LETTER: Neutral terms
I read in Saturday’s Review-Journal (“Berkeley strips gender from terms”) that officials in Berkeley, California, are stripping gender from certain terms. “Manholes” will become “maintenance holes,” “man-made” will be “human-made” and masculine and feminine pronouns will become “they” and “them.”
Well, I certainly hope they will be changing “The League of Women Voters” to “The League of Human Voters” and phrases such as “women’s rights” to “human rights.” How can we live in this society if we label restrooms as “men” and “women”? All restrooms will need to have the word “human” on them. But men’s bathrooms have urinals in them which women — sorry, “humans” — can’t use, so we must replace them all with toilets.
I certainly hope they will be addressing the words “management,” “manicurist,” “manipulate” and “mandatory,” not to mention the other thousands of words that have caused such division in the greatest country on Earth.
God bless America. I hope I can say that.
