The European Parliament has banned the terms ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’ in case they offend female MEPs. The politically correct rules also mean a ban on Continental titles, such as Madame and Mademoiselle, Frau and Fraulein and Senora and Senorita.
Guidance issued in a new ‘Gender-Neutral Language’ pamphlet instead orders politicians to address female members by their full name only.
Officials have also ordered that ‘sportsmen’ be called ‘athletes’, ‘statesmen’ be referred to as ‘political leaders’ and even that ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ be used instead of ‘man-made’.
The guidance lists banned terms for describing professions, including fireman, air hostess, headmaster, policeman, salesman, manageress, cinema usherette and male nurse.
However MEPs are still allowed to refer to ‘midwives’ as there is no accepted male version of the job description.
The booklet also admits that “no gender-neutral term has been successfully proposed” to replace ‘waiter’ and ‘waitress’, allowing parliamentarians to use these words in a restaurant or café.
It has been circulated by Harold Romer, the parliament’s secretary general, to the 785 MEPs working in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Struan Stevenson, a Scottish Conservative MEP described the guidelines as “political correctness gone mad.”
Photo from Daily Mail, Source: Telegraph.co.uk
Soon they will ban the words mother and father:)
Hope this will be another grant proposal for armenian feminists:)
The socialist-secularists dominating the European parliament hate anything that has to do with liberty, Christianity, masculinity, and male-female differences.
The (Former) Western Europe is so feminized it deserves to die. It will die thanks to its demographic anomalies, abortion-loving feminism, sodomite abomination, pervasive welfare state and the young, dashing, militant, masculine Islam.
I say it is time to bury it.
🙂
David, you sound like an angry Evangelist preacher.
Nazarian,
I don’t sound like anything or anyone. I am an evangelical Christian and a Libertarian who believes in free markets. 🙂
And a very happy one.
Cheers!!!
P.S. Anger is something missing in the Former Western Europe. Anger at loss of freedom of speech. Anger at rape and violence against the European women. Anger that the socialist governments don’t publish the race/ethnicity of the violent criminals. Anger that the taxpayers are paying for the illegal immigrants. Anger that hundreds of cars are being burnt in France every day. Anger that there are 800 ghettos that the French police doesn’t enter. Anger that an ambulance has to be accompanied by a police escort to go to the Muslim immigrant neighborhoods of Sweden. Anger that any speech against Islamo-fascism is banned or pushed back. Anger that the Somali-born former Muslim politician had to take refugee in the USA because of the threats against her. In other words, there is anger against evil which is missing in the Former Western Europe. Anger that for 7 years now there are more ethnic Dutch leaving Netherlands than returning home. Anger that the young, educated, entrepreneurial Europeans are leaving that God forsaken land. Anger that Brussels and Amsterdam have fewer ethnic Belgians and Dutch than Muslim immigrants. Anger that there are fewer babies who have to carry the burden of taking care of a lot of older Europeans.
And on and on and on…. Therefore, they deserve to be defeated and they will be destroyed.
P.P.S. Steynonline.com is a very useful website. And Mark is the best English journalist today.
P.P.P.S. I am sure Armenia will prosper with socialism and secularism adding some homosexual agenda. Just attack God, destroy free markets and promote homosexuality.
You know, I was just sitting here thinking, “There’s something missing from the world today. Let me think, what could it be?” Then David comes along with the answer: “Anger!” Yes, what the world needs more of–definitely, ANGER!
Ani W.
You missed the point entirely. There is love, joy, happiness. And there is anger. Things must be taken in the context. Neither joy nor anger exist in vacuum. I presented numerous facts where anger is the justified response.
So, I suppose when a Muslim illegal immigrant in Netherlands rapes a Dutch girl, you have no anger. When the Dutch police will not publish the race/ethnicity/religion of the attacker, you have no anger. When a criticism of radical Islam is banned, one way or another, you have no anger. When the civilization is under siege in Former Western Europe, you have no anger. Just “love.” 🙂
Now I understand. “Love” is the answer…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIXzUSc8De0
Yeah, guess I’m more a New Testament kind of gal.
Ani,
If you are a New Testament gal, you should know:
(1) that there is nothing new in the New Testament that was not stated or alluded in the Old Testament. New Testament simply makes veiled things obvious.
(2) When Jesus Christ returns again, He will have a sword coming out of His mouth. He is coming to destroy and kill the enemies of evil. He is coming to crush the non-believers.
“He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword…” Revelations 1:16. Ouch…. a sword? Yup. Two-edged? Oh my…. Sharp? Oh dear…
(3) Armageddon won’t be a pleasant sight. There won’t be “love” when the forces of Good battle and destroy the forces of evil. Nope, “love” can’t exist for evil. Evil must be destroyed, crashed, eliminated.
(4) “And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15. I don’t see much “love” there.
