If you have ever visited the North East of England and interacted with any inhabitants of that area, the chances are, never mind your gender or age, that you will have been called ‘pet’.
If you have ever visited London or the south east, and interacted with any inhabitants then the chances are, never mind your gender or age, that you have been called ‘love or darlin’.
If you have ever visited Edinburgh or Glasgow it’s ‘hen’ or ‘hennie’. Liverpool ‘chook’. There are too many to list..
These terms of endearment are a feature of the English language in all its rich tapestry of regional diversity and can be found from the plains of the USA to the slums of Glasgow. They are especially prevalent in the British Isles where regional accents and dialects are extremely distinct. I’m typing this 20 miles south of the border in Northumberland, here it is ‘pet’ 21 miles north, ‘hen’.
This phenomenon has been studied. In fact, dozens of academic studies exist on this unique cultural diversity. These studies also tell us how these words are used. Firstly, they are not gender-specific and tend not to be age-specific. Secondly, they are most prevalent in service interactions between strangers; in fact, they are seen as a polite and welcoming way of interacting in such circumstances. They are also, as mentioned, a feature of regional dialects and contribute to the keen sense of identity in communities. They are most commonly used by what is referred to as ‘non-academics’ – i.e., those who did not attend a university. They are universal in the working class of an urban area, but in rural areas, their use crosses classes. They are as unique to a region as a stottie cake is to a Geordie or a deep-fried haggis is to an Edinburger, forming part of our identity, diversity as a nation, society and heritage.
So why is my alma mata, the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne instructing its staff to avoid using ‘Pet’?
The 13 member-strong Diversity and Inclusion team (yes, 13 of them) at the University has issued a 7-page guide with 44 words and phrases listed that should be avoided as problematic. “Avoid patronising or gendered terms, such as girls, pet or ladies,” says the advice. Now, let’s put aside why an academic institution is so keen to police the speech of its staff and students by dictating what is ‘unacceptable’. We have already established, as they would have if they had actually researched the use of ‘pet’, that it is never used in a patronising manner and is not gender-specific. Had they checked the extensive amount of research, freely available with a five-minute Google search, they would not have jumped to this erroneous conclusion and would not now be in the headlines.
There are those who have been quick to agree. In the Telegraph, Eleanor Mills thunders that the University is “right to ban ‘pet’ – it’s so patronising”. She says she is “all for endearments” but claims that it is inappropriate when used to address young women. Oddly enough, she seems to like being called “my loverrrr” by red-faced West Country yokel types, but apparently Geordies don’t qualify for this tolerance.
Now, I don’t know where Ms. Mills is from, and I don’t know if she has ever spent any time in Newcastle or rural Northumberland. She sounds very ‘educated class’; like me, she speaks with an ‘RP’ accent, and RP is one of the very few dialects in British English that doesn’t use endearments in this way. I can’t think that she has spent any time up here, because if she had, she would know that ‘pet’ is never used exclusively to address young women; it is never used to patronise or uniquely in a sexist manner. As already described, ‘pet’, along with its equivalents, is in fact part of the rich micro-diachronic variation in British English. We can evidence that from the multiple studies carried out, and indeed, anyone who actually gets off their backside and travels to the regions to speak to the ‘plebs sordida’ can confirm this.
There’s a nasty whiff of classism here, that the working classes need to be morally corrected: what they eat, their politics, their relationships, their pastimes, their dress sense and their language must all be policed by those-who-know-what-is-in-their-best-interests. It doesn’t surprise me that a university EDI team has come out with this, and it doesn’t surprise me that Eleanor Mills has decided to chime in. The great unwashed must be tamed.
