How ‘gender neutrality’ could screw up the next generation
by Frank Furedi, spiked:
At first sight, the call from Ann Millington, chief executive of Kent Fire and Rescue, to change the name of the children’s TV character Fireman Sam to Firefighter Sam seems trivial. But this is more than just a silly exercise in virtue-signalling. It also echoes and reinforces the growing subjugation of the conventional distinction between boys and girls, and men and women, to the ethos of ‘gender neutrality’.
In this case, gender-neutral vocabulary is being justified on the grounds that it challenges stereotyping. Millington claims that adopting ‘firefighter’ would help change the image of firefighting as a male or a manly occupation, therefore encouraging girls and women to think of it as a job they could do, too.
Yet calls to purge the English language of gender-specific words are not just made on the grounds of challenging gender stereotypes. The crusade for a gender-neutral vocabulary also argues that existing pronouns, such as she and he, as well as references to men and women, or ladies and gentlemen, excludes so-called non-binary people. As Dara Hoffman-Fox, a self-styled genderqueer mental-health counsellor, argues:
‘Using gendered terms – such as “ladies [and] gentlemen” – is highly presumptuous, especially in today’s society, in which many persons are aware that they don’t identify as male or female and therefore are uncomfortable with this type of language’
From this standpoint, existing gender-specific vocabulary hurts and offends non-binary people and anyone else who feels that words like men and women do not describe them accurately.
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