Censorship by Language Reform
In his essay on the liberty of the press, the great philosopher David Hume wrote what has been many times quoted, but has never achieved the status of a cliché:
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom that it must steal in upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received.
I think this is borne out pretty well by our current experience. Freedom is being nibbled away in the name of justice, security, well-being, and even of freedom itself, that is to say true freedom, not the merely apparent kind — for nothing is easier for power-hungry intellectuals to justify than the coercion that they favor to bring about true freedom.
However, Hume goes on to say something that seems to me not to be quite true:
But if the liberty of the press ever be lost, it must be lost at once.
He says this because he assumes that the only serious threat to freedom of the press comes from a despotic government desirous of imposing centralized censorship of what appears in print, and which it is be able to do by fiat. This is not so; there are other, subtler threats to press freedom.
I have noticed that whenever I used the word “Mankind” in an article, it emerges in the printed version, without my permission, as “Humankind,” a word I despise as both ugly and sanctimonious. (In the Oxfam shop round the corner from where I live there is a poster with a slogan that nauseates me: “Thankyou for Being Humankind.”) The change is made with such regularity, and in so many publications, that the government might as well have decreed it, though in fact it has not. There is, presumably, a monstrous regiment of sub-editors at work, all of like mind.
Of course the change lacks logic. If Mankind is objectionable because of its masculinity, Humankind is no better. It still contains the dread word, or should I say syllable, “man.” Nor would “Hupersonkind” be better, because of the masculinity of the syllable “son.” To eradicate all sexism from the word, it should be “Huperoffspringkind.” This is clearly ridiculous. But censorship by language reform is not a matter of logic, it is a matter of power. As Humpty Dumpty said, it is a question of who is to be master (if one may still be allowed the word), that’s all.
I am not alone the victim of the monstrous regiment of sub-editors. I get to review quite a number of books published by academic presses, British and American, and I have found that the use of the impersonal “she” is now almost universal, even when the writer is aged and is most unlikely to have chosen this locution for himself (or herself). It is therefore an imposed locution, and as such sinister.
I cannot say my role in resisting this tiny tyranny has been or is an heroic one. On the contrary: I now simply avoid the use of certain ways of putting things so that the question does not arise. I do not want to have a blazing argument with editors or sub-editors each time I use the word “Mankind” and it is changed without my permission, nor do I not want to stop writing altogether; and the matter, after all, is a very small one. How petty one would look to argue about it, how foolish to cut one’s nose off to spite one’s face if one refused to write any more because of it!
And so the censors have achieved a small victory. They will seek out new locutions to conquer.
I would also ban the word “woman” . In Old English it was wifmon. “lady” is also suspect: Old English hlafdige = kneader of the bread. Moral: Do not dig too deep in the history of words but accept their present meaning.
Yes, but if my memory of Anglo-Saxon language studies is still any good, “wer-man” meant man just as “wyfman” meant woman.
In other words, to denude our language of the suffix “man” is inane. Its Anglo-Saxon root phrase meant “human.”
Yuck – there’s that oppressive three letter slur to women. Oops, there it is again!
Oddly I’m in the process of reading “The Third Reich in Power”, and the author is discussing the subjugation of the German press during the Nazi era. This was mostly not done by outlawing the sale of certain papers, at least domestically. It was done by publishing an endless supply of guidelines for the papers regulating what stories could be reported and how.
Huperoffspringkind?
Doubleplusgood!
Start your own publication. Edit it the way you like. Stop moaning. What you describe: owners of publications using your contributions the way they like, is not censorship. Nor does it abridge anyones freedom.
In 2010 we say ‘three times’ instead of ‘thrice’ and ‘humankind’ instead of ‘mankind’ and use ‘she’ much of the time. No doubt things will be different in 2020.
Roy M: I think you’re missing the point. This is not a question of someone posting comments on someone else’s blog. The question here involves a contract between a publisher and a writer, and just how far an “editor” can go without destroying the author’s manuscript.
I mean, Roy, you are certainly not so naive as to recognize the hand of feminism and political correctness, making sure that only “safe discourse” is allowed into the “public space?” In other words, censorship. “No author published in America may use the word ‘mankind,’ period.”