(5) “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth.” Revelations 6:10.
Your interpretation of “love” somehow doesn’t fit with the New Testament.
…(yawn)….oh sorry, David, were you saying something? I dosed off….
I can’t believe that they did not have this policy before. The conservatives can call it what they want but it is a sign of progress towards gender equality. That Scottish guy probably wants to have a wife who sits at home, gives birth to kids and cooks all day long and then gets beaten up by her husband in the afternoon without any complaints.
Who delivers the mail now? A personperson?
The answer to your question is “postal carrier.” The U.S. is apparently ahead on this issue, because after having this debate about 10-20 years ago, pretty much nobody cares much anymore.
He-he, Observer, you are married, right? Let’s assume, for the sake of illustration, some arbitrary name for your wife. Now, how would you like it if you are officially introduced: “Mr. Armine Kirakosyan!”?
My point is that really STUPID traditions (like the same Karmir Xndzor, or “Mrs. John Smith”) should be disposed of, while there is absolutely no need to go to another extreme of stupidity and ban ALL traditions.
To set my point straight – I support the “political correctness gone mad” position. Not only because I am indeed married – Artashes ;), but also because I’m a linguist, and I hold the view, that a language is a living thing, and every attempt to control it via directives, laws and ‘political correctness’ stuff, will be useless, as long as the language community doesn’t accept it naturally.
What I’m leading at is – possibly, I could see a day in the distant future, when these word-forms would die out the natural way, when the concepts denoting them in the society die out as well or acquire different shades of meaning, but forcing it like this is just useless and funny, to put it mildly.
Why can’t you imagine this as being part of the natural evolution of the language? As Ani W. mentioned earlier, the US went through this decades ago and now it is part of the everyday language here.
Well, except for a small group of right wing conservatives who still complain. But the society at large doesn’t care about it any more.
The Armenian language is mostly gender neutral so for the Armenians this is not a big issue. For example, the word ‘sportsman’ in Armenian is not ‘sportatghamard’ but ‘marmnamarzik’ which is a gender neutral. We basically do not have any words where to show a specialty, we have added the word ‘tghamard’ at the end of the profession. Even for some words we have the female ending ‘ouhi’ like ‘usutschouhi’.
We also ddo not have the custom of calling someone’s wife ‘Mrs. John Smith’. Heck, in Armenia the wives do not take the husband’s last name which is the norm in the US and which I despise.
Yeah, that list sort of reads like a time travel episode–air hostess (have you flown lately???), cinema usherette (somebody somewhere needs an usher for a movie theater????), and the cringe-inducing manageress. Those at least seem misshapen terms anyway, so good riddance. The terms with the appendage “men” (like firemen and mailmen) don’t bother me, but neither do the alternative “firefighter” and “postal carrier.” So while “banning” isn’t the answer for society at large, retiring some of these antiquated words with more inclusive meanings is fine with me.
BTW, my husband gets accidentally addressed by my last name quite often, and has learned to deal with it. 😉
It seems to me that it would be misleading to regard the altering of languge vocabulary, gramatic structures by means of state intervention and, more so, by supra-statist structures like EP, as being somewhat “natural evolution of the language”.
Dialects evolve naturally, yes. The older the language, the more dialects and the more words a language has. That’s the natural pattern, untill an extraneous intervention disrupts that natural process.
That being said, for the last 200 years at least (strating from Napoleon especially), western languages have been manipulated and modified extensiely for the purposes of governance, cultural production and social engineering. Sociologists call this the “totalising project”. Words are being invented and added on daily basis. The reason why English vocabulary has more words than _any_ other language is not because English is an old language, but because a small number of linguists invent words and decide to officially add them to English.
Contemporary Eastern Armenian language (the one that is spoken in Armenia) is another example of state-modified language. This was done by the Soviets, so as to make the language a lot more efficient and practical for communication and governance purposes. Though it was not altered as much as many other Soviet languages.
The issue above, however, is not just about a language having more gender neutrality in grammatical structures. It’s a question of how people officially address each other in EP. And Armenian language does not escape it: Oryord (Miss) and Tikin (Mrs) are still the titles by which many people are addressed, even in Parliamentary debates, at least when those are held on civilized level. These forms of address are probably the only remaining terms used for politeness and civility…
In case of EP passing such restrictions, I guess this just absurd! There are very real and much more immediate _practical_ issues of gender inequality, but banning terms like “Miss” and “Mrs” and inserting some concocted terminologies in their stead is hardly a constructive step in addressing them :-/
This is why I’m not gonna run for MEP. EP’s a house full of very confused (mostly conservative) induviduals who work hard to confuse things even further.
There’s a seemingly “neutral” title that grows in popularity (in Britain at least) – “Ms”. Ms is neither Mrs nor Miss, so many females prefer to use that for purposes of professional communication. I use Ms, which sounds a lot like “Miss” and everyone’s happy.