There is something else going on here, though. Such glossaries of ‘verboten’ words are becoming increasingly common, chosen and promulgated by these ‘experts’ in EDI and HR departments across our green and pleasant land. The idea that language must be policed comes from the assumption that all human interactions are, at their base, a conflict about power – gaining power over your interlocutor. If you speak to any modern academic versed in Critical Theory, this is front and centre of their worldview. The idea that an employee and an employer could have a relationship and a friendship based on mutual benefit is dismissed. The only dynamic in such a relationship is exploitation: the exploitation of the worker by the employer. It takes a distinctly negative view of humanity, assuming that humans are incapable of good intent towards one another and would only ever display good intent or generosity for personal gain – to manipulate. You won’t be surprised to hear that the most recent influential figure to promulgate this cynical and warped view of humanity was Vladimir Lenin, who based it on some of Nietzsche’s ideas. To Lenin, all relationships were about power, and the prerogative was to interact with others with your metaphorical foot on their necks.
Given how Marxist-Leninism has become the basis of so much of our academic effort over the last 50 years, it is hardly surprising that this dystopian view of humanity has eventually escaped from the Social Studies faculties and is now pervasive in society as a whole, where it is coming up sharply against 2,000 years of Christian thinking. This thinking holds that people are not inherently driven by power and exploitation, and that concepts such as generosity and charity are virtuous and should never be pursued for personal gain.
When HR departments take it upon themselves to inflict this view of the world on their employees, it usually backfires. In fact, we have the figures: EDI training has backfired spectacularly, with 63% of those trained experiencing major issues with it. Who would have thought that telling your employees they were incorrigible, unreconstructed Sidney Smutts from Viz – racists, bigots and homophobes to boot – who all need re-educating, wouldn’t go down well with those employees?
‘Microaggressions’, the idea that language needs to be micromanaged, is a dead end for society, and it is extraordinary that the Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD, the self-appointed boyars of the Human Resources industry in the U.K.) has adopted the theory so enthusiastically. The notion that normal, healthy human interactions and language must be policed by employers is a major problem. Firstly, it infantilises the employee; it removes their personal responsibility for their own behaviour and hands it over to the HR team. Issuing lists of ‘forbidden’ words or ‘microaggressions’ that might conceivably upset someone can never be comprehensive. “But that word wasn’t on the list, so it must be OK!” Furthermore, language relies on context; ‘lists’ remove context, and we have seen ‘microaggression’ policies devolve into a charter for empowering bullies in the workplace. In June 2024, the London City-based law firm Hogan Lovells announced that it was introducing a reporting service where employees could anonymously report colleagues for ‘microaggressions’, presumably so the HR team could then intervene and ‘take corrective action’. This was reported in the CIPD’s magazine, People Management, where they collected quotes from a variety of HR professionals, all of whom enthusiastically endorsed the idea. Not one critic was asked for their opinion (incidentally, those quotes supporting the measure, as you might expect, all seem to benefit directly from such a measure being introduced, e.g. ‘Inclusivity Consultants’).
There’s a historical point here which may come as a surprise to these HR people, so convinced that they are right to be doing this for the employee’s own good. Here’s the thing: the Popes and Kings who initiated the Inquisition didn’t set out to burn and terrorise their own populations. The mediaeval mindset was that the afterlife was very real and eternal, and that if you sinned or committed heresy in this life, your torment would be eternal. So a bit of physical pain on this side of death to persuade a heretic to reform his or her ways was entirely morally justified, because they were utterly convinced that if they did not, their souls would be in torment for eternity. It was for the heretic’s own good.
Another: East Germany was one of the most notorious surveillance states in history (although there are a few modern states which may have taken that crown). The Secret Police, the STASI, developed an informant network that encompassed one in every five of the entire population. The suppression of dissent and unapproved opinions and politics was extremely intrusive and frequently resulted in imprisonment. Unlike the collapse of many totalitarian regimes, we were able to interview and study those who thought this was a good idea. Universally, they were committed Marxist-Leninists who genuinely believed Communism was the only civilised way for people to live. Those who didn’t understand this needed to be re-educated for their own good. The STASI, the prisons and the informer networks all existed for the population’s own good. This is one of the reasons why periodically delinquent dissidents – those who had not responded to ‘re-education’ or the short, sharp shock of imprisonment; those who had resisted the zersetzung – literally the decomposition of your life, the 24/7 police and state harassment and intimidation – were deported to the West. They were incorrigible and wouldn’t respond to ‘re-education’. The ‘civilised’ approach was to throw them over the wall to their fellow capitalists. They gave up on them, but only after trying very hard to ‘fix’ them.
