A United Nations agency has been slammed as “Orwellian” for its latest diktat banning the term “Englishman” in its crackdown on “gendered” language. The Mail has more.
The Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation – which protects trademarks and patents globally – has also vetoed masculine terms including “forefathers” and “brotherhood of man”.
Even “man’s best friend” has been blacklisted – with “a faithful dog” to be used instead. And “birth attendant” is suggested as an alternative to “midwife”.
The move comes after the British Red Cross was accused of having been “hijacked by political extremists” after clamping down on phrases such as “ladies and gentlemen” and “maiden name”.
According to the ‘Guidelines on inclusive language’ published by the UN agency – known as WIPO – using “masculine-specific” terms risks giving the impression that “women are not represented in certain groups or do not possess certain skills”.
Among the terms staff should not use are Englishman – with “English person” or “English national” given as alternatives.
“Man in the street” should be replaced by “ordinary citizen” or “typical person”, while the word “sportsmanlike” is to be avoided in favour of “fair” or “sporting”. …
Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: “This is precisely what George Orwell warned us about.
“Banning certain words and phrases to advance a dogmatic political ideology is a hallmark of totalitarianism.”
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Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
The word ‘man’ is not gender specific. It refers to homo sapiens it has nothing to do with gender. Mankind doesn’t just mean all men. I am perfectly happy to deal with mental defectives up to a point but this is just retarded beyond comprehension.
Gender is a term which applies only to language as used in Latin, for example, masculine, feminine, neuter.
Only mental defectives believe it has meaning in biology. Could a tulip have ‘gender’, or a wasp?
Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
They use it other countries to refer to us male and female. They say Englishman in north European languages. Don’t let yourself be swayed by spazzes lest you start resembling them.
Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
It is a complete ignorance of Germanic languages. And even when they use Greek and Latin they get it wrong. What is homphobic? Fear of the same? It isn’t homo as in ecce homo or behold the man. And even if it was it would mean fear of the male. This is baby stuff and yet you let them get away with it.
Mogwai
6 months ago
Good grief, this is pathetic. What kind of man wishes to erase words that are deemed too ”masculine-specific”? Maybe the Director General identifies as a militant feminist or something, God knows! Anyone would think these nutty Woketards were available in both genders….
”Signed off by WIPO director general Daren Tang, the guidelines are ‘not prescriptive and common sense and clarity of text should always prevail’.
WIPO said the document was ‘designed to be a straightforward awareness-raising exercise for our colleagues on how to use language that resonates with the widest possible audience, which may include avoiding terms that are linked to one specific gender when other neutral, more-inclusive words are available.”’
Last edited 6 months ago by Mogwai
Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
It started to degrade rapidly in the early 1990s and has continued at an accelerating pace ever since. You can’t just suddenly find yourself aghast as if you have been asleep for the last thirty years. Like Jefferson said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. If you lacked vigilance before then you need to look at that. Self-examination is vitally important when it looks to you like something new confronts you.
It started back in the 1960s with the Hippies and feminist movement.
Ironically it is women today who are reaping what they sowed back then.
Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
Maybe take a leaf out of the rulebook of Millwall Foot Club – we are Millwall, nobody likes us and we don’t care.
Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
The point is that give them an inch and they will take a mile that is in their nature. Next time around don’t even give them an inch they have done nothing to earn it. Yes it means more work and watchfulness but if you can’t do that then you aren’t able to defend anything.
Jabby Mcstiff
6 months ago
Every night should be like Heartbreak Hotel until you get it. And when you do get it it then it should be the same. This isn’t like everything else wher eif you follow it then it will lead to some sweet outcome or reward. A stark confrontation with nastiness for decades and an ongoing assault. If you don’t have the stomach for that then you can offer nothing to defend the spirit of your country.
Pete Sutton
6 months ago
Swapping “hand made” for “man made” could lead to trade description violations.
Same as the word master in IT. Not meant to use master branch in Git nor master and slave. People ought to stop worrying about silly word salad and offending people with trivia and actually solve the world’s reals problems.
Grim Ace
6 months ago
These NGOs are heavily staffed, and led, by women if you open your eyes, you will notice how this type of mental derangement and unneeded bullshine always starts after women take charge. Instead of focusing on the important, day to day delivery of an organisations primary purpose, they wander off into womens favourite territory: gossip, scandal, emotioneering, safetyism, feelings, anxiousness, jealousy, love and romance, mental wellbeing, gender quotas, DEI. All completely irrelevant to operational delivery and regularly spaffing away millions of (insert currency) on womens nonsense
Hmmm…sorry not sorry to rain on your women-hating parade with a dose of reality but, including the Director General, WIPO has 6 men and 3 women in charge. But don’t let inconvenient facts get in the way of your obviously ingrained contempt towards the opposite sex. I’m sure those 3 pesky females ganged up on the boss in the gender neutral toilets and bullied him into signing off on the above claptrap. I mean, there’s no other explanation, is there?