I may be a bit sensitive on this point because the exact same thing happened to me, on the very first word of the first book I ever published. We had a contract, and my book was turned over to an editor, and that HORRIBLE word “mankind” was mindlessly blue-penciled. I think you know why, Roy. The editor thought that the word “mankind” was “sexist.” I had to accept the change or be found in violation of contract.
It may happen to you some day, Roy. I kind of hope it does.
I had a webmaster suddenly decide he was also an editor and changed the ending of a short story I had submitted simply because he didn’t like my ending! I objected vehemently to this high-handedness and said if he did not want to publish the story as written, he was to take it down. He took it down.
The first word. Ouch.
I write papers for publication in scientific journals and the odd text book so I have other problems on the whole (I wrote a book chapter last week intoducing some new mathematical methods and the man said it was great but could I leave out the math). That said, I suppose the most famous and effective defence of the blue pen is “What we Talk About When We Talk About Love”. Editors are our friends. And, more to the point, the thng that Theodore Dalrymple is complaining about still isn’t censorship because there are publications in America that do allow the use of the word mankind and if there aren’t then he is free to start one.
Is this a general conservative view? “All publications have to use lanuage we like otherwise we are suffering under the yoke of totalitarian censorship.” Or is it just Theodore Dalrymple being a bit weak?
‘Is this a general conservative view? “All publications have to use language we like otherwise we are suffering under the yoke of totalitarian censorship.”’
Well, if a publication won’t publish something in the language the author likes, it amounts to censorship. The author went to lengths to explain that it wasn’t a huge matter (eg “this tiny tyranny”), just that it bothered him, but the fact remains that he is unable to express the notion of “mankind” in any articles. The concept attached to that word has been censored, plain and simple. That’s nothing to do with conservativism, it’s just an accurate telling of the way things are.
I don’t know where you got totalitarianism from, as the author didn’t mention the government once.
Incidentally, do look up the very lefty notion of the “chilling effect” on free speech before you claim that conservatives are thin skinned about such matters.
No doubt things will be different in 2020. The fear a number of people have is whether we are allowed to notice how different.
All that will be different will be what they are whining about. Complaining about language is a form of power-mongering, and hence they can not allow themselves to be satiated.
These are the same linguistic yardbirds who also gave us ‘chairperson’…so to be semantically correct,that word should morph into ‘chairperdaughter’ for the sake of terminological accuracy
This must have something to do with all that messy violence-is-non-violence thing over at Greenpeace:
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/climate/2010/04/will_the_real_climategate_plea_1.html
You could always choose to ignore those who would have you write as they wish, instead of following your own muse. If they don’t understand the meaning of the word “mankind” without reading something else into it, that’s their problem. They’re obviously too busy playing an internal game of “telephone” to comprehend anything they read accurately anyway.
Politically correct speech is yet another effort to control you and your thoughts, and should be rejected at every opportunity. Speak your mind. You have the right. Let others deal with their own “offencism”.
BackwardsBoy: Read on. This is not a situation where the author gets to insist. He either caves to the editor, or withdraws his manuscript, and I believe that the second choice would be extremely expensive.
Editors are sometimes good and sometimes bad, usually good. But my favorite story is about the time when some moron blue-pencilled Winston Churchill for “ending a sentence with a preposition.” Churchill angrily wrote in reply, “This is something up with which I will not put.”
Bravo! When will the feminists get around to changing the Le-La, La-El, etc. of most of the world’s languages where every cottin’ pickin’ noun has a gender, but the collective form is ALWAYS masculine?
Answer: they won’t, because only the English speaking world puts up with the nonsense.
Bring on the Burquas!
Old Soviet-era complaint: “Knowing the future isn’t a problem. It’s the past that keeps changing.”
