The U.S. House of Representatives, dominated by Democrats (for now), has just passed rules eliminating gender-specific words such as mother, father, sister, brother, male, female, he, she, his, hers in an attempt to expand — you guessed it — inclusivity.
You get to be more inclusive by excluding words that have been around since roughly, when man first walked upright. Ooops. Make that when person walked upright. Right? You no longer have a sister, you have a sibling. You no longer have a father, you have a parent.
Here’s the list published in the House Resolution of banned terms (I hope you are seated):
“Father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in- law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, step-mother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, step-sister, half brother, half sister, grandson, or grand-daughter.”
All terms no longer to be uttered in polite company.
Terms to be substituted? “Parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, step-child, stepsibling, half-sibling, or grandchild.”
All clear? I copied and pasted and found “first cousin” both banned and recommended. Chalk it up to careful government work.
The Resolution was approved 217-206 in a vote along party lines, with all Republicans voting this is freaking nutty no.
I am imagining young Democrat parents with a video camera in hand waiting for their son daughter child to say Mommy parent for the first time. What a moment to cherish!
The rules only apply to garbage legislation arising in the House, but it opens an unwanted door to unnecessary change down the road.
Leader Nancy Pelosi does not have the power — yet — to shove this down the throats of everyday citizens. (Some smartass patriotic citizen revealed that on Twitter, the Leader refers to herself with the toxic words “mother” and “grandmother,” rather than the preferred matriarch elder. We know from past experience — remember the hairdresser who tricked her into a wash and perm? — that rules she promotes don’t apply to her.)
New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries waxed poetic about the new rules. “From my standpoint, the gender-neutral language is just consistent with an effort for the House, in the best tradition of the House, to reflect the gorgeous mosaic of the American people.”
“Gorgeous mosaic” does not include mother, father, sister, brother? Pass the pipe, please, Hakeem.
How can these people talk this shit stuff without breaking out in hives?
These idiots actually want to kill “mother” and “father.” What is the purpose?
Prohibiting gender-specific terms denies the actual humanity of the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. Language distortion is propaganda by the Left to attempt to erase the differences between men and women, thus erasing their humanity, creating a genderless lump.
That won’t succeed because we — and other animals — are hard-wired to recognize, in nearly all cases, the difference between male and female. Viva le difference.
I do not mean men and women (how could I say that under House rules — people and people?) should not be treated equally. They should, but their differences should be recognized. And respected.
Progressives obsession with minorities’ identity doesn’t help “victims” in any material way. Genderless language is sheer nonsense, and speaking of nonsense, during the session at which these earth-shaking rules were adopted, some holy man read the daily prayer in the House (offending atheists). He closed this way. “Amen. And A-women.”
This illustrates the utter lack of seriousness of the new insanity rules. Kind of like calling history herstory as if the word has something to do with gender. It doesn’t. Herstory is not a word. It is a mindless pander.
Don’t these clucks have anything better to do?
Some 3,000 men and women people die daily from COVID, our education system is in shambles, our infrastructure is collapsing, we might have a civil war brewing, but the clown car is busy strangling English.
You know, there has been sexism in language, often for understandable reasons. We say “policeman” because that’s all there was, once. Since we now have women in blue, saying “police officer” seems fitting, along with “letter carrier” instead of “mailman” and “sailor” instead of “seaman” and “firefighter” instead of “fireman.”
Those are reasonable and sensible. They make the words sharper, clearer, more correct. Eliminating mother, father, etc., makes things less sharp, less clear, less correct.
Why was it done? Was there a clamor for this I didn’t hear? Was it among the campaign promises I ignored? On a rating of things important to Americans it would come out like the Pfizer vaccine, at MINUS 94.
How deep in the well of Imagined Insult and Political Correctness are these mooks? How empty must be their minds to have space to come up with this?
What’s next — no more dogs and cats, just pets, because we don’t want to be guilty of speciesism?
It’s enough to make a grown man person cry.
you should post that on everything ,all social media
I can’t, but you can.
Pelosi is crazy.
This is what you are concerned about after watching the sacking of The Capital? I do admire your columns and imagine that you have to have a few in the pipe line. But I think that is way down any other concerns.with the events this week.I’m sure you next column will deal with The Eagles tanking.
Thanks again for keeping me entertained.
Yo, Kevin – let the man’s mind and pen spout forth. I want to hear it all! LoL
You are welcome. You are right about having one or two in the pipeline. For Wednesday, there were two choice — one sentence, or 2,000 words.
I did one sentence on Facebook and just did not feel up to 2,000 words.
Spot on, Stu.
Jeez – down another rabbit hole!
The fun is just beginning with ‘progressives’ now in power. We are seeing entropy in action.
Yikes.. wait till Hallmark, American Greetings, and the other card makers find out about this! I can no longer wish my husband, son, & daughter a Happy Birthday!!
I better hurry out now to buy a supply while they last
This may be an opportunity for the cards companies. Who knows?