Does any of this sound familiar? In Britain, and indeed across the West, we have developed a managerial class that has taken upon itself the mantle of moral superiority and equates its politics with morality. It has convinced itself that its role is to make the world a better place by ‘addressing injustices’, whether they are current or historical. Any dissent is seen as coming from those who are obviously unenlightened and morally degenerate. These people need to be ‘re-educated’.
Now, for some reason that I have been unable to get an answer for, our institutions and companies seem to think that this needs to be done in the workplace as well as in schools, academies and universities. Apparently, getting a load of city lawyers to avoid ‘microaggressions’ is a worthwhile activity and ‘addresses injustices’. Really? Does it? Or does it actually demoralise those who are being policed? Does it create an atmosphere of treading on eggshells, where everyone is terrified to speak to others and trust no longer exists?
Put the lawyers aside for a moment. This week, Harry Miller from Fair Cop shared an anecdote in an interview. He mentioned that he had heard of two police officers who had been having a conversation in their squad car. The conversation was about DEI training. One of the officers, a Christian, said that he thought this was a waste of time and didn’t believe men could become women and vice versa, or words to that effect. When they returned to the station, his colleague reported him to HR. Why? Because HR apparently periodically checks the voice recordings of events in police cars to ensure that behaviour is appropriate. So, HR dragged the Christian officer in for questioning. He told them where to stick it and that he would sue if they disciplined him, because his opinion, both as a gender realist and a Christian, is protected under the Equality Act. Consequently, HR stepped down. However, the issue here, as Harry rightly pointed out, is that trust between employees is crucial everywhere; in the police, it can literally be a matter of life or death. Yet this policy undermines that trust by creating an atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust, and a culture of denunciation.
Need I point out that during The Great Purge in the USSR in the 1930s, people would denounce their own friends, family and colleagues because they thought that if they didn’t, they would be punished for not doing so, and they were right.
Is this really the society we want to live in?
Well, Newcastle University seems to think so, and they are keen to reassure people that these are ‘recommendations’ and ‘not compulsory’. Well, I am sorry if I call that out as utter nonsense, because we know damn fine that they don’t need to be compulsory to create an atmosphere of treading on eggshells around people, an idea that those who use such words are moral delinquents. Repeatedly, we see these ‘recommendations’ becoming mandates by default.
It is time for HR departments to take a long, hard look at themselves and wind back this nonsense before it causes irreparable damage to our workplaces and our society. It is not their job to micromanage human relationships.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the U.K.’s leading organisations. This article was first published on his Substack which you can subscribe to here. He is a founder of Fair Job, an accreditation and support service for small businesses to help them navigate the minefields of DEI and HR.
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Art can’t develop when it’s censored, and neither can humour.
Science can’t develop when it must conform to a consensus.
Love can’t begin when it’s subordinated to gender and sexual politics.
Families can’t consolidate when the children are set against the parents, and the spouses can only think about power.
And now language can’t evolve freely, as it has since the beginning of speech, because some tossers have a power complex about that too.
The concept of microaggressions is a junk science invention of academic psychologists as a tool to stop people criticising other people and their behaviours no matter how justifiable [IMHO].
So, if you deride or criticise anyone in any way directly or indirectly by implication no matter how obtuse or indirect you are a microaggressor.
But this junk science is used to go much further to turn ordinary accepted everyday normal and regional usage of English into aggression when it is not at all.
