: “A person can’t help their birth.”
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Reading anything that uses “they/them” pronouns to refer to someone is the most annoying torture ever devised. “They and them are themselves them that they said them to they them them them!!!”
The idiots should be tortured themselves for the crime of mutilating the English language!
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We have seen for many years an assault upon the English language that is driven by the ideology of victimhood, including the left’s version of feminism and by racism disguised as racial identity.
In fiction, this is illustrated in the book (and subsequent film) The Human Stain when the protagonist, commenting on the continued absence of two of his students five weeks into his course, states that he has never laid eyes on them and asks the class if they actually exist, or “are they spooks”. Despite the fact that he was completely unaware of the absent students’ race and used the term “spooks” to suggest that the students were insubstantial rather than as a racial pejorative, he was forced to resign over the remark.
In real life, there have been several well-publicized incidents over the use of the word niggardly. This word has absolutely no etymological connection with any racial term, and thus has no racial context at all, but its use has resulted in outrage and in some instances in disciplinary action taken against those using it. I believe that one or two of these incidents were triggered by the purposeful use of the word as a double entendre, intended to disguise a racial slur as something completely innocent, but most of the incidents were by educated writers and speakers correctly and innocently using the word. Most telling, in many cases when the offended party was made aware of the innocent nature and use of the word, they continued to insist that the word was offensive to them. They claimed that their feelings were more important than any actual facts and should take precedence over correct usage of English.
Others have pointed out the idiocy of the use of third-person pronouns when first-person masculine pronouns are both correct and results in less stilted and awkward prose. We have seen completely innocent words and terms like “blackboard” and “white-out”; there are too many examples to even begin to list them here.
My cousin is a teacher who works with hearing impaired students. A few years ago, she posted on social media an article which decried the use of the term “hearing impaired” to refer to those with…well, with hearing impairments. The article suggested that the term was offensive and should be replaced with the term “hard of hearing”. When I commented on her social media post that this made no sense, she claimed that “hearing impaired” should be dropped because it has been used in a pejorative manner. I countered that cruel and mean-spirited people will always exist and will always find a way to use any term offensively, that the term “hard of hearing” will be used as an insult within days (minutes?) of its adoption. Rather than changing terms every year or three in a vain attempt to stay ahead of these jerks, I suggested that the hearing impaired community should develop thicker skin. Surprisingly, she responded fairly positively to my input.
In short, we must stop acceding to the demands of the woke mob. When we are attacked for using correct English and are falsely accused of racism, sexism, or any other prejudice, we need to stand our ground and refuse to bend the knee.
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It would all be hilariously funny if it weren’t for the fact that the demands of these nitwits are being catered to, and normal people are suffering for it.
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Thanks. That’s interesting and something of a relief. I just don’t recall seeing it too much before the gender-neutral language and pronoun wars started. Maybe it just didn’t register or catch my attention before. And I don’t recall having used the third person plural for singular reference that way, but maybe that was just automatic and unconscious. In any case, it sounds ungrammatical to me now that I’m paying closer attention. But I’ve been pretty much a grammar hawk since around 1980, so…
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It’s kind of late so I’ll just combine a few “offensive” terms into a sentence.
Chiggers can quickly find the chinks in an armor of a niggardly quality.
How do all you Mig-15s like them apples?
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Haha! Thats a good one!
The thought police are going to come after you…
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