Brickbat: I Can't Believe You Said That

Iqoncept / Dreamstime.com

Students in a course at England's Hull University were warned to use "gender sensitive" language or their grades would be reduced.

Comments

[Adans smith]

How long before they demand all text books be rewritten.?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Hull is doing yeoman's work in showing potential employers which schools have their priorities straight in cranking out educated workers.

[Entelechy]

Whoever turned Hull University into a place what stops tars from calling ships 'she' should be keelhauled forthwith.

[John C. Randolph]

Someday I may need to write an employee's handbook that explains in no uncertain terms that bitching about anyone else speaking English instead of Newspeak will get their SJW asses canned on the spot.

-jcr

[Vapourwear]

Tripleplusgoodthink, comrade!

[Rufus The Monocled]

These linguistic police are probably part of the surge that saw sales of '1984' rise without a hint of self-awareness and fact they ARE the very nasty parts that make the book up.

[Mickey Rat]

Are they buying the book as a cautionary tale or as an instruction manual?

[Princess Trigger]

Beech, what did you say to me?

[Acosmist]

Was it a Latin exam? You should be gender sensitive!

[Libertarian]

It is obvious that in the future each student will have to worry about *their* word ussge.

[Libertarian]

RIPJ. Geils.

[AlmightyJB]

Can I just use "Bitch" to cover everyone?

[$park? leftist poser]

Bitch please!

[KerryW]

Only if they identify as a bitch. (I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said "Yes I'm a bitch, so f*cking what?")

[Flex Nasty B.I.G.]

I'm in favor of actual, genuine gender equality, and I don't have a problem with gender-neutral language. It's really not that hard to say mail carrier instead of mailman.

Nobody in this story is asking for students to recognize sixteen different made-up genders or something nutty - just to use language that equally respects the two traditional genders. It's possibly a bit overboard for the professor in question to mark down papers over it, but it's also arguable that it's an expected part of writing style anymore.

I think it sets our movement back when some libertarians jeer at even reasonable, non-coercive efforts to make language gender neutral. It makes us look backwards culturally. We should stick to fighting for individual rights, and not try to tilt against the windmills of cultural change as well.

[DaveSs]

The point here is that these students will be punished for not using University approved language. In other words, they are being censored.

[Mickey Rat]

The ourpose here is purpose of Newspeak. It is a concerted attempt to make certain concepts unthinkable by banning the words that most accurately describe them.

[El Oso]

Fuck you, you faggoty feminist Chink...

[Azathoth!!]

Individual rights means treating people as individuals--not lumping them all under a collective, ungrammatical 'their'

[DC_36]

Whether or not you prefer to use gender-neutral language, or instead to use the more-correct specific terms of mailman/mailwoman, don't go around chastising others for their choice if it's accurate. If someone calls a woman a 'mailman' it just makes them an idiot, and makes them easier to identify as an idiot.

You're hedging and waffling, I see. The Univ.'s measure is absolutely overboard, and it is erroneous and wishful to think that something like their demands are an 'expected' part of writing style; writing needs to be accurate and technically correct, not gender-equal.

This effort is absolutely coercive - I realize you have to avoid calling it that so you can pretend to be open-minded and neutral, but it's threatening punishment if you don't use the approved words. That's clear-cut strong-arming.

And the 'windmills of cultural change', WTF - so whatever everyone else decides, you just go with? 'Don't rock the boat', right? Fighting for the right and just and reasonable thing often involves pissing off people who are against right, just, and reasonable - if you've not the stomach for that, sit it out altogether.

[Acosmist]

Then speak your own fucking made-up language. English has gender for some things. Latin more genders and a lot more inflection. If you said "I'm in favor of not declining nouns and adjectives and not conjugating verbs in Latin" you'd be saying something equivalent.