This DS article demonstrates ordinary everyday language is turned from terms of endearment like pet, darlin’, sweetheart, into ‘microaggressions’ using junk science to achieve it.
The journal paper Microaggressions: Clarification, Evidence, and Impact argues for the concept but helpfully instead shows IMHO how this junk science is used to create a theory which is an invention conjured up by self-serving academics.
My practice of referring to Keir Starmer as the Starmfuhrer is a macroagression not a micro one for which I deserve to be banged up in gaol for life one might think if one reads these people.
The journal paper justifies the general concept by reference to ‘racial microaggressions’.
What is being done is an academic sleight of hand – a magic trick to take and transform behaviours almost everyone would agree are unacceptable – plain out and out racism, to justify shutting down all criticisms of any kind about others but then goes way beyond that.
This conveniently creates an academic field [industry] to give academics something new to publish papers about to enhance their academic careers in the crowded field of psychology.
It is done by dressing up racism in new clothes and then expanding the idea from racism to all kinds of ‘hurty words’ and then to all kinds of words which are not but just the opposite.
You can see a lot from the following quote from the paper about ‘racial microaggressions’. Firstly this is describing racism and not ‘microaggressions’.
But what is insidious is the way plain racism is used to create the concept of “microaggressions” as a much broader category.
In other words, this is a tool to stop people criticising other people and their behaviours no matter how justifiable.
Microaggressions: Clarification, Evidence, and Impact
Now you can understand why many Americans defend their right to bear arms.
The founding fathers knew what they were doing when the penned the US Constitution having experienced the tyranny of governments including the French and British.
Recall how those who used to say “Political Correctness Gone Mad” were mocked. Oh to be back in those times.
It’s gone loopy so rapidly and I hope it’s already peaked.
“It is time for HR departments to take a long, hard look at themselves and wind back this nonsense before it causes irreparable damage to our workplaces and our society. It is not their job to micromanage human relationships.”
Irreparable damage to our society is precisely what “policing micro-aggressions” is intended to achieve.
In order to ” build back better” first they must destroy.
“Micro agressions” are basically a bullshit tool invented by the hyper-passsive aggressive to terrorise others.
Passive aggressiveness is one of the scourges of our current society.
See comment above for a more detailed explanation of why it is bullshit.
“It’s not HR departments’ place to micromanage human relationships.” Those words should be nailed to every HR department’s door with wooden stakes along with some garlic. They are the vampires of organisations.
If anyone has met any of these DEI-inspired commissars and similarly-minded managers in the workplace, they will know how their zeal burns fierce against someone they suspect of being non-compliant.
What these people lack but without realising it is a sense of humility. As the Good Book says, let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
In Suffolk somebody recently pleaded guilty to “pertaining [pretending?] to be a member of the Wagner group during a historical battle re-enactment”.[while in possession of a bladed weapon and a Russian name]. According to Hannah Wilkinson of ERSOU, this is a “serious offence” rather than a bloke ‘aving a larf. Sentencing is on 1st November.
ERSOU?
Yvette Cooper is relying on ERSOU to eliminate misogyny, by designating it to be terrorism. https://www.rocu.police.uk/news/2024/may/ersou-appoints-new-assistant-chief-constable/
Is it misogyny or hate speech or both to write “I hate people who are that stupid.”.
I have no idea. It does not seem like it to me but a fairly everyday observation.
But now you have to consult a lawyer before you can comment on anything.
Good thing I have not written that then.
An HR department I deal with requires me to watch a video about how I should look for and report “extremism” and “microaggressions” in my workplace (as well as how to spot “indicants” of being a victim of these). These videos used to be of the nature of Health and Safety guidance on How To Sit On A Chair, so that if you fell off your chair your employer could demonstrate that you had been appropriately trained. Everybody took these old videos with a pinch of salt and a packet of crisps and watched the telly for fifteen minutes on “work time”. Nowadays (thirty years on) the latest ones seem much more sinister. I wouldn’t be surprised if at the next staff meeting we were to be asked, “are you or have you ever been a member of the Wagner Group?”.