If you say Mrs to Miss, or vice versa, the female will politely correct you, after which there is a short point of embarassment (because she is tactfully accusing you of not being politically corect), to which I just reply “Whatever” and carry on with the conversation. Now it seems every title that would suggest the gender of an employee is problematic, so I just go by calling everyone by their first name. Unfortunately for others, if you’re not in a position where you can call others by their first name, then you’re in trouble…
Next thing you’ll know they’ll prohibit Poland (and many Easter European member states, and Greece too) from using gendered surnames like “sky” and “ska”, “ov” “ova”, “in” “ina”, “oulos” “oulou” etcetera. Next step after that would be to invent a whole new Grammatical “EU standards” for member states.
The best solution is to get everyone to do a PhD. Like that everyone will be called a “Dr” 🙂 — I mean academic science and research in Western Europe is down the drain anyway — so no harm done. (but this de-gendered title “Dr” presents a new dillemma for a small minority of Eastern Armenian males who are called “Karen”, which is a female name in the West).
Ah… wasn’t is absolutely cool back in USSR? Everyone was a “Comrade”, everyone was “@nger” or “@nker” and for a very brief glimpse in human history everyithing made sense 🙂
I think the Soviets were more gender neutral than the West actually. At least when it came to positions below executive level. The top positions were filled by gray men but anywhere else the policy was gender equality. Who can forget female welders or crane operators. Only recently we have started to see women doing these kind of jobs in the US.
It’s funny to see giant dump trucks driving by themselves. Upon closer inspection is when you notice a petite lady driving it. And they are less reckless than most male drivers, too.
European names signify gender, too: Paul, Paula; Henry, Henrietta; and so on. Are they going to ban those too?
And what are they going to do after that in their quest to eliminate gender altogether? Have the women get mastectomies in exchange for the men getting castrated? Well, that still leaves the ovaries, brain structure differences, and a slew of gender-specific hormones. Why are they so terrified of gender differences?
It seems to me that what they need to do is somehow separate their essential, legally conceived, gender neutral “souls” from their bodies, fly up to where Plato’s forms are suspended, changeless for all eternity, and have their parliamentary debates there, where witless, shitless bureaucrats can carry-on for all eternity unencumbered by the real world.
There is a weird schizophrenic element in the type of thinking indulged in by the EU that worries me a little. It seems a little…inhuman and unreal.
I think the purpose is not to eliminate gender but discrimination based on gender. There is a big difference between these two.
Personally I think it is a crock!! We should all be proud of our titles I can’t wait to be a Mrs. Men and women will never be equal. I am ok with this! I would like for more men to want to be the “bread winner” Young men are learning that women should provide for them while they do nothing. I am grateful that us women or ladies (wich ever you prefer) have gained alot of rights and freedoms, but I also would like to see more men being the “MAN” of the house! When people use the word man kind some see it as a sexist word but what it is is refering to every human on earth not just the guys. That to me says equality if they are refering to everyone with those words. I belive there is such thing as people going too far with equality! No one is equal we are all different. The closest to equal you will get are identical twins and even then they are not completely equal. Deffinitions of equal
as great as; the same as (often fol. by to or with): The velocity of sound is not equal to that of light.
2. like or alike in quantity, degree, value, etc.; of the same rank, ability, merit, etc.: two students of equal brilliance.
3. evenly proportioned or balanced: an equal contest.
4. uniform in operation or effect: equal laws.
5. adequate or sufficient in quantity or degree: The supply is equal to the demand.
6. having adequate powers, ability, or means: He was equal to the task.
7. level, as a plain.
8. tranquil or undisturbed: to confront death with an equal mind.
9. impartial or equitable.
Dont we teach our children it is ok to be different? so why teach them that every one is the same when they are not. I am not equal to our president i don’t want to be! I am proud to be a mother and with a man who will take out the trash and mow the lawn!! I can do these things but I would wrather be spending time raising my children instead of working all the time while a day care full of children and other people teach my kids. I teach morals and values they can’t get at school. Schools are not allowed to teach those things. I am proud to be a woman and am proud to have a man ! I never felt less because I am called a woman. Every one is entitled to their opinion I do respect others opinions I just really felt the need to share!!
Actually after reading most of the comments here one comes to a conclusion that…
Anyway this kind of “politically correctness” is what will eventually end the democracy in all its forms. Think about it, if one can not really say smth., because it is not “politically correct” doesn’t it really mean that he/she doesn’t have freedom of speech. Of course we should also take into consideration that yapping about everything that crosses one’s mind is not freedom of speech at all. Still trying to change, or regulate words or phrases is just the next step towards the END. Remember when you push against something it will push back.
Nice one, and I have to say – I agree almost 100%
P.S. I mostly agree with Cyndi, people are different, and it actually is a good thing.