Dear Stu,
I needed a laugh this morning. Thank you! Elbo, I’m off to the Dollar store to buy my cards now before the shelves
are empty and replaced with the NEW ones!!!!!
Stu, you are the best!!!!!
Thank you.
Outstanding.
BUT people will call you “approved” names.
My SON and DAUGHTER (not offspring) called me Dad, and Father. And that don’t change.
I don’t think we have seen the last of the raids on Washington. There are a boatload of unhappy campers out there. And probable the state and local governments should have a battle strategy up and ready.
I totally agree that this is foolish work when there are so many more pressing problems. What has our country come to? And a vote of 217-206? That means that 217 have nothing better to do and not even enough “nay” to obstruct this foolishness. I need to pray harder to save our
history, my mother and father, my male children and female children (3 and 3), and pray to God this type of thing does not spread to our world. Aren’t we the laughingstock of the world enough now?
We are getting there, to laughing stock.
DROP. THE. MIC. The shit coming out of Washington DC keeps getting worser and worser. They don’t even hear themselves anymore! If I shake my head any harder, I’m going to snap my own neck!
Careful, buddy.
There are no words.
No safe words. ☺️
This is just the beginning of the end of the country we were born and raised in.The power hungry billionaires,anarchist,morons,radicals,marxists,freeloaders,criminals, and junkies are now on track to run the country.The working middle class (who pay for all this) sat back and did nothing for the past 20 years allowing the radicals to brain wash your children in the education system run 90 % by liberal idiots who think they are superior to youThe complete takeover of the disgusting lying media is even worse.You can’t even read the sports page or watch a TV show without being told you are a racist and all Police are evil and you hate gays.What happened to entertainment escapism.History proves when the minority rules and not the majority that country is doomed to fail.
We live in the USA of PC. It’s insane. With the demos controlling the congress, It will get worse.
An example of pc gone amok have the Girl Scouts changing the name of the Samoan cookie to caramel delight. Now who could be offended by the name Samoan being used for a cookie?
Enjoyed the tongue in cheek column.
This insanity reminds me of the wonderful Seinfeld episode, when Jerry was dating an American Indian — damn! There I go again, being insensitive! Shoulda said ‘native American! Anyway, everything he said to her caused him PC fear. Like when he got tickets to some event and almost told her he bought them from a SCALPER. Then he told her he was taking her to a famous restaurant, but he had RESERVATIONS. Then she asked for him to return something and he almost called her an INDIAN GIVER. That show saw years before the insanity took over that political correctness would run amok. And it has.
Vince, a classic show about nuthin’, with everything and everyone open to parody.
Sadly, nuthin’ is what we’ve grown to get/expect from these public servants elected to Congress. They’re spending more time (and money) writing insane rules like this and advancing their own self serving political agendas than legislation to make American lives better. To this, I offer two words…
TERM LIMITS
How long until these words are banned by Congress?
Glad you liked and thanks for Samoan info.
Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling. Or grimacing. Maybe both.
It’s been that kind of week.
George is saying, “Damn it, I turned out to be right!”
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Stu,
You give us another reason to believe that Nancy Pelosi has to go. I’d say much the same for our remaining, local (especially) Clintonite Democrats. If the PC-Democrats can’t understand their own contributions to contemporary discord and divisiveness, then someone surely ought to sketch this in for them.
The “PC” newspeak does have a particular function, of course. It makes for a quick “us vs. them” method of deciding who’s on which side. It is an attempt to politicize every-day speech and language –by inviting instant indignation at every violation of newspeak prescriptions.
The practice is akin, socially, to “tribal markings” (etched facial tattoos in some societies) which help people, otherwise virtually indistinguishable, know who it is they are supposed to be fighting. It also resembles the pronounced dialects of some European languages which socially divide one village from the next.
There is an old joke about European social prejudices in particular. These generally run from North to South and from West to East. The more northerly think themselves superior to the more southerly peoples and the more Westerly tend to think themselves superior to the more easterly. But, the funny part is that if you ask them, say, “Where exactly does the South (or the East) begin?” The answer is always “The next village.”
Something like resentment over small differences tends to set in, since every smallest difference from the “village norm” is regarded as a weakness (because it can be exploited for advantage by insiders to the village). Its like those strange situations when two ladies show up at a grand event –wearing the same dress– and hateful glances may pass back and forth.
When I was growing up in Philadelphia, people (say, new immigrants) who acted in similar ways were said to be just “ignorant” and dismissed out of hand. Similar things came into the country but were regarded with some contempt.
It is to George Orwell that we owe the concept of political “newspeak.” This is indeed happening right here and now. It is easy to think of it as top-down, neo-liberal “divide and conquer.”
H.G. Callaway
What will we call boats/ships now? Are they not always referred to as “she?”
I guess use their Christian name. 😀
And what about those gender reveal parties? What’s to become of them? 🤔
Excellent point. Another tradition dies….😄