Did the Wagner Group ever have a No 1?
No. The BBC consider Wagner to be A Bit Third Reichy.
Hitler loved Wagner.
The first four lines of this article – the ‘never mind your gender’… ‘Pet’, ‘love’ and ‘darlin’ aren’t used for men for goodness’ sake! They’re used as names for women by men. And they are often used in a patronising way – I’ve been on the end of that a few times in my life. I’ve never liked being called ‘love’ or ‘darlin’ by a man. Market trader – maybe! But that’s about the limit. I remember being called ‘love’ several times when I was working by a man who was certainly trying to put me down. And I can absolutely see why women don’t want to be called ‘pet’!
Here is the sunny socialist kingdom of South Yorkshire, it is perfectly acceptable from men to call each other ‘love’, pal, and mate, a little further south its mi duck, ducky, and other words that mean we don’t have to resort to dealing with strangers in casual conversations by calling them sir or madam. It is a filler word and one which frankly most people don’t even hear in the conversation. You are changing its meaning, by guessing that it has been specifically chosen by someone you knew, to knowingly cause offence to you. Perhaps, if you didn’t like it, a short conversation with this person would have fixed the issue.
In the North East ‘pet’ is universal and not gender specific and certainly NOT in any way patronising. Frankly the use of ‘pet’ is delightfully endearing.
In the North West we use ‘love’ in exactly the same way.
I love regional dialects and accents and certainly could not be offended by their use. Bland is where the Davos Deviants want everyone to be – no thanks, so I will continue to use the word ‘love’ as part of my normal conversation just as I always have.
I don’t think she read the article. I explained all this in detail and if she wants I can cite half a dozen academic papers which back up what everyone who lives in these communities knows is the truth.
Can I suggest you read the article? It explains why the first 4 lines of your comment are not the case at all, and we have the studies to prove it.
No point bothering with Deborah T.
It is impossible to have a reasoned dialogue with someone unencumbered by facts.
Didn’t seem to bother Petula Clark.
Nonsense it is. I have been called pet, my lovely, my duck, darling, mate, and lots of other names that vary by region but in principle are universal. For men, women and all. It’s rather sweet. No microggressions, just a waste of time arguing about such things when there are serious matters in the world…
I have never been called “chook” in Liverpool, and I was born here, lol. I enjoy the variety and accents when people use these terms. We are headed for a boring country to be in.
Strachan love can you explain why terms of endearment are deemed patronising? I have a weakness for ” girls”, in more ways than one, which stems from the whole of my education and working lives being in the company of women. I find it difficult to address a group of females any other way without appearing pompous and unfriendly.
Read this comment above which explains where all this nonsense comes from and the junk science that psychology is.
Remember Freud? The perv who was obsessed with sex and thought all psychological problems were sex based.
Its like the joke about the banana. Freud’s daughter consults her father and explains a recurring dream.
She sees her youngest brother holding a banana.
Then her older brother comes into view holding a bigger banana.
Then her father appears in the dream and she says “and he had the biggest banana”.
To which Freud replies – ‘sometimes Anna my dear, a dream is just a dream’.
did you read the article? My entire argument is that using these terms is NOT patronising and NOT gender specific.
Having moved from the SE to the SW a few years ago I considered I had been properly integrated into my new community, despite the lack of a west country accent, the first time I was called “my lovely” by a local shopkeeper.
In my experience, this kind of term is often used when you are comfortable with another person you don’t know well, and you want to signal that. They are a term of acceptance, not endearment or an attempt to signal superiority.
I’m sick to death of being given “advice” on how I should behave by politicians, various public sector organisations and HR gauleiters. If I want their advice, I’ll ask for it.
As an alumnus of Newcastle University I am fairly disgusted.