If you already have a reputation, you do not need a publisher to publish a book. Hire your own editor, if you want, then create a pdf file and send it to LULU. They will publish it at the same cost to you that it would have in a bookstore, and you can order them one at a time as people ask for copies. The reason this works is that the old economic rationale for publishers — that it was incredibly expensive to print just one book so you needed the economies of scale from printing many identical copies of the same book after a print run had been set up — no longer hold true when the only retooling needed to go from one book to another is to load a new pdf file into the computerized printer. Publishers are in sad shape because the only real “value added” they have to bring to their authors today is the expertise of their editors and the prestige of their imprimatur. But if you already have a reputation you don’t need their prestige, and nowadays the best editors are free-lance…
This March of the Editorial Gramscis has been on for decades. Examples range from the disgusting condescention of the National Geographic, as far as the magazine Civil Engineering. CE was once an ornament to the profession, keeping engineers up on latest techniques and examples of human creations of items and processes making human life in the natural world more comfortable and efficient. Now those products of ingenuity take a distant second to politically correct investments of bazillions of dollars and man-hours into ‘compliance’ with extremist demands for ultra-environmental sensitivity, and for religious devotion to the supremacy of global warming as the number one concern. The chanting of these praises occupies more space than the descriptions of ingenuity.
Why engage the political insensibilities of the politically correct yet intellectually stunted statist? Ignore them and continue as you wish. Manknd will not hurt for the worse.
I believe that Theodore Dalrymple hit it on the head in an earlier piece. (Hopefully I am not misattributing the quote) He said that “the purpose of enforced political correctness is not just to rule but to humiliate.” That always struck me as a wonderful observation. When an intelligent and free-thinking individual is forced to use some grammatical monstrosity that they would never willingly use, then that person is humiliated at the most basic and profound level. They have been “controlled” without the apparatus of control. It achieves that internal policing of thought which Orwell identified as the most thorough form of totalitarianism. Naturally we all know that this is the end product that language “reform” aims at. And all in name of making the world a “nicer place.”
I was watching a recent NCAA basketball tournament pregame show, hosted by the typical PC network commentator. He referred to one of the team’s uniform colors as “dark and purple.” The uniforms were black with purple trim, of course, and you could almost hear the PC sensor in his head screeching to a halt at “black” and substituting a more ‘acceptable’ but ridiculous descriptor.
This is PC at work among the true believers. They censor themselves, and see no problem with censoring others. After all, it’s for the public good – in case you didn’t know.
Some state dept twit was in Africa, let me repeat that, they were visiting the CONTINENT of AFRICA. This person then proceeded to refer to the locals as being “african-american”.
The Dalrymple quote is here:
Since the well-established word ‘humanity’ is available as a benign synonym for ‘mankind’, I have always believed that ‘humankind’ is an intentional disfigurement of the language: a deliberately hideous scar designed to flaunt the power of the thought police.
“Since the well-established word ‘humanity’ is available as a benign synonym for ‘mankind’, I have always believed that ‘humankind’ is an intentional disfigurement of the language: a deliberately hideous scar designed to flaunt the power of the thought police.”
Absolutely right. The ostensible purpose of politically correct language is to “correct” the language so that it no longer inculcates prejudice at a sublimnal level. In other words, it’s a project to affect attitudes by controlling language. If the reformers had a democratic bone in their body, you’d think this would give them pause. The secretive exercise of power is creepy.
The real purpose, as you say, is quite different. It’s like the Communist language described by Vaclav Havel: the shopkeeper who puts a banner “Workers of the World Unite!” in his window isn’t expressing solidarity with proletariat, he’s expressing fear of the authorities, in the officially approved.
If you want evidence for this, look at the contradictions in the “non-sexist” guidelines. The most important of these guidelines is the abolition of gendered or supposedly gendered noun forms: “actress” > “actor”; “chairman” > “chair”, “chairperson”, etc. But enlightened Germans, despite subscribing to almost identical feminist ideology as Anglo-Saxons, are supposed to do the opposite, creating novel feminine forms like “Aerztin” (‘doctress’) beside “Arzt” (‘doctor’). And in the Anglo-American academy, the heartland of political correctness, we get the linguistically illiterate “professor emerita” alongside the traditionally gender-neutral “professor emeritus”. Obviously, the point is not to introduce a coherent system, but simply to change whatever was there before, as a way of signalling allegience (or coercing a sign of submission) to the new order.
Bang on ChrisB! It’s an exercise in power; they don’t care what you say or do, so long as they get to give the orders. That’s why searching for consistency in the Po-Mo world is a waste of time. Since they don’t believe in objective truth, but only power-based narratives, they’re simply asserting a power-based narrative and trying to force as many as possible to submit. It’s nothing more than “it’s own turn to rule.”