Its not a case of counting up the chromosomes on the board, governing body etc. Its the one of the downsides (and there are undoubtedly upsides) of the feminisation of society in general, which has got us into a lot of distracting byways like this one.
What’s interesting is your consistent tendancy to follow me round the comments sections misconstruing my posts. Perhaps read back and observe that I’m fact-checking one of our resident misogynists. WIPO evidently is not ran by a majority of females. Who’s talking about society as a whole? Only you. Try sticking to the point at hand.
And besides, who exactly is responsible for the so-called “feminisation of society” if most of the people in a position of leadership, across all sectors, including politicians, are male?
Strange as it may seem to you, I don’t exactly warm to people who have an obsessive compulsion to denigrate an entire gender whenever they feel the need because they’re triggered by a particular article. I know, I know, I’m such an anomaly.
Alpha males are at the top of every greasy pole – this doesn’t mean they have to be good looking hunks, they can be intellectual and successful nerds now on very large salaries. In any event they attract women like you wouldn’t believe unless you have seen it with your own eyes.
So when discussing the feminisation of society, you can leave out those alpha males / directory generals they are not interested in such things. But in as much as feminisation of the workforce helps the alphas who are not affected by it and hinders their rivals who are, they are all for it.
Richard Austin
6 months ago
What words can be possibly be more inclusive than Man and Woman? There are two sexes; everything else is chemistry and psychology.
Funny how abandoning the sex-neutral masculine usage in favour of “gender-neutrality” has only served to emphasise sex differences.
Hester
6 months ago
The story misses a fundamental, in short there are obviously too many employees, with too little to do, paid too much of our money, who are justifying their roles by making this stuff up. Suggestion get rid of at least half of the UN staff and managers including senior team and perhaps they will focus on useful things that actually help humanity rather than divides it.
Well it could be worse. The boss of the UN could be female! I mean, imagine…
disgruntled246
6 months ago
Given that everybody seems able to self-identify as a standard lamp or anything else these days, if I want to be called an Englishman I’ll damn well be called an Englishman, thank you.
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Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The word ‘man’ is not gender specific. It refers to homo sapiens it has nothing to do with gender. Mankind doesn’t just mean all men. I am perfectly happy to deal with mental defectives up to a point but this is just retarded beyond comprehension.
Womens sh1t
Gender is a term which applies only to language as used in Latin, for example, masculine, feminine, neuter.
Only mental defectives believe it has meaning in biology. Could a tulip have ‘gender’, or a wasp?
They use it other countries to refer to us male and female. They say Englishman in north European languages. Don’t let yourself be swayed by spazzes lest you start resembling them.
It is a complete ignorance of Germanic languages. And even when they use Greek and Latin they get it wrong. What is homphobic? Fear of the same? It isn’t homo as in ecce homo or behold the man. And even if it was it would mean fear of the male. This is baby stuff and yet you let them get away with it.
Good grief, this is pathetic. What kind of man wishes to erase words that are deemed too ”masculine-specific”? Maybe the Director General identifies as a militant feminist or something, God knows! Anyone would think these nutty Woketards were available in both genders….
”Signed off by WIPO director general Daren Tang, the guidelines are ‘not prescriptive and common sense and clarity of text should always prevail’.
WIPO said the document was ‘designed to be a straightforward awareness-raising exercise for our colleagues on how to use language that resonates with the widest possible audience, which may include avoiding terms that are linked to one specific gender when other neutral, more-inclusive words are available.”’
It started to degrade rapidly in the early 1990s and has continued at an accelerating pace ever since. You can’t just suddenly find yourself aghast as if you have been asleep for the last thirty years. Like Jefferson said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. If you lacked vigilance before then you need to look at that. Self-examination is vitally important when it looks to you like something new confronts you.
It started back in the 1960s with the Hippies and feminist movement.
Ironically it is women today who are reaping what they sowed back then.
Maybe take a leaf out of the rulebook of Millwall Foot Club – we are Millwall, nobody likes us and we don’t care.
The point is that give them an inch and they will take a mile that is in their nature. Next time around don’t even give them an inch they have done nothing to earn it. Yes it means more work and watchfulness but if you can’t do that then you aren’t able to defend anything.
