Erasing “man” and “men,” one state at a time

July 8, 2013

By Katy Grimes

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?

Kinder, gentler, gender-neutral state

In February, I wrote “A kinder, gentler, gender-neutral state,” about the creepy push to take the word “man” out of law books, school books, and spoken language.

Washington state had already spent the last six years changing language in the law books of the state.

Word such as “dairymen,” “freshmen” and even “penmanship” were on the short list for neutering when I wrote my story in February. And now they have been neutered.

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.

But what about the words WoMAN, FeMALE, MANager, MAN, ReaSON, PerSON, GovernMENt? What will we do when we have to use these offensive words? I am guessing “HIStory” will no longer be allowed; “HERstory” will probably replace it.

Perhaps someone will author a bill to change the word “politician” to “dimwit.”