Got another quote for you, from “Sin City” (please excuse the crudity, but it is EXTREMELY apt):
“Power don’t come from a badge, or a gun. Power comes from lying, lying big and getting the whole damn world to play along with you. Once you’ve got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain’t true you’ve got ‘em by the balls.”
“Sin City” isn’t exactly a deep, meaningful movie. But every so often there’s a gem lying in the muck.
What folly to imagine God would bestow freedom to publish upon the press while denying them liberty to edit. Would you have freedom of the press become freedom of any old person to print and distribute any writing they care to? With great freedom must come great responsibility. Take for example the New York Times. Their layer upon layer of editors and fact-checkers reassures a public hungry for objective fact and opinion that what appears on their pages is purest sterling.
Take for example the New York Times. Their layer upon layer of editors and fact-checkers reminds a public hungry for objective fact and opinion that what appears on their pages is purest crap.
Hupers? I saw some folksinger do this shtick about 35 years ago. Can’t remember his name. I agree, however, it’s ridiculous.
For myself, the made up words that yank my chain are the artificial pronouns “hier” and “zie,” supposedly used to replace the default “his” and “he.” When I see them, my eye cross and my thought process comes to a crashing, jangling halt. And then I close the book, magazine, or web page, because the author is clearly a pretentious, sanctimonious jackass.
Bill
I too have had a similar clash with sub-editors. I wrote an engineering article about control rooms for nuclear power plants for a magazine published in San Francisco.
The female copy editor changed my use of the industry-standard “man-machine interface” to something like “human-machine interface.” When I objected and called the copy editor, she was adamant and refused to relent. What to do? Pull my article over which I had labored mightly and submitted to the only appropriate outlet?
I folded, just like Dr. Dalrymple.
I still cringe at my cowardness. The ancient phrase “A coward dies a thousand deaths” rings true.
Now that the Feds have passed a law defining hate crimes, they seek to root out selectively, those who mean them harm in the voting booth.
Dear Doctor Dalrymple:
“(In the Oxfam shop round the corner from where I live there is a poster with a slogan that nauseates me: “Thankyou for Being Humankind.”) ”
Whatever in the world were you doing there? I ken that such an establishment is not fit for the patronage of Hominidkind.
Please, pay heed to your own well-being and avoid such slop-chests at all costs…try a cozy pub or friendly saloon instead.
“I do not want to have a blazing argument with editors or sub-editors each time I use the word “Mankind” and it is changed without my permission, nor do I not want to stop writing altogether; and the matter, after all, is a very small one.”
This is truly distressing. That an author of no small accomplishment such as yourself would be subjected to a row with whatever species of mammal makes up a “sub-editor”.
Last I looked, my (hard-cover) copies of “Life at the Bottom” and “Our Culture” had YOUR name in the Bold Type and large font, and NOT the alias of the moonbat drone second assistant sub-editor.
One would hope that after so many millions of copies sold worldwide, an author could silence the moonbat midget flunktionaries by the simple threat of displaying the very essence of organic masculinity and challenging:
“Someone ’round these parts have a best-seller list longer’n THIS?”
“And so the censors have achieved a small victory. They will seek out new locutions to conquer.”
Rather like metastasizing cancer cells, yes?
‘Humankind’! In contrast to . . . inhumankind? Or antihumankind?
1.) I hear girls refer to each other as “guys.” They’ll say, “Hey, you guys want to go to a movie?” when it’s a group of girls being addressed. “Guys?” Girls can refer to themselves as “guys,” but it’s offensive to refer to the human race as “men”?
2.) The use of “their” as a singular is killing me! The fear of using “he” for an unspecified singular has led to this disgusting mistake. I even hear it used in instances where the gender is known. I heard a sportscaster say, “If someone’s going to be the center for the Seahawks, they should be the sort who…” Huh? If someone is going to be an NFL player, we can safely assume it’s a MALE we’re discussing!
This BS has led to the destruction of the concept of plurals. I now hear people say, “There’s many different things.” Really? “There IS many?”
Trust me: listen for “there’s” in conversation. When you hear it, you’ll never be able to STOP hearing it, and you’ll hate me forever.
On a hopeful note, any variety of Newspeak has only limited power to control thought. Words are not tiny meaning-containers that have descended from above, they are arbitrary sound patterns that take their meaning from how they’re used. For instance, the people who coined the terms “Fascist” and “Communist” considered them extremely positive. But when people described what Fascists and Communists in power actually did, they necessarily became negative.