Every night should be like Heartbreak Hotel until you get it. And when you do get it it then it should be the same. This isn’t like everything else wher eif you follow it then it will lead to some sweet outcome or reward. A stark confrontation with nastiness for decades and an ongoing assault. If you don’t have the stomach for that then you can offer nothing to defend the spirit of your country.
Swapping “hand made” for “man made” could lead to trade description violations.
“Man” is a contraction of the Latin “manus” meaning hand.
The word “hand” has long been used in occupations to describe a worker – “all hands on deck”, charge-hand, for example.
Foreman, postman, fireman, policeman – can be viewed in that context.
Shouldn’t ‘Man’s best friend’ be ‘A faithful canine’? We wouldn’t want to upset any female canines would we?
(large scoop of sarcasm)
They are properly referred to as bitches.
Same as the word master in IT. Not meant to use master branch in Git nor master and slave. People ought to stop worrying about silly word salad and offending people with trivia and actually solve the world’s reals problems.
These NGOs are heavily staffed, and led, by women if you open your eyes, you will notice how this type of mental derangement and unneeded bullshine always starts after women take charge. Instead of focusing on the important, day to day delivery of an organisations primary purpose, they wander off into womens favourite territory: gossip, scandal, emotioneering, safetyism, feelings, anxiousness, jealousy, love and romance, mental wellbeing, gender quotas, DEI. All completely irrelevant to operational delivery and regularly spaffing away millions of (insert currency) on womens nonsense
Hmmm…sorry not sorry to rain on your women-hating parade with a dose of reality but, including the Director General, WIPO has 6 men and 3 women in charge. But don’t let inconvenient facts get in the way of your obviously ingrained contempt towards the opposite sex. I’m sure those 3 pesky females ganged up on the boss in the gender neutral toilets and bullied him into signing off on the above claptrap. I mean, there’s no other explanation, is there?
https://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/management.html
“Women hating parade” Oh purleeze!
Its not a case of counting up the chromosomes on the board, governing body etc. Its the one of the downsides (and there are undoubtedly upsides) of the feminisation of society in general, which has got us into a lot of distracting byways like this one.
(woman here BTW)
What’s interesting is your consistent tendancy to follow me round the comments sections misconstruing my posts. Perhaps read back and observe that I’m fact-checking one of our resident misogynists. WIPO evidently is not ran by a majority of females. Who’s talking about society as a whole?
Only you. Try sticking to the point at hand.
And besides, who exactly is responsible for the so-called “feminisation of society” if most of the people in a position of leadership, across all sectors, including politicians, are male?
Strange as it may seem to you, I don’t exactly warm to people who have an obsessive compulsion to denigrate an entire gender whenever they feel the need because they’re triggered by a particular article. I know, I know, I’m such an anomaly.
As I suspected, tumbleweeds….
Isn’t it interesting when the facts don’t support somebody’s narrative how it all goes quiet? Funny that.
Alpha males are at the top of every greasy pole – this doesn’t mean they have to be good looking hunks, they can be intellectual and successful nerds now on very large salaries. In any event they attract women like you wouldn’t believe unless you have seen it with your own eyes.
So when discussing the feminisation of society, you can leave out those alpha males / directory generals they are not interested in such things. But in as much as feminisation of the workforce helps the alphas who are not affected by it and hinders their rivals who are, they are all for it.
What words can be possibly be more inclusive than Man and Woman? There are two sexes; everything else is chemistry and psychology.
Funny how abandoning the sex-neutral masculine usage in favour of “gender-neutrality” has only served to emphasise sex differences.
The story misses a fundamental, in short there are obviously too many employees, with too little to do, paid too much of our money, who are justifying their roles by making this stuff up. Suggestion get rid of at least half of the UN staff and managers including senior team and perhaps they will focus on useful things that actually help humanity rather than divides it.
Well it could be worse. The boss of the UN could be female! I mean, imagine…
Given that everybody seems able to self-identify as a standard lamp or anything else these days, if I want to be called an Englishman I’ll damn well be called an Englishman, thank you.
Mad dogs and technocrats go out in the mid day sun
Out in the mid day, out in the mid day, out in the mid day sun.
He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it’s greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
For he might have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an!
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations
He remains an Englishman!
He remains an Englishman!
G&S
So Foxtrot Oscar UN.
One of my pet hates is in cricket
You no longer have batsmen, you have batters – so we are told.
I can see that might help in a mixed sex cricket team – I’m not totally unreasonable.
Its also (unsurprisingly) used in Women’s cricket, you can’t have batswomen.
However, if you concede no runs in an over, it is still a maiden.
What about that caped crusader, what should (he) be referred to as?
Someone, please stop this madness, it needs to end!