Man-ic

One of the blogs I love to read, and which astonishes me by being updated daily is Tom Reynolds' Random Acts of Reality.

Usually I enjoy reading it and am fascinated by both the content and style of writing.

But something jumped out one day. Just tucked on the end of the post.

"*I was told off for not being politically correct when calling the staffing of motors 'manning', hence 'resourced'."

I take HUGE objection to this nonsensical changing of words in the interests of 'Political Correctness'. We have person-hole covers, chairperson and Personchester United FC. OK, I made that last one up.

There was an article in yesterday's local paper about this too.

We have to get rid of any words ending in -ess, as it's sexist and discriminatory? Maybe it's because I'm male, but I don't get it.

I also find something strange about Kate Dean's comment "I would say being able to use the term "Mrs" is one of my achievements." It seems unlikely to me, but then, on second thoughts, I have seen pictures of Kate Dean, and it's quite an achievement that she got someone to marry her. Is that cruel? Perhaps, but there are lots of reasons to dislike and make fun of this woman. Or should I say person?


But I digress. Among rules being imposed by Glasgow Council is the order that the word "manpower" should be replaced by "staff" or "workers", otherwise women feel excluded or ignored. The discriminatory "mankind" should be replaced with "human beings".

Aah yes, that hugely discriminatory word "Mankind". In fact, shouldn't we be replacing it with hu-person beings? Similarly, this is Glasgow City Council, I'm not sure that 'workers' is accurate either.*

The problem is that this slavish devotion to 'Political Correctness" ignores the root of our language. You see, "mann" is an Anglo-Saxon word.

In Anglo-Saxon the word 'mann' meant human beings of both sexes and no disrespect was intended to the female of the species.

So let's just get over it and go back to agreeing on how much we all hate MANchester United.



*We knew it already, but there was a letter written recently by a council worker complaining she only had 1 day's worth of work each week. I'll link it when I find it.