When you force people not to use a particular word, you don’t reach their attitudes — the new word acquires most of the connotations of the old one. I now hear “homeless” spoken in a derogatory tone. The basic effect of political correctness, like any system of euphemism, is to make speech stilted and self-conscious, and to confuse and irritate.
Theodore Dalrymple:
“I do not want to have a blazing argument with editors or sub-editors each time I use the word “Mankind” and it is changed without my permission, nor do I not want to stop writing altogether; and the matter, after all, is a very small one.”
Remind me again about the point I thought you intended to make, because it certainly looks like you’re colluding in depredation by degree, not resisting it. OTOH, perhaps you’re representing your own laissez-faire recalcitrance as one of those “subtler threats to press freedom.”
Roy M;
“Start your own publication. Edit it the way you like. Stop moaning. What you describe: owners of publications using your contributions the way they like, is not censorship. Nor does it abridge anyones freedom.”
If I were to abridge your own words here in a manner which misrepresents your thinking, I suspect you would complain. I also doubt you’d acquiesce if I told you to pipe down, or go post somewhere else, because, after all, it’s not actually censorship.
Theodore Dalrymple:
“I do not want to have a blazing argument with editors or sub-editors each time I use the word “Mankind” and it is changed without my permission, nor do I not want to stop writing altogether; and the matter, after all, is a very small one.”
Remind me again about the point I thought you intended to make, because it certainly looks like you’re colluding in depredation by degree, not resisting it. OTOH, perhaps you’re representing your own laissez-faire recalcitrance as one of those “subtler threats to press freedom.”
As a professor of linguistics my colleagues and I often have fun pointing out the ignorance of the language sensitives who shudder at the mere suggestion that the inglorious and oppressive ‘man’ appendage should have any place in English. For instance there are numerous vocabulary items in English which came into the language from French – manpower is one, manipulate another. In French they were main – hand. The hand connection still exists in English in expressions such as all hands on deck – hired hands. The pronominal prohibition on he as everyman and its replacement with she is both ridiculous and misleading. I remember a baffled professor of psychology at the University of Montreal, a native speaker of French, asking my help in deciphering an article which dealt with a condition appearing predominantly in males where all the he items in the text had been changed to she by the kind of zealous editor Dalrymple describes.
Dr. Dalrymple, I was shocked that a person of your reputation would fold in this fight so easily. For shame sir! The contention of the “Long War” (1914-1991) was whether parliamentary government or totalitarianism would continue on as the major form of governance. All the deaths, wounds, trauma and sacrifice and then to come to this; faced down by an editor!!
“Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Speech has always been controlled for the vast history of mankind. Anyone ‘misspeaking’ or not speaking from a kneeling position, eyes down cast, to any person of nobility would find his head rolling in the dust. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the US proposes the radical and explosive idea that the average man could hear, speak and debate any and all ideas, and do so in the end, responsibility. But we are ‘the last man standing’ in this regard. If you doubt that Google the Human Rights Commission in Canada or the words that are outlawed in European countries.
Recall that the rights of the First Amendment (and the body of the Constitution) were handed to us. “Here,” in effect it was said, “keep this safe for yourselves and mankind.” Famously Franklin wondered about said safety as well he might. Such a radical idea as freedom on speech must be defended every day in every way conceivable. What now, are we to throw it all over for editors and the legions of pc?
Even the Nazi’s didn’t try to regulate what you eat, the light bulbs you use or the automobiles you drive. And all this is done for what reason? A more virtuous view of society. A society where no one has to suffer an offense of any kind. Viktor Frankle famously wrote in 1945 (paraphrase) that no matter what anyone does to you, no matter what happens, there is always one freedom that can never be taken and that is the freedom to choose your own attitude. Then of course it is patently untrue when someone claims, “You offended me.” The truth is that they choose to be offended. The natural response then could be, “I don’t choose to give a shit!”
If you care to know what we are in for read “Enemies of the People” by Kati Martin. Kati went back to Hungary and read the secret police files kept on her parents during the Cold War. I wept hot tears in several places, the only thing that sustained her parents several times was hope in the United States of America!
And as far as virtue… “Terror is the natural emanation of virtue.” Robespierre.
