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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Political correctness gone mad in the EU Parliament

From time to time, you hear of political correctness gaining ground. Removing sex based discrimination is a noble quest, such as when jobs are reserved for either only males and females. However, in recent years, there has been a push to remove all traces of traditional male dominance in the nomenclature of professions, so a profession such as 'sportsmen' should now be re-designated 'athletes' since 'sportsmen' has the term men in the name. Read more about this in the following link:


The European Parliament has prohibited the use of the terms 'Miss' and 'Mrs' in case they upset female MEPs. According to a new "Gender-Neutral Language" guidance, the politicians are required to address female members by their full name only. It has also revealed that 'sportsmen' should be called 'athletes', 'statesmen' should be referred to as 'political leaders' , and terms like 'synthetic' or 'artificial' should be used in place of 'man-made'.
The guidance lists has also banned terms for describing professions, including fireman, airhostess,headmaster, policeman, salesman, manageress, cinema usherette and male nurse. However, according to the booklet, "no gender-neutral term has been successfully proposed" to replace 'waiter' and 'waitress', allowing parliamentarians to use these words in a restaurant or cafe.


Many MP's are not taking kindly to these changes, since they seem to be a case of political correctedness gone wild, totally out of control. At such times, these proposed changes either seem funny, or make people very irritated at having to change their language to accommodate such changes. The funny thing is, for many of these changes, there are not many such requests; but you give a free rein to some person desperate to correct historical imbalances, and you can end up in such a situation.

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