I find the new term to be incredibly offensive. Who can I sue?
Posted on 04/23/2013 3:03:39 AM PDT by rickmichaels
SEATTLE - Washington state’s governor signed into law on Monday the final piece of a six-year effort to rewrite state laws using gender-neutral vocabulary, replacing terms such as “fisherman” and “freshman” with “fisher” and “first-year student.”
Lawmakers have passed a series of bills since 2007 to root out gender bias from Washington statutes, though a 1983 state mandate required that all laws be written in gender-neutral terms unless a specification of gender was intended.
“This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman,” said Democratic state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle.
The new gender-neutral references, for example, include “journey-level plumber” instead of “journeyman plumber,” “handwriting” in place of “penmanship,” and “signal operator” for “signalman.”
“There’s no good reason for keeping our legal terms anachronistic and with words that do not respect our current contemporary times,” Kohl-Welles, the 475-page bill’s sponsor, told Reuters.
Several words, however, aren’t easy to replace, said Kyle Thiessen, the state’s code reviser, who heads up the 40-staff Washington Code Reviser’s Office agency.
The state likely won’t change the words “airmen” and “seaman,” for example, because of objections by the state’s Washington Military Department, he said.
Civil engineering terms such as “man hole” and “man lock,” also will not be changed because no common-sense substitutes could easily be found, Thiessen said.
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,” Thiessen said.
The bill passed the Democrat-controlled state House 70-22 on April 9 and unanimously cleared the state Senate on Feb. 8 before being signed by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee.
Washington state is the nation’s fourth to boast of eliminating gender bias from its official lexicon, following in the footsteps of Florida, North Carolina and Illinois, Kohl-Welles said.
Other states that have passed gender-neutral constitutional mandates include California, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Utah, Kohl-Welles said. At least nine other states are currently considering gender-neutral legislation, she said.
“Words matter,” said Liz Watson, a National Women’s Law Center senior adviser. “This is important in changing hearts and minds.”
ridiculous
Making things up again
The louder it screams "IMPORTANT !" on the outside of the envelope, the less valuable the contents are.
Same thing here.
Well, he does now and I gave my 5 year old grandson a little indian boy statue.
Like my son in law said: "We didn't play cowboys and native americans".
I find the new term to be incredibly offensive. Who can I sue?
“Words matter “ sez Lez Watson.
Ergo She is having dictionary changed to vaginary.
“Words matter,” said Liz Watson, a National Women’s Law Center senior adviser. “This is important in changing hearts and minds.”
She’s totally correct. Words DO MATTER they are the means of translating mental concepts into communicable concepts to another person.
Imagine if the language you speak had no words for Love, Freedom, Honor, etc. It would be difficult to communicate those concepts to another person who spoke that same language.
This is a insidious path they are trodding upon!
Now the question comes up is what are they going to do with the word “homo” which is Latin for ‘man’?
I thought handwriting was just the physical object of something written by hand (or sometimes foot :-) while penmanship was the quality of that handwriting? The words are not interchangeable. If they had any imagination, they would think of new words like maybe ‘penwritingship’. It’s not like there’s a law against it.
To quote my wife, “We are surrounded by idiots!”
Like Mathematics and Arithmetic, Penmanship and Handwriting are two entirely different things.
Are the idiots going to presume also to change the name of woman and women to wo’s and wee’s?!
No good reason - I guess the effort being a ridiculous waste of time and money doesn't count.
So I guess we are all humyns now
mens and wymyns
“Handwriting” is offensive to those individuals without a hand. The use of the term “a leg up” is offensive to people who lost a leg. The term “brain food” must be terribly offensive to Liz Watson...
It is just a really good thing that the word ASSHOLE is gender neutral.
Post of the day!!!!!!
What about craftsmanship, workmanship,brinksmanship, statesmanship, et al?
Oh, and for what it is worth, having experienced WA, and enjoyed most of what wasn’t politics related, I chose to never (well never is a long time)go near the place if I could help it.
You are absolutely right.That the PC fanatics do not perceive that is further evidence of their abysmal stupidity.
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