–> Misandry
Fred: Three men robbed the bank.
Mike: Thankfully, eight police personnel caught them.
02/26/10 – Classical Values by Eric, (ideo 7:35)
[edited] “The word “misandry” was flagged in red, unknown to the spell-checker, even though it is hardly a new word. Misandry is the hatred of men.”
“Men do not exist unless they commit crimes or do bad things. Men are “people” or “personnel” when they do good things. They are “men” when they do bad things.
There is a connection between misandry and feminism. This has been slipped by me, over the years. I’m pissed off. I don’t take kindly to being manipulated.”
“Editors are sometimes good and sometimes bad, usually good.”
Gales of riotous laughter! That’s usually “dreadful.”
“To entrust to an editor a story over which you have labored and to which your name and reputation are attached can be like sending your daughter off for an evening with Ted Bundy” – Buchanan.
“An editor of no judgement, perpetually confronted with a couple of MSS. to choose from, cannot but feel in every fibre of his being that he is a donkey, between two bundles of hay. What shall he do? Leave criticism to the critics, you may say, and betake himself to any honest trade for which he is less unfit. But he prefers a more flattering solution: he confusedly imagines that if one bundle of hay is removed he will cease to be donkey.” – Houseman.
“And so the censors have achieved a small victory.”
Even 13 year old drama queens seem to have more self-respect. A part of the editing job is to get a certain amount of uniformity in what’s published. Software auto-subs. Quit whining.
Hullo Alston.
Made parole, I see, (how was the grub?).
Good to see you again.
If I should happen to habituate the same restroom as Dr, Dalrymple, and saw him leave a toilet stall, I would eagerly pop into it once he had vacated on the off chance that he had seen fit to scribble something on the walls.
Because there would be more insight, wisdom and felicitous turns of phrase therein than in a decade’s morgue of New York Times issues.
It sells or it does not sell. Manifestly, Dr. Dalrymple sells,(warts,dangling participles n’all), and the idea of his prose being tyrannized over such a picayune matter as the word “humankind” is, even you must admit, piss-antish in the extreme.
Hey Bilge, all is well. I see you’re about the same.
***
Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be that the basic formatting, grammar checking and spellcheck libs used in publishing houses are commonly provided from one or two sources and few people feel the need to fiddle with the settings.
Nah. Too simple. Conjuring up an insidious commie conspiracy hatched by lesbian feminazis to steal our language AND our freedumbs makes more sense. [Dr. Evil laugh goes here.]
This place never fails to be entertaining.
“Conjuring up an insidious commie conspiracy hatched by lesbian feminazis to steal our language AND our freedumbs makes more sense.”
Well, old boy, like I said…it sells or it doesn’t.
Communism and Lesbian feminazis?
Alston…how could it MISS?
Sorry, but as long as there are people who are offended by candor, they will come up with anything to make them look correct.
Isn’t that at the heart of the issue of politically correct speech?
It is disheartening to read of Dr. Dalrymple’s misadventures with editors, but heartening that he recognizes what is being done to him – a form of moral violence. In 2008, I had occasion to write a series of articles on the pernicious effect of political correctness and feminism in the military, for publication on the website of a non-profit organization. Two editors, through whom my work had to pass, worked for the group; one male and one female. My initial draft passed through the junior of the two – the woman, a feminist who didn’t much care for my arguments, which she made care by liberal (no pun intended) use of the delete key, red highlighting and so on. I didn’t knuckle under; recognizing that the whole point of my article would be lost if I accepted her edits, I did an end-around to her boss, who accepted my work pretty much in the original form. I ended up having to make a few cosmetic changes as a sop to the feminist, but won out in the end by getting a hard-hitting series published. A small victory for our side in the politically-correct war upon ideas and words. My point is that we should know the rightness of our cause and stick to our rhetorical guns. If necessary, be willing to walk out the door with your work, and take it elsewhere where freedom of thought and speech are still respected.
Influential conservative talkshow host (and Dalrymple friend) Dennis Prager has commented often on the harm done by the radical left to language.
He is correct; by letting leftists hijack public discourse, and set the linguistic terms of the debate, we have already lost some of our precious freedom.
If some poor radical has his feelings hurt, ask him the following question (even if it is a she): “Can you show me where in the Constitution it guarantees one the right not to be offended?” Free speech, if it is to be free in any meaningful sense of the word, must have the ability to offend.
I occasionally write copy for my organization, and run into these same problems. When I recently wrote “man-made” in a text, the editor changed it to “human-made”. I warned her that my next piece contained the expression “no-man’s land”: somehow, this made it through. The thing is, the editor is a bright person, with a sense of humour: she groans and rolls her eyes in sympathy with me when making the changes, but still insists we “have” to do it. But nobody stands over her to check her work, and if she let “man-made” through, nobody would pull her (or me) up on it. This is true political correctness: it’s not imposed from the top down, but spreads laterally amongst people who want to stay safe by pre-empting and second-guessing the (largely imaginary) authority above.
When I worked at a major metro daily, I noticed that in the speech code issued by our dreaded Diversity Committee women were called “women” and men were called “males.” The difference being that women are always human, but “males” can refer to subhuman creatures.
Not sure this is OT or not…
I have noticed that at the Catholic church I attend, that the Psalm reading has deleted phrases referring to “handmaid”. Changing the liturgy is a no no but everyone from the Pastor on down seems to be okay with it…
PS116 O LORD, truly I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant; you have freed me from my chains.
I suppose I should ask the liturgy director…
What diocese you are in is important, as the Bishop’s outlook sets the tone for the whole ‘hood.
Even what parish within a given diocese can make a difference.
I pretty much came up in the Diocese of Arlington, (one of the most conservative in the nation), and when attending Mass at a parish of the Diocese of Richmond, I hardly recognized what those folks were doing thereabouts as the Mass.
(In their defense, they WERE in Newport News, and perhaps a wee bit closer to the “Vox Pat Robertson” in Virginia Beach than might, doctrinally-speaking, be good for them).
And just to quibble over the PC whack-jobs and their encroachment upon Scripture…”maidservant” is sexist as well, since it is gender-specific,(vice “man”servant).
If these folks really wanted to get with the program, they could simply substitute “servant”…and even THAT is an oppressive loaded unequal power-exchange term.
Why not just amend the Psalm to read “helper”. Isn’t that…nicer?
Oh dear God!
What have we done to merit such a cruelly insipid form of Damnation?
Please…I think I’d prefer having my soul roasted over the fires of Hell forever to THIS!
I worship at the Orthodox Church in America, and when communion is served, and a woman approaches, she is referred to as, “The Handmaiden ______ receives the body & blood for the remission of sins”. (I’ll pay closer attention to make sure I got it right).
So, no room for political correctness, thank God, when it comes to the most important aspect of the liturgy.
Impeach him now, why isn’t there a mass-movement of 100s of millions of patriots to impeach him?
neuteredbipedalhominidkind
I am almost tempted to say the sub-editors may be ‘Femi-nazis and let’s just all be Derrideans and enjoy the incessant play of significations and the privilege of none.
I attended a lecture by Derrida ‘before he died’. The strange thing is that he was sharp, witty and clear. His theme was simple: how reproductive technology was changing what it meant to be a person. A particular example of this was the reversal of the position that “Materninty is a fact and paternity is an opinion.”
We’ve made a collective mistake when dealing with these politically correct censors: we’ve tried to reason with them. The answer to “mankind is sexist” needs to be no more than “opinion noted”.
Don’t argue or try to persuade censors or the offended brigade. It only legitimizes their censorship. By telling them they’re wrong about “mankind” and their opinions are ridiculous, it may imply that they’d be right to censor something else that offends some other sensibility.
The answer should just be: “No, it stays the way it is”.
Humankind is no better then Mankind not because of the man in Human but because the gender of Human in Greek is also masculine.
OOPS! A man is in the lady’s bedroom.
I have rarely found persons who don’t think that the possessive apostrophe is different in kind from the elisional one. In fact it is not.
What is elided in the possessive form is “his”, a universal possessive adjective. In long form “the queen’s navy” would be, “the queen, his navy”. It is a legacy of OE that has survived in tact.
Acknowledging my own I am generally tolerant of simple ignorance. It is another matter when ignorance turns aggressive.
Further changes to the editors’ attention:
bullshit –> bovine shit
mandrake –> personduck (doubleplussexist!)
mailman –> mailperson (but notice the remaining hidden sexism) –> posthuman
We’ll all be posthumans soon enough, and biological gender will be a quaint anachronism, like species and the biological/electronic distinction.
Well, that how we’re headed!
One of the ten provinces and three territories that make up my country, Canada, is Manitoba. I haven’t yet heard a demand that it be changed to “Personitoba” or something equally preposterous but I’m not going to be awfully surprised when it does happen….
Let me share another instance of political correctness. In the early 1990s, a recent graduate of a major British Columbia university asked me to speculate on what happened if students at his university wrote ‘his’ instead of ‘his or her’ in a paper. Not having any idea but assuming it would not be a major penalty, I guessed that the professor might take a few points off the final grade for the paper. In fact, the graduate advised me that the paper would be immediately graded a failure regardless of any other merits it might possess.
I still find that a particularly disturbing example of political correctness. The penalty for not being PC could potentially be graduation from the university itself if you were sufficiently principled to refuse to indulge in these practices.
Person the Lifeboats.
Crew Member Overboard.
Human Eating Shark !
The dangers of sailing the briny deep.
.
And, Danger – open people hole.
.
A graduate of Duke University (98), when Stanley Fish was Chair of the English Dept. tells of a required Freshman writing course. All quotes had to be reworded to be gender neutral. “All people are created equal”.
The general student reaction … “This is a crap course, just meant to provide employment for favored faculty. Give them what they want, and forget about it after the final exam”. The value of a top tier university education …. NOT.
Didn’t you get the memo? It’s “Staff the lifeboats!”
“Danger – open people hole.”
This reminds me of an experience I had in Toronto in the mid-1990s. I was driving along Lakeshore Boulevard under the Gardiner Expressway. [The Gardiner Expressway is an elevated roadway for most of its length in downtown Toronto and Lakeshore Boulevard actually runs beneath the Gardiner for part of Lakeshore's length.] As I was driving along, I noticed several signs warning “Danger – Open Maintenance Covers”. Never having heard the term “maintenance covers” before, I was figuratively scratching my head in wonder as I tried to deduce what it might mean. Could it be something to do with drainage from the Gardiner Expressway above me? Or perhaps access to electrical wires in the pillars holding up the expressway? I had rejected the idea that they might be manholes because surely manholes would simply be called manholes….
I’m afraid I actually let my eyes wander from the road a bit as I was going through this thought process. The signs had me concerned that something dangerous might happen if I were not sufficiently alert. I just couldn’t figure out from the sign where the actual danger lay. Was something going to fall down on me from the Expressway above? Was a loose wire going to hit my car as I passed by one of the support pillars?
As it turned out, I found out very quickly through the simple expedient of almost driving into a “maintenance cover” at ground level. It turned out that the sign had been warning of open manhole covers all along. I managed to dodge the open hole without having (or causing) an accident but I offer no thanks to the administrators of the city maintenance department. If their signs had simply said “Danger – Open Manhole Covers”, I would have been immediately clear on what the danger was and would have seen the specific instance of that danger in plenty of time. As it was though, I only saw it at the last possible moment because I was so perplexed about what the sign actually meant.
That is the hidden danger of political correctness. Although justified simply as a way of ensuring inclusiveness and limiting offense, when the PC language obscures the meaning of the message it can potentially pose a real danger to life and limb.
I think that all major corporations in the USA require “gender-neutral” language in their style guides. I assume publishing houses are the same. This battle was lost without a fight.
Solution seems simple enough. Two levels really.
One: If you must be bound by a contract that requires submission to PC edits then submit it. But unless there is a clause forbidding it there is no reason for the author to take the hit to his reputation as a PC drone who can’t use the English language properly. So permit the edit on condition it be footnoted as an edit for compliance to the publisher’s political style guide and that the author DOES indeed know the proper usage. Or if an un-PC usage was for artistic reasons note that also. Nothing like sunlight to send cockroaches scurrying for cover.
Two: Once an author becomes established signing a contract one doesn’t like really is optional in an age where there there are a lot of publishers and not nearly as many good writers. First renewal cross out the odious bits, sign it and send it back. What is the worst that can happen? How many publishers would really, when push came to shove, drop a profitable author over political correctness?
Hupers unite! You have nothing to lose but your humanity!